Meeting Strange Men in Hotel Elevators

There must be something about hotel elevators. The promise! The potential! The anonymity!

I’m staying at a hotel in Seoul, Korea for a few weeks for work, and had an interesting encounter with a man in the elevator this morning. During my first stay at this hotel back in July, I had an unpleasant experience with a different man in the very same elevator, a story I shared here, and also on Facebook, through my blog.

I was shocked that a simple post discussing my fear of strange men could provoke such debate on my Facebook feed, with guys getting offended and wondering if they are ever allowed to speak to a strange woman without her feeling harassed, and also how exactly they should go about approaching a woman they do find attractive, without making her afraid.

Well guys, here’s how it’s done:

Strange Man #2 followed me into the elevator after breakfast and leaned back against the side railing, facing toward me as I faced the door. I pressed the button for 19, he pressed for 17, and I knew we were in for a long ride together.

He began with some small talk, speaking English with a European accent I couldn’t quite place. Italian, maybe? He asked me how long I was staying in the hotel. I replied that I would be there a few weeks, and asked “what about you?”. He was leaving in a few days, he said, but had been there for two weeks already.

As we arrived at his floor and the doors opened, he looked me directly in the eyes and said “if you like, maybe later…” and motioned down the hall, presumably toward his room. I was so taken aback I literally said “no, thank you”, shaking my head, making a no thanks gesture with my hands, and blushing rather dramatically, I am sure.

He stepped out of the elevator, the doors closed behind him, and I smiled to myself in bemused amazement. Such a brazen offer. I cannot imagine, ever, in a million years, propositioning someone quite so directly. Hello, we’ve just met, would you like to have sex? Bold move, sir.

This is probably the most blatant proposition I have ever received, and yet I felt no offense, and absolutely zero fear.

There was nothing threatening about this situation.

It was, quite simply, an offer. One that was mine to accept or decline. It was all there in his words: “If you like…”. It was also there in his body language; open, relaxed, and interested, but not aggressive in any way. Though he faced toward me, he left plenty of space between us, and I felt no violation of my personal space, no crossing of any boundaries.

He quite blatantly expressed sexual interest, but my consent was literally part of the conversation. He was not going to cross that line unless I wanted him to.

Body language is exceptionally powerful. It speaks of interest and intention and respect, all on a level that is mostly below our conscious awareness. But we feel it. When a man gets too close to me, hovering over me or touching me without invitation, it sets off every alarm bell in my entire being. The message reads through loud and clear; he wants what he wants, feels entitled to it, even, and he isn’t too concerned with whether or not I want it too. Taking this behaviour to its logical conclusion, it speaks to the very thing that, as a woman, I am most afraid of.

Strange Man #2 wasn’t scary; he was just incredibly forward.

Of course, afterward I wondered whether I had been too friendly. Had I given him the wrong impression, somehow ‘lead him on’? No, of course not, I’d simply made polite conversation. I will take no blame here. He obviously just figured that the potential upside was worth the risk of being rejected, and so he asked. I have heard enough stories from female friends who travel a lot for work, that a woman staying alone in a hotel offers a certain sense of potential to a significant proportion of men, single or otherwise.

Obviously I can’t speak for all women here. But what I can say is that, for me, this experience was one of the least offensive ways in which a strange man has made his interest known to me.

To be perfectly honest, I found myself mildly flattered by the encounter. I recognize this might be a dangerous admission, but I’m trying to be honest here, because I think it’s important to do so. He was not unattractive, and was roughly my age, so of course that factors in. It can certainly be nice, on occasion, to be reminded that men find me attractive. As a heterosexual woman, wanting to be sexually appealing to the opposite sex seems like a pretty innate drive.

Equally innate? My fear of male desire.

So there you have it. It’s complicated, this business of being female. Perhaps that’s why these situations are so complex. They all come down to how the encounter makes us feel. They come down to a ‘gut response’, those intuitive assessments of threat. I did not feel unsafe in this interaction, and that made all the difference in the world.

We live in a culture that is quick to dismiss emotions as irrational, unmeasurable, and worst of all feminine. But these gut responses are incredibly informative, and are often early indicators of things we cannot yet bring to conscious awareness.

And just like body language, they do not lie.