He wore brightly
patterned socks and kept getting up for more food, explaining to me how eating
after fasting all day is like salvation. How he reaches a haze during his fast and
how he got lost driving earlier in the day but didn’t mind because he didn’t
have anywhere important to be.
He asked what it felt
like to break a fast after not fasting all day. I told him it was just dinner
to me.
We had met earlier by
the food but he had seemed kind of cold and grumpy.
Turns out he was just
hungry.
Someone commented that
we were talking so animatedly but from across the room, so eventually he moved
to the chair next to me.
We talked about how
Beyonce and Jay Z must easily keep the romance alive because they probably only
spent 60 nights a year in the same place. He somehow convinced me to download
the Kim Kardashian game.
I told him he had
ruined my life.
Somehow we got into my
life goals and work frustrations, big questions of what’s next and where I
should live and what I should be doing. He told me to send him a postcard from
wherever I ended up.
He was a journalist in
New York who lived with his girlfriend, and only one of those things was a
legitimate turn on.
I realized he reminded
me of my childhood friend Alex whom I had had a debilitating crush on.
I genuinely laughed out
loud for most the evening and didn’t think about it until later that it had
been so long since I had instantly connected so well with a stranger that I had
assumed I couldn’t do it anymore.
***
It’s raining as I
transfer trains, and my boots and socks are soggy, but I am almost home so it
doesn’t matter.
A crowd of young men
approach me and one of them crouches down as if to take advantage of my
umbrella.
I stop to commiserate
good-naturedly, “It is pretty nasty out. I would give it to you if I didn’t
have somewhere to go…”
One of them shouts
after me, “You would GIVE IT TO ME, huh? You want a piece of ass?”
I stop, shocked, and
turn around, “Oh, THAT’S NICE!”
He hollers back, “COME
ON, BABY!” And his friends shuffle him away.
I keep walking,
disappointed and shaken.
I tend to not mind
getting cat-called on the street. I’m always surprised and amused, and I also
always hope that whoever has called out in admiration will just keep moving and
not bother me further.
It’s at once exhilarating
and anxiety-inducing.
Which is what it sometimes feels like to be a woman to me.
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