When I went to school to become a mechanic I had a female classmate. A girl, Jessie. She was literally the only female in my entire class and she took pride in that, even sporting a related name. (something like Newton). She was really into band shirts by all sorts of metal artists. It really accentuated her fair skin. The fact their were oversize did not stop her hourglass figure from shining though. She had long beautiful sometimes green but mostly blue hair. This was before I knew about aposematism.
I was not as excited as my peers, being in a happy long time relationship at the time, flirting was out of the question for me. She seemed kinda nice, though unreliable at times. (It always felt that she was more often late when it was her turn to drive and had to take a detour to pick me up.) She drove a nice she had definitely done some work on. The blacked out angular interior only emphasized her round shapes. Jessie told me that she likes to keep in shape by going out with her crew and dancing. She was doing industrial dancing. If you don´t know what that is let me fill you in. [An example video: ]
To me, this isn´t dancing. Not because out of some reasoning like:”This isn´t real music/dancing because I do not like it” (I´m a big EDM fan and adequately good Melbourne shuffler myself) it´s because it breaks the first and only rule I have for it to classify as a dance: It needs to have basic steps. When inquiring about her “dancing” (I´m using quotation marks here) she never talked about steps or techniques only ever about “aggressive movements” and “passive movements” as if this means anything.
In her free time she volunteered as a fire fighter, doing mechanical things what led her to try out an apprenticeship as a mechanic. Spoiler alert: She just stopped showing up after a year or so without telling anybody.
However, the thing that struck me the most when talking to her on the way to and back from school was this: She is one dirty girl. And I don´t mean this in the flattering sense.
The confined space of the car made me realize she had a slight rancid smell. Now, I´m not going to claim that her shower routine should be tighter, maybe she had a condition. However it became distracting once I could detect it over the smell of open Monster energy cans she had laying around, drinking only half of a can and leaving it open until the drive home. My suspicions hardened when her long fingernails often had some dark dirt rings. However they became harder to spot once she had colorful fingers.
I asked her:”Jessie, how does it come that you recently got green blueish fingers?”
She told me:” I got this new hair dye that sometimes rubs off when I comb through my hair with my fingers.” “Maybe you should invest in better dye when it sticks to your fingers when wet.” I replied.
“Oh no, it also happens when my hair is dry. I got this really cheap from overseas but but it is really great, a friend recommended it to me.”
I trusted her on the being cheap part at left it at that.
After a couple of months we stopped carpooling together as she got mad at me multiple times at three different incidents.
The first one came, when we had to drive through a less than ideal neighborhood. Spotting a scantily clad woman she expressed distaste for her choice in fashion. In her mind the woman clearly she was doing it craving looks from men. Jessie hates it when women only do something to get looks from men.
I raised an eyebrow, inquiring:“But how are you different? Just 30 minutes ago, when we rolled of the schools parking space, you told me, and I quote:´I like when men look at my tuned car and see me behind the wheel, a woman! I love her looks of surprise!´ I don´t understand what is the dividing characteristic here. I don´t like her style either, but you just assumed her intentions and judged her on that. Maybe she just likes to dress up like you like to tune. And that´s even beside the point that different people have different tastes and that is OK.”
She did not like that.
The second argument was about walking about jaywalking, with my position being that jaywalking can be more safe than waiting for the green light, if:
no small children (<12 years old) are present
you are not intoxicated
I´ve seen enough people run over who were in the right and I do not need an eulogy that starts with:”Well technically he was right...”
She got very angry when she saw me do it. She literally ran after me after I did not stop to turn around when I heard her screeching:”Shame” at my back. Furious she asked me:”What if children were present.”
“None was present”
“But what if there was?”
“Irrelevant. There were none.”
“Next time I will stop you![...]”
“Good Luck.”
“[...]With force if I have to!”
“Feel free to. But be sure that you are able to handle the echo.”
This argument is especially hilarious when considering that she once told the story in class how she got a ticket for running a red light at 3 in the morning because the camera was hidden in a bush and “the streets were empty anyways, so that totally unfair”
The last time I saw her was just before summer break.
Our school let us have a barbecue on school grounds, as long as we the students would build the site and clean up after ourselves. Easy, right?
Me and eleven other students volunteered to set up the benches and grills for the approximately 90-100 attendees. The BBQ went well and after a couple of hours we were about to leave. I packed up my remaining trash into my backpack, being ready to go.
On my way out I ran into Jessie.
“Oh hey Jessie, are you about to leave as well?”
“No we still need to clean up.”
“Already did. It´s all in my backpack.”
Visibly irritated she pointed at the benches and loads of plastic packaging laying on the grass.
“I already helped set everything up, we have more than enough manpower so everyone can help”
“But they aren´t doing anything. There is litter everywhere!”
“Is this my fault? I already set everything up. I left to a single piece of trash behind. I´m not going to clean up after them”
Furious, she raised her voice:” But when we don´t clean up the teachers won´t let us have another barbecue next year!”
I replied unfazed:”That´s not my problem and I don´t care. Either I don´t do their work and don´t have to next year or I´ll enslave myself this year so I can do so the next as well. Direct your anger towards them, if you´d be so kind”
I pushed myself past her and drove home. This was the last time I saw her. There were rumors why she left without telling anybody. We knew of her attempt to start an industrial “dancing” career on YouTube, however she has not uploaded in months. She is definitely alive though, having recently uploaded her Instagram picture with still blue, but now also short hair, and even more face piercings.
Her only friend in class, a 29 year old single father also soon left without warning, only contacting me a couple of months later to try to sell me some pyramid scheme.
And this is where this one ends. Jessie was really one of the few people who instilled the idea into me that aposematism, the phenomenon that brightly colored animals tend to be toxic, might also apply to humans.
Despite what it may have sounded like, I enjoyed our little spats. Dismantling her arguments was a fun exercise. She really did not seem to like it when scrutinized with the same logic with which she scolded other people with. Similarly my downright refusal to bow down to her aggression seemed to throw her off, knowing that my experience in martial arts and the fact that I weigh over 20kg (45lbs) more than her would make it quite one sided.
Honestly, I don´t have any profound conclusion. She was just a stinky bitch with a worse attitude.
I had fun.
