creepy men at bars

earlier tonight a guy at the bar picked a fight with me. the reason was because he thinks i'm a bitch (he said this several times). the reason he thinks i'm a bitch is because he often sees me having conversations with other people and sits down to join in, hears something i say totally out of context, and chimes in with a comment. he gets angry when i tell him that what he said isn't really what we're talking about at all.

let me give an example: tonight my friend and i were talking about the expression "don't put all your eggs in one basket", but i was trying to talk about how different people have different amounts of sort of emotional energy, which is why some people can tolerate being friends with a untreated mentally ill person and others can't. my friend has lots of emotional resources because he's relatively mentally stable and he has a laid-back temperament. i have way fewer resources because i'm dealing with my own mental illness and i'm an anxious person, which means i get more stressed than most people when i have to deal with a volatile or emotionally demanding person.
this guy heard me talking about eggs and assumed i was talking about eggs as in the kind of eggs that go with sperm to make babies. he reassured me that i had lots of time and told me not to worry about it. i told him that we weren't talking about those kinds of eggs and he told me again not to worry. i said i wasn't worried and he insisted i was. i said okay and went back to my conversation. he got angry and walked away.

so anyway, this guy came up to me and basically yelled at me because he thinks i'm mean, i guess. apparently he thinks he's a big deal because he's been going to that bar for 20 years. actually he goes to bars where young people congregate because he wants to hook up with them and it's really very creepy. he touches people too much, hits on them when they clearly aren't interested, and other such things. i didn't say any of that though, i just explained that if he had a problem with me, i wasn't forcing him to talk to me, and he threw a sort of tantrum about me not being nicer to him.

that was annoying, and then later i was extra annoyed because some people were going to eat and the person i like was going so i decided i would go along too. this guy overheard that i was going and invited himself, so i uninvited myself and went somewhere else. he also got a ride with the person i like, so i'm concerned that he might have told him that i'm a bitch or whatever. i don't know.

i think i should think about why men pick fights with me. i think it's because i look like someone who will smile awkwardly and try to make nice. also, some men think women should always be polite and friendly no matter what, and they get very angry when a woman defends herself without apologizing or says she doesn't want to be around him. i think this man tonight thought that because he's older than me and a man, he has the right to my attention. and i think the man a couple weeks ago thinks that because he's white and a man, he has the right to touch me and say racist things to me and have me smile politely in response.

i'm really happy that i've been able to defend myself, though. i'm happy that i'm able to stay calm and say what i'm thinking and not apologize or cry. i feel...good.