Yesterday I was dressed up nice for once so I convinced Steven to take me out to one of my favorite seafood restaurants. I was feeling spiffy and wanted to partake of some crab legs. Tasty stuff.
This restaurant has wonderful food though it isn’t particularly fancy. After you place your order you get a little flashing lobster-shaped beeper to let you know when your food is ready then a waiter will come, get your plastic lobster, and bring out your food to you. Steven and I sit down with our Lobster #111 and talk about our day.
At some point a young waiter comes by and gets Lobster #111 so when it goes off he’ll bring out our food. We thank him and continue our discussion. Not long after he begins to bring our food out — Steven’s comes first.
While Steven is checking out his food and preparing to dive in the waiter brings out my food. He’s serving me from my left and begins to set down my plate of crab legs with his right hand. I remember thinking he was setting down the plate funny because his hand was between the plate and me. Then as he set the plate down the back of his hand touched my left breast.
Well, my first thought was, “Oh, how embarrassing for him,” and I instinctively sat back in my chair. His hand followed along with me, kept touching me. I leaned back some more and he again kept the back of his hand against my chest. He was arranging my plate, or seemed to be. I don’t know. I can’t be sure how long it lasted — maybe five to seven seconds at the most — but it seemed like forever. All I could do was stare at my corn.
He finally had my plate arranged to his satisfaction and began to clean up the table next to us. Steven had been concerned with his food the entire time and didn’t see what happened; he didn’t see the look on my face. I couldn’t say anything to him right then because the waiter was still too close.
I really didn’t know what to think. My first, instinctive thought was that the waiter did it on purpose but then I’d snap back to giving him the benefit of the doubt: “Surely it was an accident,” “It didn’t go on as long as what it felt like,” “He would not have done that with my husband RIGHT THERE.” Even now, while writing this, I still don’t know for certain. All I knew was that I felt a horrible wrongness.
Finally, Creepy Waiter sleazed back into the kitchen. Steven was talking about a book but I stopped him mid-sentence with an urgent whisper of, “That waiter TOTALLY copped a feel!” Instinct won out for the time being. Then I busted out laughing ’cause I didn’t know what else to do.
“What?!” Steven looked ready to kick butt. He wanted to say something to the waiter, the manager, or somebody but I didn’t want him to do anything. I don’t really know why except I didn’t want to cause a scene or be all White Woman Uses Sexual Harassment Card on Minority Worker. I just wanted to eat my seafood and get the hell out of there. I might have been eating crab, but I felt chicken.
So we ate our seafood with me going through my crab legs in my usual methodical manner. It felt good to have something to concentrate on. Every once in a while Creepy Waiter would sleaze close by and we’d watch him out of the corner of our eyes. I was so afraid he’d come back and try the same move while taking away our plates but thankfully he didn’t bother us again. I wonder if Steven gave him a dirty look that I don’t know about.
I would like to think I am a pretty strong-willed woman; I don’t put up with too much shit. Before, I would have thought if someone tried a move like that on me I’d whack their hand away and call them out on it. Now I know otherwise, and the biggest reason why is the self-doubt — did it even really happen the way I think it did?
I know that what happened yesterday is nothing — NOTHING — compared to what happens to many women every day, but now I can understand more why many are afraid to speak out and say something.
We can be so quick to find fault in ourselves first.
As we left the restaurant I told Steven, “I still feel kinda bad that we’re not leaving him a tip.” Then I thought about it a second and said, “Well, I guess he got his tip.”
