If you call me 'gorgeous' I will hate you

The other evening, while downloading mail as I sat in the Rosebank Mugg & Bean and cursing the fact that the waiter had brought me wine that tasted like cooldrink, a student approached me. He launched into his sales pitch so quickly I had no time to ask him (politely) to leave me alone. Instead, he stood there and told me he wasn’t asking me for money, this was an “egg beg” and the idea was I would give him a donation for his team’s university rugby tour of Argentina. Which meant that technically he was asking for money, but presumably that’s beside the point. In the great South African tradition, I was so desperate to get rid of him that I handed him the first bit of cash I could rip out of my wallet, a R20 note. “That’s more than I give to beggars at intersections,” I said. “Thanks gorgeous,” he said.

That’s what grated me most of all. “Gorgeous”. When he used it for the second time (he’d greeted me with the immortal words “Hi gorgeous”) I felt an intense rush of loathing for him. I hope he breaks an ankle and doesn’t get to go.

Why such a hostile reaction? Why such visceral hatred? I sat back to think about it, because it’s probably not a rational reaction per se. Visceral hatred should generally be reserved for taxi drivers, estate agents and he-who-shall-not-be-named. Why some doos in a coffee shop whose testicles probably haven’t even dropped yet?

I think that, for a start, that kind of familiarity was totally inappropriate. “Gorgeous” is what I’d expect from a smarmy Lolly Jackson type with chest hair and bling — yuck yuck yuck — not from somebody a lot younger than me who also happens to be asking me for a favour. If he’d been polite and humble and called me “Ma’am” (or nothing), I might have been less hostile. Polite and humble generally works a lot better for me (and a lot of people) than arrogant and sleazy.

This guy clearly thought he was something special, that his looks would help him get by. I can’t imagine why else he would have used the kind of approach more suited to a Friday night pickup joint. Presumably women in all situations are all desperate to be called “gorgeous” by good-looking young males, right? That’s what the seduction websites tell men who aren’t so blessed in the looks department. (They also tell men not to approach women alone, but to approach the challenge as fighter pilots would. Hence the wingman, useful — so I have been told — for picking up skanks at Billy the Bums.) Seduction is clearly big business, or at least that’s what the number of books and websites devoted to the subject would suggest.

Those guides to seduction are also scary because they assume that women are an entirely different species, an enemy to be subdued. So here’s what really irritates me: the assumption that I would be flattered by the use of “gorgeous” and therefore softened up. And within that, a further assumption that I am not accustomed to that kind of approach, and would appreciate it even more because, hey, I should take what I can get.

Flattery of that kind does not work for me at all. Forget the pick-up lines, at least any that refer to my appearance. Comments about the way I look just make me instantly suspicious and once I’m suspicious, you’ve had it. The shield goes up.

Occasionally I’ll be more forgiving. The other night I went cougar-hunting at the Baron on Main with a gay friend. There were no cougars (surprisingly; perhaps they stay in on Saturday nights), but within ten minutes I’d been hit on by a guy, 23 years old maximum and probably from some benighted locale on the East Rand. He told me I was the most beautiful woman in the bar, and suggested we go partying together. He was completely blotto and kept giving me and my friend high fives (why do drunk people give high fives? What is it with the high fives?), but in having been drunk for the past four hours or so, since before the Stormers vs Bulls match started showing, he had incubated a kind of goofy charm he probably doesn’t possess when he’s sober. Not that he’d get anywhere with me in a million years, but as my friend said, he took the risk, so good for him.

The student in the Mugg & Bean had no such excuse. He just went around looking for suitable targets and used what he thought were his best seduction techniques on them. Perhaps I’m being paranoid or cynical or both. I’d be interested in whether other women respond to flattery of this kind. Do you melt when a random stranger who wants money from you says, “Hi gorgeous”? I’d love to know.