Big Fun with Dancing Girls

I'm venturing outside my comfort zone tonight. My friend Crys asked me to go out with her tonight. She is a fun gal with a lot of spunk. She's been through a lot in her life and works hard at finding the bright side of life.

Crys, like me, is a woman of size. She found a club (group, organization?) for people of size to meet others who aren't put off by size. She said she use to go to the mixers all the time when she (and her husband) lived in Detroit. She loved he idea that there was a place where you weren't seen as a "Fat person" but as a person.

I have to admit that in spite of my jovial out look on life (we're all jolly you know) and the amount of enjoyment I get from living life I am self conscience of meeting new people - and by people I mean men. I am a little wary of men who come on too strong and immediately start on "ooh, you're so beautiful" it makes my predator radar go off.

My predator radar is 50% mental illness and 50% experienced based. In college (Co Cougs!) I met this guy who seemed great. He was at the clubs I went to and was fun to hang out and dance with. We made a date to hang out at the library (yes, dad... I did study at college) and I was excited about maybe dating someone for real. He was handsome and on the football team. Translation - he was a very big, muscular man. He would call me every night and we would talk for a while it was nice. Our library date was going to be our first time out alone and I was jazzed about being with him as me, not dressed up party college girl.

The main college library was many floors with desks set up in every free space - my football player took me to a place on one of the upper floors away from where most of the frat & sorority girls hung out (studying was second to checking out the scenery)- he said he knew of a place were there weren't tons of people. He was right, we were mostly alone and things were going well, we were talking, having fun and spending a minute or two in our books. After a while he asked to show me something and we walked to the back corner of the floor. The books were dusty, and seemed like listings of people, maybe former university employees. This wasn't a place where anybody would accidentally happen upon anytime soon. He kissed me which was nice and I will admit that I was a willing participant. I was ok with kissing in the library, but he started to put his hands on me and I pulled away to say I wasn't comfortable with anything like that while standing between the racks of dusty books. As I pulled away he firmly put his massive hand on my wrist and held me there. About this time the danger bells were ringing loudly in my head. We were in a semi-public place so I knew it couldn't get out of hand, so I told him to let go of me. He kept pulling me in for kiss after kiss. I was in a funny position because I had liked kissing him, but he wouldn't let me go which made the situation scary. I claimed I needed to get back to my stuff. We finally went back to sit down and he spend the next hour or so trying to get me to come back to his apartment to hang out. I knew I didn't want to have sex with this guy and going back to his place to "hang out" was a bad idea.

I managed to decline and started to avoid him like the plague from then on. He would call at all hours of the night and go on and on about how pretty I was and how he really wanted to love me. Eventually he moved on. I read in the school paper the next year that a woman had accused him of raping her after she went back to his apartment. At the time it scared the crap out of me and I felt extremely lucky that my radar went off in time to avoid being the victim. Now, with a number of years of perspective I wish I had contact the police just to let them know that he was a predator, I am ashamed of the possibility that I could have said or done something. I know my experience wasn't enough to prevent what happened to her, but it might have established a pattern. So, while my whole experience isn't dramatic enough for a Lifetime Movie of the Week, it was real enough to make me respect that little voice in my head when it screams DANGER!

Ok -- back to the topic at hand... Crys says the events she's been to have been great, my football player was a motherfucker and I shouldn't let it taint my view of all men who like big ladies. So, with my self esteme in check and my adventure hat on I'm going. I"ll let you know how it turns out. Who knows, maybe my Mr. TPgal will be there... maybe that's putting too much pressure on the evening. I'll lower my expectations to, maybe it will be fun.