ATMs and what to do about them

No, I don't mean the automatic teller machines, nor asynchronous transfer mode. I mean the men of low sexual market value, or rather the subgroup of them that pesters women in public places and do not take a polite "no" for an answer. The question is not how to get rid of them - I knew how to get rid of them when I was 10 - but how to get rid of them politely without making them too upset.

You see, nowadays I decided to be a polite young - well, youngish - woman with good manners and, as Bridget Jones puts it, inner poise, as opposed to the little bitch from hell that I was back when I was a jailbait. The net result is usually that I tell them to leave me in peace politely and with inner poise for a few minutes without getting any results, then do the bitchy thing and they disappear. I do get a nice bit of righteous satisfaction from not starting my half of conversation with "bugger off, asshole", but the whole process is tedious.

Today, for example. Waiting for a bus in Herttoniemi. 10 minutes to the bus, and I sit down on the elevated border of the grassy area to read my book, since the bench is already occupied by the kind of gentlemen who usually enjoy beer and kossu on benches in Herttoniemi in the early morning. After a moment a couple of legs appear in front of my face and stay there. I take a look at the owner: small, mid-fifties, drunk but not very drunk, smoker but not currently smoking, does not look like someone about to attack. I take my eyes back to a book and try to read. One'd think he'll understand that his company is not needed.

It's hard to concentrate on reading when there is someone standing within 20 cm in front of you and looking at you. It's even harder when the guy bends down so that his face is on the same level as mine and looks at my face from the same distance. He grabs my knee and I push his hand away and growl at him rather menacingly. He gets scared and starts to apologize, saying that he lost his balance by accident. I don't know whether it's true, and, most importantly, don't care. "No problem. Bye now."

He asks for my name. I politely refuse him this information and try to continue reading. He continues standing in that bent-down position. Then he tries to wave hands in front of my book and I tell him that this interferes with reading. He tells me that I seem like a very nice person. I think he is not a very good judge of character. He asks what am I reading. I flip the cover of the book at him without answering and continue reading. After doing this I realize it was a mistake since the title of the book is Porno.

He asks me whether he can sit there. I say it's a free country and he sits about 30 cm from me. He carries on about me being such a nice and pleasant person. I tell him that thanks for the compliment but I'd really rather not have any company and concentrate on reading. The concentration is somewhat disturbed by having to watch his hands. After two attempts to touch me that I have to block physically I growl at him and move further away. He whines like a beaten dog and after a minute moves up to me. He asks me where I am going and whether I'd go for a beer with him. "To work, " - I say, politely declining the invitation, but the concept is clearly unfamiliar to him because he then invites me to Alko with him, which I also politely decline. After he attempts to touch me again I employ the same tone of voice that Killeri uses on Jero when Jero tries to eat his guests. The man whines and recoils. At that moment the bus comes and I go there, accompanied by whining from behind.

Way back 20 years ago the 12-year-old jailbait bitch Vera would have told him from the beginning something like "What the fuck are you thinking? You are old enough to be my grandfather and ugly enough to be a dick of a walrus! Frankly, I don't think you have any chance even with women your own age, let alone a teenager. Besides, you probably haven't been sober for 30 years now - are you sure your dick still works and do I get a microscope to see it? Face it, man - most women wouldn't screw you even if you were the last man on earth, and they were out of all the cucumbers and bananas, too." Saying things like that was good fun when I was a kid, but somewhere in my late teenage years I mellowed out a bit and figured it wasn't nice to be so mean to a guy just because the poor bugger wants to get laid and has no chance whatsoever.

There are moments though when I wish I hadn't decided to become a semi-polite person. Too much bother, can't concentrate on reading, and in the end they are upset anyway.