Two Scenes

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.