Spitting…Not Sexy

Newsflash. It’s not.

So why am I seeing more and more men locking eyes with me, sensually parting their lips and letting a huge glob of saliva fall from their mouth to the ground as they hold a firm gaze in my direction? Not only is spitting unseemly and impolite, it’s unsanitary. I think we can all agree that New York is unsanitary enough without men trying to pick up women by showcasing the sultriness of their spit (I recently read a statistic that there might be more rats in Manhattan than people…but that’s another entry for another day.) Back to spit. I’ve noticed this phenomenon has escalated in recent months, and I have some questions. Guys:

Are you using spitting as an attention getting mechanism? Congratulations, you’ve succeeded. Only problem is that while before I didn’t want to touch you with a ten-foot pole, I’d now prefer a twenty-foot pole and latex gloves.

Do you believe spitting is sexy because it draws attention to your mouth? Cher in Clueless worked this angle by sensually nibbling dark chocolate Godivas in her debate class. Bottom line: Teasing anything with a luscious lipsticked mouth works for women, not so much for men.

Are you trying to be badass? For me, even James Dean becomes less attractive when expelling saliva from his system. Motorcycles, tattoos, a sulky strut – these things are more effective in procuring a bad boy image. Please stop spitting. Summer is rapidly approaching and some of us will have to venture through the city in open toed shoes.

As a person who played baseball intensively as a child, men spewing saliva as if the world was their own person spittoon is nothing new to me. My breaking point (and why I decided to write this lovely article) was when I saw a young man spit inside a New York City subway car. Am I overly sensitive? Perhaps. But this was an empty Brooklyn bound subway car – void of passengers except for me, the offending young man, and his female companion. This made it especially awkward when the young man decided to spit an impressively large amount of liquid from his mouth. There was nothing to distract me from watching his spit bob up and down out of his face like a yo-yo before landing in a small, self-contained puddle SPLAT on the subway car floor. I managed to exit the train via a pre-plotted escape route which took me far from the offending, jiggling glob. But I couldn’t help staring at it for the remainder of journey, while beginning this angry diatribe in my head… :)

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