Escorting a cute red head back to our table I found the aisle blocked by a single wide body. I skipped holding her chair that time and let her go around by herself. But the guy turned out to have been lying in ambush. He grabbed Red and squeezed her.
Red didn't seem flustered. She sat down and said to her friend sitting across from her (next to me), "I just got a grab."
I was frustrated because I'd been elaborately courtly to Red all day: bowing at the end of a dance, offering her my arm as we walked, holding her chair ... and Mr. Wide's heterosexual aggression I already found boorish. I'd allowed myself to be finessed out of the action and was frustrated and tongue tied. But Red's friend didn't say anything either. The rest of our table seconded our silence. But back home I posted a report immediately, an early draft of this here: and asked the following ethical conundra:
What should Red have done or said? What should I have done or said? What should our friends have done or said? What should our senior social have done once I told our CEO?
But something happened as a result that puzzles and annoys me even more. A more complex account will be told as a Paul Knatz story at Redhead Revisited.
Two years later another chapter perhaps explains some part of what went wrong: and right: Red Alert.
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