Actually I had a personality lift – see here, the line behind my ears?

So it’s almost 10.30 at night and I’m on my way home, it’s dark, obviously, and I’m heading to the late open supermarket to get something for work lunches the next few days – and fruit, have a sudden hankering for mangoes. Walking through the car park, skip bins on my right, concrete lined garden bed on my left. There is a shadowy figure walking towards me. Literally, in shadows from shrubs and bin and me slightly blinded by the burning effigy of supermarket in front of me.

We pass and as we’re passing a voice says ‘Hi (my name)’. I turn and say ‘oh hi (his name). Sorry I didn’t recognize you, the light was in my eyes’. A guy I first met at a coffee shop table when I stopped to talk to someone else I knew. We’ve bumped into each other in supermarkets and laundry mats just by virtue of often being in town on a weekend and now have remembered each others’ names for polite and brief passing hellos. I’ve met his girlfriend too, she seems outspoken and a good counterweight to his slightly flimsy presence. He is holding a little blue bat. I say ‘oh – how was your table tennis? Good game?’ He is holding the bat up at shoulder height and kind of angling his body, like a kid might twist in an uncomfortable pose when confessing something they don’t really want to let out. He pauses and says ‘Oh yeah, I really enjoy the game…’ He is lined and dry looking and his eyes always make me cautious – they are somehow too pale, and maybe the pupils are too small, they look wild, and stunned from staring too wide into the sun. He is thin in a way that suggests that his skin would like some fatty acids, that maybe he is a little worn down from not enough sustenance, that he has been wetted, wrung out and dried, and the crinkles have remained. He pauses. He says ‘You know, I find you really attractive’ in the tone of revelation, with the emphasis on the really. I’m not scared, I’m surprised, and I say ‘Oh thank you, that’s sweet’ (do I really say that? How patronizing. I’m trying to be gracious and accept what I figure is meant as a compliment, and to treat it as just a compliment, not a loaded and provocative statement that is essentially a proposition). He laughs like we are now sharing marvel in some mystery, and says with some degree of wonder ‘you must take charisma pills’. And I say quite straightforwardly, earnestly, ‘No. I don’t’, as if he’s just asked whether I happen to dye my eyebrows. He says ‘you’re a pisces aren’t you?’. I say yes, nodding and continuing to move slightly in the direction I was going. I’m not phased by this, I told him this once before – he asked, and it is a very common question in the mountains, like ‘where do you live’ is a Sydney standard. He says pisces dragon? This I don’t think I’ve told him, he seems to be deducing, asking. I say yes, I’m a dragon, a fire dragon. He says ‘pisces fire dragon!’ and I say nothing. I realise that it might be polite to ask him his star sign now, but I can’t bear to – because it might give the impression I am interested in finding out more about him – which I’m not – and might open up the door for him to tell me something hideous about how compatible he thinks we are. So instead I just back away, as I had started earlier edging towards the supermarket, and say ‘I’ve gotta go!’ while my arms do something to indicate the supermarket and the lateness of the night and my need for work lunches and mangoes. And how tired I am. So I turn and go.

(And to track my internal responses my this exchange honestly I have to recognize that I felt an initial flush of feeling pleased at being complimented, surprised and flattered ‘someone thinks I’m attractive!’, and then a swift feeling of concern as I wonder whether he is creepy and I should now be worried about him ‘oh crap please don’t let him still be outside the supermarket when I come out – thank the Goddess he doesn’t know where I live’, and finally some strange analytical observation about men externalizing the experience of unexpected desire – he asked whether I take charisma pills, in another era he probably would have suggested that I had made a pact with the devil and maliciously applied my supernatural powers of seduction upon him just to wreak havoc on his life, and burnt me at a stake.)