She's taking care to look for sharks.
They hang out in the local bars
and they feed right after dark.
Can't you feel them circling, honey?
Can't you feel them swimming around?
You got fins to the left, fins to the right
And you're the only bait in town!
Oh-whoa, oh-whoa
You got fins to the left, fins to the right
And you're the only girl in town!
I forget how we got on the subject of the differences between men and women but L. and I, at work once, spoke of it, particularly about her assumption of the low morals of guys in general when it came to how we prowled for girls.
“Ahh..guys are wolves.” L. concluded.
I sat there quietly, rolling her judgment around in my head and wondering should I keep my mouth closed and refrain from besmirching my half of the race further, or vocally admit to her this.
“Well, yeah...in some ways we are.”
L.’s face lit up to my concession. “You agree? Really? I never heard a guy openly admit it! Most times you all dodge that!”
I then try to explain to her why.
“Look. You’re a woman, you have NO idea what we guys feel, not even close.” I told her what it is when it came to our hunting for the next girl and how we feel doing it. Our wolf can be automatic, the motivation runs on it’s own and the chase feels...fun.
“OK, the wolf stalking is sort of correct.” I tell her. “You ever see a group of young guys at a night club? All sitting at a table, enjoying their beer? I’m gonna tell you what they’re thinking.”
“When a group of girls come through the door, they do what everyone does, they pause and look around. Usually it’s about getting drink orders right or perhaps to find the table or spot they want to hang out at.”
“As they stand there, here’s what the the guys are thinking. Each and every one of them is scanning each girl, finding which one is the the most attractive to them. It happens in seconds too. Each one considers her face, body type, clothing, hair style, how she holds herself and everything head to toe. In about 2 to 3 seconds he zeros on the one he likes the best. It doesn’t mean he’ll immediately get up and hit on her but he’s going to track her throughout the club, keep her in sight, until he decides to do so.”
“That doesn’t sound so wolfy.” L says. “It sounds like he may just plain ‘like’ her.”
“OK” I tell her, “here’s the wolf part that’s more predatory.”
“The first scan happens but there is also with a second one occurring at the same time. Each guy is also looking for the ‘weakest’ girl.”
“Weakest? What do you mean by that?”
“He’s looking for the silly ditz, or the drunkest one of the group and if luck holds out, she’s both! She’s the one who cannot make good decisions. Out of them all, that girl will be the most pliable, the most defenseless one to the guy’s advances. But he has to pry her away from her other girlfriends as they will try to protect her.”
“I”ll give you an example of a weak one you know real well...Marie Ann Wry.” Wry was a CNA we all knew well, as she used to take numerous cigarette breaks under a tree just outside of our part of the building back in the 2000’s when I worked there.
“Wry! Oh...she’s real nice but she can be a complete airhead at times!” L says.
“Exactly.” I tell her. “And I’ll tell you a quick story when I found that out and how vulnerable she really was...and how the wolf woke up in me when I saw what I saw.”
I was outside with a group of CNAs, puffing away on a Marlboro light listening these girls talk about...whatever. Wry was sitting next to me on the bench under the tree, holding a water bottle and as she spoke to the other girls, she turned her head to face them. As she talked, her left hand and arm started to rotate further and further to the left to the point where the water was spilling out on to the ground. She never noticed she was doing this as she kept talking on.
I.saw.this...and recognized for what it was.
My inner wolf immediately spotted and surmised she was the weakest gazelle in the herd, the one with the bum leg that couldn’t run as fast as the others, the easy catch. The wolf program deep inside my head automatically kicked on and began to run. “Get her..work on her...she’s easy.” Was I stoked for her? Sure. Am I the only guy to act like this? Nope. It’s literally a subconscious action.
I then said to Marie, “Hey, I bet you’d be real fun DRUNK! We should hang out!” I just had to blurt out the truth. She would be fun blotto!
Marie turns to me and vacantly says, “Whaddayamean?” and then finally notices half her water bottle has puddled on the ground at our feet.
She did not process what I had asked her. She just looked dreamily at me, half there. What I said went in one ear and out the other, not picking up on what I had noticed about her personality. I could tell she did not see how her own behavior was a threat to her own self. She was probably unaware of a lot of things in life sort of on purpose, as being in the now requires feeling pain and after getting to know her better, I found she had far to much of her share of it. So numb out, shut off and anesthetize yourself. It’s called default-state dissociation. It’s a great coping mechanism but a danger as well. Shoving your head into the sand won’t stop the cheetah from tackling you. By the way, we ALL do this but the spread and depth of this varies from person to person.
As if on cue, after picking up on how I saw how Marie was, the other women there circled their wagons, protecting her and telling me she had a boyfriend. They pulled her attention from me back to them again, changing the topic of conversation fast.
“Fuck.” I thought.
**
“And that,” I tell L, “is how quick and easy it is for the wolf to come out. There is no moral question that crops up about ‘is this right?’ We guys just spot a girl’s susceptibility fast. Then the Big Bad Wolf wants to eat.
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