Chivalry

Women like to sit. According to Carrie.

I consider myself a gentleman. I hold doors for women. This week, trying to catch a cab on a busy Saturday afternoon, I let two girls take the cab even though I was obviously waiting there first. And if I were on the Titanic, I would have let the women and children go first, even if one of them was stupid enough to throw the damn Heart of the Ocean diamond necklace overboard. Why'd she do it? Why!?!?

But if I'm sitting on a subway, and some perfectly healthy girl enters, and has to stand... do I really have to get up and give her my seat? Really? Even though she would Mace me in a second if I tried to hit on her? This isn't a lifeboat we're talking about here. Yeah, women have to put up with a lot. PMS for one. But us guys have to deal with a lot of crap too. Like girls with PMS.

Maybe I would have given up that seat before this weekend. I went to a bar with my friend, who I'll call J-dawg. I decided to approach a group of girls.

Now I'm not a swarmy character. As I said, I'm a gentlemanly guy. Me and J-dawg were having a disagreement over whether guy bartenders or girl bartenders poured better drinks. So I decided to ask the girl her opinion.

Here is how it went.

Me: (confidently) Hey.. excu..

Girl: You do not want to be talking to me.

Me: What?

Girl: Trust me. You do not want to be talking to me.

Me: (terrified) But I, uh...

Girl: Ok, what do you want?

Me: (retreating into a shell) Uh... I gotta go.

Yeah. Brutal.

I went to get another drink. I ordered a vodka tonic, cause I'm doing the kosher for passover thing. I overheard the girl next to me mention Passover and I started talking to her. She was Jewish too. Drinking a vodka and diet coke. We had a nice conversation. Got into one of those east-coast vs. west-coast debates (she was from California). I started to get over the searing pain caused by the brutality I'd just suffered. THEN this Jewish girl's friend comes over.

Jgirl: This is my friend, Bitchy McNopersonality

Me: Oh hey, I'm Adam, nice to meet you.

Bitchy: Yeah.

Me: Are you from California too?

Bitchy: No.

Jgirl: She goes to school with me.

Me: Oh yeah? What do you study?

Jgirl: She's studying biology, she's doing a paper on Penguins.

Me: Oh yeah? You think that maybe, when no one is looking, they fly around?

Bitchy: They can't fly.

Me: So you don't think they're just trying to fool us.

Bitchy: No. They can't fly. Are you an idiot?

Me: I'm just joking.

Bitchy: (to friend) Let's go.

Me: You ever hear of this new thing? It's called humor?

Bitchy: Nice meeting you (drags friend away).

Needless to say, after this night, I started to question the whole chivalry thing. Why be nice to girls when they'll treat you like shit and not even bat an eyelash in remorse? I was nice, friendly, not drunk, dressed reasonably well (I had an abercrombie polo on). Why react so bitchily toward me? It was as if I'd whipped out my penis and asked the girls to suck it. All I did was say hi!

So girls, women. The bottom line is this. If you want this whole chivalry thing, you're gonna have to earn it. Women back in the day had no rights, no property, and had to wear things that are now used in Abu Gharib to torture prisoners. Yet, they were polite, well-mannered, sweet. Chivalry made sense because, hell, if they could be nice after we men treated them like second class citizens, they deserved to get in the lifeboats first.

But if you're going to act like a bitch, there's no way I'm standing up for you on the subway.