Today, I met a man.

It was 23:30, and he was socializing with a fellow slightly intoxicated gentleman at the top of the stairs leading out of my metro stop onto the street. Knowing how men get when they are drunk and in the company of other men, I looked straight ahead, marched up the stairs as far away from them as I could, and almost passed them, when the shorter, huskier of the two rushed over to me. His body was contained by a light-yellow, striped, button-down shirt and a pinstriped grey suit with a hands-free cell phone device clipped to his tie.

‘Devushka, devushka![1]’ He yelled, quickly making his way toward me. The first card I decided to play was ‘ignore’. I kept staring straight ahead, making like I didn’t hear him. But as he slipped his arm underneath mine and began walking alongside me, ignoring him was no longer an option. After a quick eyeball of my hand, I decided it was time to bust out the ‘bitch’ card…after all, the most important thing in such situations is to sport a poker face and not show any fear.

‘Devushka, you’re probably tired, and it’s late and you want to go home, right?’ he asked.

‘Yes I do,’ I said. He had a pleasant face that compensated for his thick build, and, I must say, that for a young, drunk man accosting a young girl on a Friday night, he was reasonably polite. Nonetheless, I am not a fan of interacting with strange men in the darkness of night and I made sure that my tone and face made him well-aware of that.

‘Please, just two minutes,’ he said, smiling like an idiot. In the short time of our meeting, I could already tell that he was desperate but harmless. ‘Can I just ask you one question?’

‘What.’

‘Do you believe in love at first sight?’ I rolled my eyes.

‘No,’ I said definitively.

‘Ok, so maybe look at me again?’ he said with a dopey smile that just made me feel bad for the guy.

‘Sorry,’ I said.

‘Nothing?’ he asked raising his eyebrows.

‘Nothing at all.’ I kept walking, and he kept right on with me. I tried to pull my arm away from him, but he wouldn’t give. Although it was clear that he was propelled more by persistence and loneliness than aggression, I was officially unamuzed by the progression of our relationship beyond the 30-second-mark: after all, I indulged him, eard him out, and with that, felt as though I had paid my debt to the community of drunk, lonely 30-somethings for the night. But the guy was relentless.

‘Aren’t you afraid to walk home alone so late at night?’ he asked, pointing at the dark path toward which I was clearly headed.

‘No,’ I said, staring him straight in the face.

‘I could walk you home,’ he said hopefully.

‘No.’ He slipped his arm out of mine and quickly grabbed hold of my wrist, pulling my hand out of the comforts of my jacket pocket.

‘Please, then, just allow me one more thing,’ he said, as if I had any choice in the matter and as though all of his previous actions were subject to my decision. ‘Please, just allow me to kiss your hand.’ By then I was just pissed, and had I not been alone, I would have given him a piece of my mind, but I kept quiet.

‘I need to go,’ I said firmly trying to pull my hand away before he made lip-contact, but it was no use: he laid one on me.

‘Thank you so much,’ I said derisively.

‘What is your name?’ he asked.

‘No-name,’ I answered bluntly, still pulling my hand away from him.

‘OK, No-name,’ he said smiling. ‘It was a pleasure to meet you.’

‘Sure thing,’ I said. He let me go and shuffled back to his friend, while I made my way down the dark, scary path to which he had alluded earlier. Although he was not intimidating, this encounter I could have done without, because, the fact is, you never know who’s, who’s.

As I walked, looking, as always, at the lit windows in the tall apartment building peeking through the black tree branches elegantly silhouetted against the dark-blue night sky, my mind drifted down a familiar track. Although I am not an avid moviegoer, I often place myself in the context of a movie to imagine how I would perceive the situation as an onlooker sitting in the comforts of soft-cushion seat in the theater. And so, if this serendipitous meeting were to happen in a movie, it would be perceived as romantic and likely be branded ‘fate’: A young girl walks home – probably wondering when the man of her dreams would finally stroll into her life – when a decent-looking, mildly intoxicated but well-dressed and polite young man runs up to her and, with genuine and pure intention, asks her whether or not she believes in love at first site. The hearts of female movie-goers would instantly be smitten. Why is that? Why is it that our sense of reality and decency are washed away by unreasonable romanticism when we watch it happen to other people? By what mechanism do we turn a situation that would be unpleasant if it happen to us personally into a romantic, attractive happening worthy of dreaming about as the credits roll by and all the way home?

No answer...just a thought. =)

---

[1] Devushka=Young woman; this is the word one would use to beckon the attention of a young woman whose name you don’t know, sort of like ma’am but more casual.