Perverted or Repressed or Plain Psycho?

If you've lived in Sri Lanka long enough, there's a very likely chance that you/ a girl you know has been "eve-teased" - either groped on the bus/ in a crowd, or at the very least have had a few well-chosen words/ remarks aimed at you/ her as you/ she walked past a group of men. (This though is not just in Sri Lanka, but common in the sub-continent.)

Anyway, sometimes you get told by adults to "dress properly" (=conservatively) to avoid such harassment. This has no real grounds though since even older sari-clad women complain of being masturbated on/ rubbed against on the bus. Why is this? Because men here are generally perverts who get a kick out of harrssing women/ girls? Or are men here so repressed that this is their only "outlet" so to speak (no pun intended!)??

Ravana kept asking in this post, are men here really so repressed cos "why are all these men so excited by the tame sight of [the] dancer’s cleavage?" No one really gave a very satisfactory answer to that. And I continue to wonder, these kind of men - are they perverts? Or "the repressed"? Which category does this guy (that I'll tell you about in a sec) slide in to since he wasn't bothering a girl dressed "provocatively"? Was he neither your general pervert or repressed but simply a random psycho?

Last evening, a friend and I went for a play - an adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet directed by William Scott Richards. It was held at the Hilton Garden - a very nice setting had it not been for the terrible (and cold) winds, the blast of vehicles on the road outside and the at least 10-minute long ringing of the temple bell from the Gangaramaya (I assume?) in the middle of the performance. Nevertheless, the performance was fantastic - I really loved the alternative uses of symbolism, clothes and lighting. Ironically, before I left home, as usual, the dad threw a mini-fit about "it's not safe to go all alone" for which I retorted "it's at a 5-star hotel for God's sake!". He replied, the hotel bit he was fine with, it's the getting there he worried about. He finally drove me there. I collected my ticket at the counter and they asked for my ID to verify that I am indeed the manshark (as the ticket said)..before I proceeded to join my friend who was already sitting inside.

What happened during the performance was shocking - and that is a gross understatement. In the ball scene, the actors broke out in dance to a fast song. The cast was very young and the dancing very “modern” - what you'd find at a club. Within these youngsters, there was a man dancing - extremely vulgar moves, thrusting his pelvis forward, gyrating. He stood out (even if it were not for his disgusting dancing) cos he was in a white t-shirt emblazoned "Oregon" in red and brown pants with brown (very, very shiny) dress shoes - and, without meaning to sound elitist, he just didn't seem to be part of the audience and looked more like a 'helper' - with the equipment, etc). The cast was in jeans, runners and white t-shirts which had quotes from the play written on them, unlike the oregon dude. Anyhow, the dancing over, the play continued. The Oregon dude sat at the edge of a stage (there were 3 positioned at 45 degree angles to each other) very near a 14 /15 year old foreign boy (British, I think) who was sitting in the row in front of me. He then proceeded to slip his arm around the back of the chair, lean in towards the boy and mutter things to him, staring intently at the boy’s face the whole time. He honestly looked scary - his eyes wild, his head bent, chin tucked into his neck, the eyes rolling around "peeking" at other people every few minutes. Perveted or freaky? The boy mostly ignored him, except to swallow hard a couple of times and move his neck forward when the hand touched him . There was a Chinese mother and son (a 3/4 year old) sitting beside me, and at one point, when the mom sat the boy down next to me and went off for a few minutes, the kid promptly jumped up and was running about. When he accidently knocked into this psycho’s knee, he grabbed the boy by the neck of his t-shirt, brought his face close to the boy’s face, his mouth in a kind of leer and for a second I seriously thought he was going to take a bite, I swear. I grabbed the kid's hand and pulled till he landed in the chair next to me again and I whispered "sit here till your mother comes back" as fiercely as I knew how and held on to him till the mother came back. More perverted or freakier?

The play ended half hour or so later, and the last scene was (an alternative addition after the death scene) was once again of the cast dancing to a fast tempo. Psycho dude jumped up and began the gyrating, staring at the British boy, 3 feet away from him. And as the music started tapering off, he walked up to the boy, lifted his Oregon t-shirt, thrust his pelvis in the boy’s face and gyrated, leering. The boy looked terrified till his mother (sitting beside him) punched the psycho in the stomach, to which he leered at her before joining the cast to watch them (the cast) hug each other, etc off stage. The boy's mother was almost in tears. And the worst thing was, no one seemed to have noticed, not even my friend (sitting beside me!) till that last dance. Perhaps cos the play involved the audience quite a bit (they pulled a few front-row-seaters into dance with the cast as well, etc), perhaps they thought this was part of the play? But seriously? And who could that boy complain to? The play director? The cast? The hotel? I honestly had no idea and it was frustrating that it seemed there was nothing to do. The mother turned around, her face red and teary and said "that man was bothering my son all night! Who can I talk to?!?". I asked her to try both the cast and the hotel management. The only thing I did was leave my name and number with her in case they got treated with the usual "but it's your word against his" quip if they did choose to complain, and needed a witness.

And this made me realize that, in reality, maybe not even 5-star hotels are actually safe since this psycho made it in. And I wondered, was this a stalker/ hotel employee who'd had that boy in his sights for some reason (far-fetched but possible)? Although if that was the case, wouldn't the mom/ boy have "known" him at least by sight? And why did they not complain in the middle of the play? I suspect they didn't want to make a scene and figured if they ignored him long enough, he'd go away.

Or was this a random pervert who made it in with a valid ticket, or otherwise? Was this “a repressed” whose only outlet for his gay tendencies (but perverted anyway since normal gay guys don't gyrate at random people) was to show up here? Or a random paedophile? What was going on and more importantly, what could that boy have done? Hit him? Have complained in the middle of the play? If so, then to whom since there weren't any hotel employees around and it seemed there were only the cast (who did the lighting and the moving of equipment themselves) and the audience? Or ignored him (as was done till the last scene) and endured the groping and muttering? My own behaviour disgusted me then and continues to disgust me now since all I did was to observe this whole fiasco and only get angrier and scared-er and ended up only offering to be "a witness" for them, before choosing to walk away. Couldn't I have done more? Complained myself (after or in the middle of the play)?

I guess these will only be abstract questions now that it's all over and done with. But I must say, selfishly I guess, next time I go out - no matter where - I'll take my dad's advice and have a safety net. Perhaps lots of friends around in case there are more of these perverts/ repressed/ psychos around and next time, the crime goes further and the victim turns out to be me.

Update

Apparently this psycho is a part of neither the crew nor the cast of the play as assured by Benvoleo ( a member of the cast) who had left a comment here and also by another cast member which Sach very kindly shared with me thru e-mail.