Brett travels. Same shit, different bodypart.

So I'm under covers and wearing a warm superwool hat and socks and long flannel pants (plaid, greenish, like the cotton sweater I'm wearing) and I'm just about comfortable. I may have to take off this hat in a bit, though. It's real darn warm.
In any case, this means that I am at the moment in Colorado, the beautiful land of stars and starlets and mountains and wiznits and whatnots. My bus-ride from Austin to Denver was a normal travelling-excursion for Brett: Much time spent trying to get comfortable, stetching, and cracking my back, a few vain attempts to read in the bus without heading into a state of car-sickness, listening to my beautiful little ipod, and gettting quasi-molested by a Bob-Marley-wanna-be Jordanian man from San Francisco.

What is it about me, travel, and ethnic gay men that inspires them to touch me in inappropriate ways? I suppose the combination of tiredness and the slight nervousness of travel makes me look vulnerable and swimming in desire for hard man cock. I just don't get it. When I'm travelling (and in real life...but especially when I'm travelling, for security and slothful reasons) I look more like a bum than homosexual. But I guess looking homeless (which usually keeps me from being too worried about people stealing my stuff...sure, I have a thousand dollar computer in my backpack, but I Look like I should be asking you for a quarter so I can buy a cup of coffee...who's gonna rob a vagrant?) turns dark-skinned people on. Because this is the thing. Most of my life has been spent Not travelling. Most of my life has been spent, admittedly, around waspish American white people. But EVERY time I have been inappropriately touched by a Man, I have been travelling, and the man has been 'ethnic,' or whatever the PC word is for 'not white American-born suburban duder'.

So what was the particular trespass this time? Compared to Perugia, it wasn't much...just me entering into a 'friendly' conversation with a hippie-looking dude. We talked a little bit about various universities, schools, poetry, bullshit, yada yada. Every now and again I feel like I should try to be more of a 'talkative' traveller, instead of the apparently-depressed guy with his head against the window daydreaming about dying. So I talk to him, we communicate, everything seems aight. And then his hand enters into the space between us. And, somehow, slowly and sheepishly, his hand ends up grazing my ass. It's an accident, right? I mean, these seats Are kinda close to each other. Then, somehow, he moves his hand Under a bit of my ass. I am now feeling very awkward, and I am beginning to realize the paralysis that I have seen in attractive women being touched by skeezy men. So, there's his hand, under my ass, and I shift my body around to get it out from under me as best I can, and while I'm doing this, the hand moves to the small of my back, where it rests for a moment or two before he asks 'Do you mind if I work on your back?' and I say 'yeah, I'd rather you didn't,' after which he says 'I just like doing things I'm good at,' or something along those lines, and then I move seats as best I can to try to fall asleep.

I learned two things, Again, from this episode. 1) I think it might SUCK to be a girl, especially a good-looking one, at times. I've oftened heard attractive females complaining, in one form or another, about being hit on constantly. Luckily for me and my maleness, I don't often get 'hit on' by undesirables, since most women are not as predatory as men tend to be. With only about 2 percent of the male population being homosexual, there just aren't all that many gay dudes to eerily and queerily and touchily hit on me. But if you're a Girl, and you're hot, and there are men everywhere you go in your life, and 98 percent of them are straight,and 80 percent of them what to bang you, and 40 percent have the gaul/balls/dumbassness to approach you in that quary when, then it just seems like you could get into a lot of awkward, unwanted, or feeling-violated situations. It would be shitty to Constantly have to think that with Every man you're talking to, he really wants something more than just a friendly chat. On a lot of levels, I think it'd be a burden, especially when guys starting getting touch-feely-ewww-gross...and Especially when you're constantly being groped when you're in Italy. Dirty farkin' Italians. Dwelling in a land of stereotypes, I was expecting to be ashamed of obnoxious american boys when I was in Europe...but the truth was that most of the big annoying groups of guys were Italians, even in Prague and whatnot, and most of my she-friends who've been to Italy have complained (or just apathetically stated) the reality of being repeatedly felt-up in Italia. Damn good pasta they got, though. Damn good pasta. And Fonzie, the guy I met on the train, was cool...though he was two-timing on his girlfriend. So, cool to me, not to his women. That's the Italian pattern so far from my incredibly narrow viewpoint.

The other thing I was reminded of is something more general: Everybody wants something from you. This guy I was talking to told me I had a 'pure soul' and seemed like I could 'write a great novel' or something alont those lines, but, really, 'you have a pure soul' means 'please give me a handjob on the greyhound bus,' and you seem like you could write a great novel means 'I want my hand in your ass.' So people say things, and feel and mean something else. Maybe not all the time. but possibly, probably most. It's hard not to be suspicious of people's motives when you're human. But, as Mother Theresa said, be hip and live sweetly anyway, though I guess she never assumed that being friendly with a hippie on a bus would lead to creepy lemme-rub-you come-ons.

The thing is, Hussan wasn't, from what I could tell, a Bad guy. Seemed nice enough and whatnot. But I guess that might be part of his shtick to get the shdick.