Bars. Each one a controlled experiment of human interaction. You meet all kinds while bar-hopping, but you soon realize that all people populating places of booze consumption are basically divided into two kinds: the socially competent, and the socially inept.
    I was out recently, minding my own business, chatting with my friends at the bar as we charmingly broke early-twenties kids are wont to do. It was sometime after midnight that I was approached by a man. He was older, very bearded, and had been seen skulking around awkwardly between the clumps of people all night. There is nothing wrong with that; some people aren't good at just shoehorning their way into peoples' lives (like me). There is also nothing wrong with using an ice-breaking question to start a conversation. I am very patient with people's attempts to be social.
    Unless they open with this:
    "Can I ask you a creepy question?"
    Living is a learning process, and he's never going to learn unless someone points out his errors. Seeing as he was almost twice my age, he probably should have learned that this approach was quite wrong in any social setting, but maybe no one had told him before. I was happy to be that someone. That said, there may have been a more tactful way to go about it than my mildly-drunken way of saying, "That was a terrible opener. Never introduce yourself that way again. Seriously."
    He was not discouraged or apologetic. He kept staring at me with those big beardy eyes and said, "Well...can I?"
    I really didn't want him to. I don't condone that type of behavior and allowing him to answer is only rewarding shitty social skills. But, as any lady who's ever been to a bar will tell you, resistance to dumb male comments often just acts to elongate the interaction and it's usually better to just get it over with. It's a sad world, but it's the world we drunkenly stumble through.
    So I said, "If you have to."
    I was not expecting this to be his question: "Are you an empath?"
    For those of you who don't know what an "empath" is, don't try to look it up in a dictionary because it's technically not a word. But a Google search came up with the following definition:

    Apparently, empathy is so rare these days that they attribute it to supernatural abilities. I am pretty empathetic, empathetic enough to be able to recognize that this guy was drunk enough to form the question, "Are you an empath?" in his mind and decide, "Oh, yeah. That is worth asking."
    I was too dumbfounded for a moment to respond.
    "Um...what?" I said, partly hoping I'd misheard him and partly hoping that I didn't because I have a vast appreciation for the WTF moments of the universe, and mama, this one's a doozy.
    "An empath, it's like--"
    I was actually already familiar with the term "empath," but I didn't realize it was mostly a sci-fi thing till I looked it up. That makes it far more absurd. I stopped him before he could explain--or, with a hindsighted guess, describe a character in a book he read that takes place in space--and asked him, "Why do you think that? What would make you ask me that?"
    He looked a little awkward, and my super Empath skills were telling me that he was finally realizing how stupid he sounded. But now I was invested. Some creepy beardo at the grimiest hole-in-the-wall bar ever comes up and asks with all seriousness if I have emotional super powers? I must know more.
    "Well..." he began, a little hesitantly, "you're dressed kind of...like a gypsy, and...um..."
    (I should point out that was not the first time I was called a gypsy that night. It was the third.)
    He mumbled something, his confidence waning. But after a few awkward seconds, he regained himself, looking at me with almost angry determination, and commandingly said, "Explain your necklace."
    I looked down to see the necklace in question. I had on a long hemp necklace that I made with a silver peace sign, and another necklace with a pink stone hanging from a black cord. Writing this out is making me realize that there is no way to describe my outfits without describing a gypsy.
    Before he could ask which one I was talking about, he clarified with, "Explain the stone."
    I do not respond well to demanding tones like that, one of many reasons why I would not last in the army. My patience with the conversation had just run out, and I was certainly not about to get into the nuances of crystology with this creep, for a creep he most decidedly was.
    "It's a rose quartz," I said, "and fuck, I don't know. I like it."
    "Oh. Good," he said.
    And then he walked away.
    Thus is the occasion that I was approached by someone who learned their social skills from episodes of Battlestar Galactica. I can only hope that he's actually a mystical soldier fighting against those with secret supernatural abilities who would use their power for evil. Thank goodness I was able to convince him of my benevolence--unless...what if he's been tracking me? What if he's been monitoring my behavior, waiting diligently by my window on the off chance that he has to thwart my plans for global domination with his mighty boozy beard powers?
    ...Excuse me, I'm going to go double check my closet for spies. Just in case.

Dear Dresses-With-Pockets,

Let’s get this out of the way: I love dresses. Anything that lets me look like I give a flying turd about looking nice while in reality being just another excuse to not wear pants is a perfect fit to my increasingly I-don’t-give-a-flying-turd existence. But we all know the problem with women’s purses: they’re either impractically small, or unbearably huge. That middle ground for a purse is hard to find, and it means that carrying around my wallet or lighter or Reuben sandwich has always been a battle with me.

Then you, dresses-with-pockets, then you show up.

I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to go home with a cute dress, put it on in front of my mirror to discover that it has pockets. Or even better is when I don’t realize it until I’m already wearing it out for the first time. I’ll smooth out my dress or touch my body in an attempt to seem objectifyable to men and lo! where has my hand disappeared to? Suddenly it is not seen by anyone, and for a fleeting moment I believe myself to be an  amputee. Or a magician. Or that my hand has taken a spontaneous trip to Narnia that for some reason lies in the seam of my dress.

But no! Even better! I have POCKETS. Suddenly my big bulky purse is no longer needed, or whatever lucky guy friend I’ve dragged along can stop keeping my money and ID in his pockets because now I have my own! I am an independent woman!

Therein lies the beauty of what your existence means. While women have made giant leaps in today’s world, society is still generally sexist and trying to keep us down in many ways–one by making our belongings easier to steal. Don’t believe me? Try to steal a man’s wallet from his pocket. Now try to steal a woman’s wallet from her purse. Odds are you’ll just grab for the whole purse, am  I right? That means you’re not just getting her money, but her phone, her iPod, her make-up, her birth-control pills, her Midol—you’ve just sentenced her to a very expensive shopping trip. And all because she had to carry a purse, something men never have to understand.***

(***And I don’t include those shitty men’s messenger bags, and neither should you. Because while their wallet, sunglasses, and douchey Macbook are probably in them, no one is going to bring that fashion atrocity out to a bar at night because it's both stupid behavior and an anti-poon force field. Blech.)

But you. You, my pet, my turtledove, my darling…you set me free. You give me a place to put my cell phone so I don’t have to bring a purse. I don’t have to set my bag on the disgusting sink covered in some uncomfortably off-color film while I pee in the single-stall bathroom at the bar by the train tracks. You give me a practical place to sneak my tampons when I don’t want all the people, who I for some reason think are paying attention to me in class or at a restaurant, wonder what the hell I would need my entire bag for if I’m just going to the bathroom; with you around, I don’t have to put on a sweater just to hide it in my sleeve or pretend to drop my pen so I can slip it in my cleavage. You give me years of my life back that I will no longer be spent digging through my purse for endless minutes to find a lighter or my phone or my headphones or my debit card or that condom I found in my roommates desk that I stole to make it seem like I’m getting some.

You make me a woman. You set me free. And you give me life.

God created man in his image. Then created you, because you are better than all of us.

Thank you,

Your biggest fan

P.S. Call me.