Entendre

My pal Jenny and I are heading briskly up the sidewalk, in the third mile of our evening walk. We are both in our mid-40s, both redheads. We pause near a fraternity house where two of the brothers are tossing a football in the street. One of them looks at us and starts running backwards toward us. "Go deep! Go deep!" he shouts to his friend. He turns to us with a self-conscious sort of jocularity. He says, "Did anybody ever go deep on you, maybe way back in the day?" We keep walking. For a few strides I think, "He seemed weirdly deliberate about saying that. That was a strange encounter." The words play back in my head and I realize there's another way to interpret that question: did anybody ever go deep on you, maybe way back in the day?

I turn to Jenny with horror on my face. She is looking at me with the selfsame expression. "Did he...?!" "He absolutely did." "That is SO WRONG." "Totally disgusting, but that's definitely what he meant." The skeeviness is palpable. And I am mad.

We turn toward Jenny's house and I say, "If I were a better Christian I'd pray for him, but right now I'm just glad he's not likely to remain in the gene pool." We fume and steam. I stop. I say, "I have half a mind to go back and say something to him." She says, "What would you say?" I say, "I'll tell him, 'This is a civil neighborhood. People are polite to each other here. It is NOT appropriate for you to talk to random women like that.' Come on, let's do it." Jenny whips out her phone in case the conversation goes south, but I, uncharacteristically, have not a speck of fear in me. 

I stride up to him and plant my hands on my hips. "That was extremely rude," I say. He says, "What?" I echo his words: "Did anybody ever go deep on you, maybe way back in the day?" And what I think I see in his face is a crunch of recognition as he hears what we heard, followed by a surge of embarrassment. "Oh," he says, "That's not what I meant-- I was just talking about the football. Like in American Pie. Have you seen it?" I have never seen American Pie, but it strikes me as a terrible reference to choose if you're trying to distance yourself from sexually offensive talk. Still, he apologizes; I shake the hand he offers me. My anger has evaporated.

Jenny is not persuaded. She thinks he was just backpedaling, surprised by the wrath I was radiating. She is glad I confronted him. I am glad too, because I really felt slimed by the encounter. I am certain it would have taken me a chunk of the evening to shrug it off if I had walked away. 

But now I am wondering what the real story is, and if I was unjust. There was definitely something weird in the way he spoke to us. Was it just a college kid feeling a little too old to play ball in the street? Or was our mutual certainty about his intent actually on target?

If I were Captain Awkward, I'd write about rape culture here. I have been thinking this evening about the times in college when I didn't speak up, when I let skeeviness slide and regretted it later. And if I were a different sort of Christian, maybe I'd be humbler here about my initial refusal to pray for him. But maybe instead of writing about what I'm not, I'll head to bed so I can be the best version of myself tomorrow. (And I will say a prayer for him, whatever his needs might be.) I'm curious about your perspective on the situation, though. What would you have done? Has anything similar happened to you lately?