Beastly Behavior

            I was in a shop the other day – no need to name it, but any woman who has been in it might recognize which shop it was – looking at some attractive serving trays painted with designs of olive trees, lemon groves, vegetables, and so on, when the proprietor of the shop approached and to my utter astonishment put his arm around my shoulders in an intimate manner and whispered in my ear, “It’s melamine.” He chuckled, tugged tighter, and whispered, “You remember melamine. All of us who were around then remember it.”

            I mumbled something incomprehensible, although to tell the truth, I had no idea what melamine was and I was so astonished at the intimacy of his salesmanship I didn’t know what to say. He whispered something else about the product, then was gone. Later, when I was looking at something else, he again scurried up and hugged me close to whisper something about it before darting off again.

            I mean, really! Hadn’t he been listening to the news? Wasn’t he aware that those are not socially acceptable behaviors towards women he doesn’t know – and even, depending on the woman and the circumstances, to some he does know? What right did he think he had to put his arm around me, a complete stranger, and whisper in my ear not only things about the product he was selling, but insinuations about my age? Incredulity was so great it blocked anger at the insult.  

            The man’s wife (I assume she was his wife) was watching him from behind the counter, eagle-eyed. Had she never said to him, at home, while she was preparing dinner, “You really shouldn’t treat our women customers like that,” to which he would have replied, “Oh, I’m not doing any harm. They like it.” And how would he know I didn’t like it? Would he have noticed my slight shrinking from his chummy arm? Maybe he thought I would be flattered by those attentions. I saw him put his arm around another woman customer, but I doubt he would do that to a male customer. When he chatted with a young couple also looking at items, he proved the salacious nature of his gestures with me by not putting his arm around this young woman. Her male companion was a barrier.

            I could have made a scene by demanding he take his hands off me (“You beast!”), and I probably at least should have turned immediately and walked out of the store, but I continued to browse, and in the end, because I liked it, not because I had been flattered into buying it by the selling techniques of the store owner, I bought the melamine tray, the one with a large olive tree spreading its branches over half the plate. Every time I look at it, I see, in the thick olive-green branches, a pruriently peering, luridly lurking satyr.