It was an otherwise unassuming summer day where the sun was bright, the sky a bright form of blue and the air so warm, there was little to do but find yourself a beach and sit yourself down.
It was early January, so people were flittering around, but a weekday; the spaces in the sand hinting to the fact many others had gone back to work.
I walked down to the beach closest to my house, towel in hand, book in other. It’s a calm, quiet stretch of beach that has a funny way of soothing the most frantic of minds.
I lay down and began reading. Within moments I had company.
“Hi,” he said. He had an inflatable lilo in hand and, such is the universal beach uniform for men, wore a pair of board shorts and not much else. “I am just going to sit here.”
It wasn’t a question. He would be sitting down ‘here‘.
‘Here’ was on the edge of my towel. He positioned himself on top of his desperately oversized lilo, which covered a corner of my towel.
I was annoyed, not least because a sand-infested lilo was staining the towel I only just shook clean, but because my time alone is not the kind of thing I appreciate being invaded.
I was impressed by how many different thoughts consumed my mind in the space of just a few seconds. Do I indulge him? Be polite? Tell him to f*ck off?
“Sorry, I’m actually just reading,” was the response I settled on.
He looked at me. There was no doubt he was taken aback. Perhaps every other time he sat his entitled arse down on someone’s towel, he had stumbled on a person much better, much more polite, than me.
“Wow, okay. Now, I am definitely just going to sit here for a bit.”
Like a boomerang, it was my turn to look a bit like a deer in headlights. I did little to hide how taken aback I really was.
I sat up, crossed my legs, turned my back to him and continued reading. He looked out to sea.
A flurry of thoughts shot through my mind. The two overriding ones were feelings of being totally exposed and others of pervading guilt.
Though the beach is a public place, it can be a supremely personal experience.
For one, I was in nothing but a bikini. Of course, that was my choice. However I expected my experience at the beach that day would be one that didn't involve anyone else. Suddenly he made himself part of that experience, and I automatically wished I had clothes on. It would've been, I guess, like an armour of sorts.
The other half of me was acutely aware that other people around us may have overhead our conversation. Did they think I was an awful person? Too rude? Was I too brusque, my tone too harsh?
After 10 minutes of re-reading the same paragraph in my book over and over - my mind far too distracted to actually consume any information - I began texting my mum and a friend. How in the world do I get rid of this guy, short of telling him to shove it?
Before they had a chance to reply, he quietly picked up his absurd, fluoro-coloured lilo and left. It had been about 10 minutes, but felt like 10 hours. As he walked away, back to his friends a few hundred metres down the beach, a group of girls close by cheered.
In hindsight, it didn't have to be 10 minutes. In fact, every time I tell the story, I'm always met with confusion as to why I didn't just tell him to leave.
But here's the thing: I don't actually know why I didn't say anything. I froze. I was so, so hyper-aware that people around me would be listening. At the end of the day, I didn't want to risk be branded - by strangers, no less - as rude. After all, women are overrun with messages that tell them they always need to be polite.
LISTEN: A woman called the MMOL team for advice, on how to politely tell a lingering man to leave. (Post continues after audio...)
When I asked the people around me what I should have said, the answers went a little like this:
You're making me uncomfortable. Could you leave?
I'm so sorry but I've actually come for some peace and quiet, could you leave?
In the days since, I've thought about the exchange a lot. His intentions were probably innocent, but at the time, it felt like the ultimate power play. He had a group of friends at the beach, I didn't. He had back-up, I didn't. And although it was my home ground, it felt like he had the advantage.
There's a time and place for a man to approach a woman, and a woman to approach a man, but this didn't feel like it. This felt like an entitled man playing games, assuming because I sat alone, I owed him a conversation. Assuming because I didn't have company of my own, I'd embrace his.
It amazed me how little power he afforded me in that scenario, as if my opinion didn't matter, my body language void of meaning and the fact I didn't want him there just a tiny blip on his intention to stay.
What would have done in this scenario? Tell us in the comments below.
Top Comments
I think it's easy after the moment to have the "perfect" response, but in the actual moment, you're not expecting this to happen, so why would it be expected for you to have the right answer, let alone any. I probably would have frozen as well if that had happened, but now at least (the only good from this), you have experienced something like this, which not only will help you next time, if God forbid it happens again ( which I sincerely hope it doesn't!), but it also brings awareness to others who can learn from this. You have nothing to be ashamed of.
Unfortunately this is the reason I don't like being anywhere by myself, pub, park, beach, restaurant. I know that in this day and age women should be able to be in any situation by themselves and not feel intimidated or uneasy, but it is men, like this guy, who make it difficult and uneasy for women. You just never know what the person is going to do if you politely ask them to leave you alone. I was in a bar, that I would frequent often as it was close to where I lived and I knew the owner, when this guy came up and just sat at my table, which I felt was very odd as there were plenty of tables vacant. I smiled politely and went back to my phone, he asked if he could buy me a drink, I said no, he kept pestering me, until the owner asked him to move back to his group, or he could leave the bar. He left the bar, humiliated, but what I did not know was that he waited for me to leave, to accost me outside, later on. Fortunately my then partner was there to pick me up. Sometimes a bruised ego is the catalyst for something worse.