adventures in public romance (not the sexy kind--this site is always SFW!)

I just dextrously avoided being asked out by someone at the library help desk--I say dextrously because I employed the classic, "Well, this is a helpdesk, so... if you have an actual question, i will answer it" line (implication: but I do not want to be part of any "confidential conversations," thanks). I don't mind being flirted with, if it's classy flirting--especially since I am feeling rather pretty today--but this wasn't flirting, it was something else far more open and depressing... scouting. Frank evaluation. Predation.

The weird people who try to date me--and there aren't that many, but enough to establish a pattern--are always asking me my name, and I experience this momentary hesitation. Why don't I want them to know my name? If normal crazy people want to know my name, I usually don't mind (it's not like it's a secret), but for some reason if I can tell they're angling to try to ask me out (or whatever we would do, in their crazy version of what relationships are like--make out in the bathroom?) it makes me uncomfortable. It seems like I'm giving them a power they don't deserve. Fairy tales know this: names are powerful. Yet I always stumble over the truth instead of providing a spontaneous, ill-constructed lie. Why can't I be Monique or Sasha or Jamie, just for today? Maybe I should practice.

Another weird guy asked me out earlier in the week, as I was walking from the LRT station to my building, and this guy was OLD. Sometimes I describe people as "old," and I really mean, "over 30," but this guy was 65 if he was a day. I transcribe our conversation for posterity:

OLD guy, with no preamble: Are you single?
Jocelyn, quizzical and amused expression on her face: No.
Old guy: Because you are [indistinct; a combination of an appreciative groan and what may have actually been a real english word, although maybe not].
I walked away, laughing, and when I had gone another ten feet:
Woman sitting on a bench with a bemused look on her face: You're not single either, huh?
Jocelyn: No, not today.

Am I a weird guy magnet? Or is it just logical--only weird guys would try to pick up random women on the street, and therefore, the only men who will try to pick you up on the street are weird by definition? I hope it's the second. Anyway, I wanted to ask this weird guy what, in his weird old guy version of reality, gave him the impression that he had a chance--however remote--of picking me up. I wanted to say, "do I look homeless or mentally ill to you? Do I look like I am in your age or income or attractiveness bracket?" [not that i'm a supermodel, but keep in mind, this guy was getting the senior's discount AND the weird guy discount, and probably a shoplifting-from-value-village discount as well. At least I wear clean clothes and my hair smells like satsuma.] "Do you know that I have a real boyfriend, who is gainfully employed and cute and smart and funny and who accompanies me to foreign films and never describes me using grunting noises? Do you know that I have 15/16ths of a Masters degree, a laundry card, a savings account, multiple pairs of shoes, 471 books, tiny frozen casseroles, handmade jewelry, a sense of dignity, and a myriad of other things that put me way out of your league?"

But I said none of those things. At least I didn't tell him my name.