Wind In My Head: Alter Ego
Wind In My Head
Sunday, December 04, 2005
Alter Ego
Today I became Sharen, the PhD student at Melbourne uni, happily married for 3 years with a 15 month old son named Joel.I'm not crazy. And I do not have a spilt personality either.
All I was doing was biding my time walking around the city while Packrat was off at his usual comic haunts when all of a sudden a short swarthy man comes up to me and asks if I'm lost.
I give him a puzzled no and prepare to walk off when he launches into this thing about having seen me from a far and thought I looked great and now that I was in front of him, I was gorgeous.
Yupo. Excuse me while I roll my eyes.
This guy wasn't taking no for an answer. He wanted me to join him for tea, there and then. When I looked like I was going to say no, he asked if my boyfriend would mind. When I replied that my husband might very much, he exclaimed that I looked like I was 22 and didn't look old enough to be married. Without any sort of preamble, he lifts my hand and examines my rings, all the while exclaiming that my fingers are so long and slender and could not belong on the hand of a thirty year old.
He enquires further, all the while, encroaching into my personal space, making me take steps back constantly and taking a stance I can only assume said "Please stay away and don't come any closer". But he is unfazed and starts talking about how men and women can be friends without being in any sort of relationship. Yes, I believe him, I am twenty-two and was born yesterday. So, I continue spinning the yarn, creating a home, a 15 month old child and an academic career all the while, looking for an exit strategy which wouldn't open up since I'm in a foreign city and the only people I know can be counted on my long slender fingers.
Packrat is plenty amused. He marvels at the forwardedness and unabashedness while I continuously bash him with my empty water bottle for not being more sympathetic to the fact that I was held in conversation hostage by some guy trying to get laid.
When I wondered about how men could be so forward, Packrat's reply was that desperation bred confidence and that persistence was how ugly men ended up with beautiful women. He, on the other hand, said he prefered the more subtle way of insulting the colour of my mobile phone.
So, what's going to happen is this guy is going to call me sometime this week. On a number at a residence that I haven't lived at in the last 4 years this Christmas asking for me by a name that is not even mine.
And he can go right ahead and do all that while I suffer temporarily from OCD and wash my hands incessantly to get the feel of scum off my hands and slender fingers.
Ondine tossed this thought in at 14:40
3 thoughts...
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At 7:53 pm
Tym said... Well done! Is there a story behind how your son came to be named Joel?
See, in Singapore you can't do that because the place is too damn small and we're all separated by just two degrees of separation anyway, so there's the off chance that Annoying Man might somehow find out who you really are someday.-
At 10:13 pm
Ondine said...
I really don't know what was going through my mind at that point. I was standing outside a store named Ojay and the First Noel was chiming in the back. Perhaps. =)
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At 12:23 pm
wahj said...
So if the musak from the store was "Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer", your son would be named Rudolf? = )
(reminds of "The Usual Suspects")