Bus Stop, Wet Day

Today I had one of the strangest conversations I've had in recent years.



I had to go to the bank, and after chasing all over creation trying to get a $20 cash advance on my credit card--apparently my bank doesn't do such menial things--then going back to the bank, making my deposit, and THEN spending the better part of an hour hunting for a place to pee, I finally was done with that part of the day. I needed to get to Clark and Lake, so I stood on the corner of Broadway, Fullerton, and Clark, near the stop for the southbound #36.



I pause here to paint a picture of myself.



I'm 5'6", about 220 lbs. I don't LOOK 220, but I do look at least 180; I'm not as fat as my height/weight ratio makes it sound, but I'm definitely fat, no question about it. I am fashion-impaired to a high degree, and my mid-spring wardrobe varies not at all from day to day: jeans, a gray sweatshirt, navy blue running shoes, and an olive-green messenger bag worn bandolier-wise across my chest. My hair is shoulder-length, and though on sunny days it has a bunch of interesting highlights in it, on a day like today it's just plain brown--and frizzy, instead of wavy. By the end of the day, I generally look like something the dogs have had under the house--tired, limp, in need of nothing more than a shower and some downtime.



This is all to say: I am not a terribly attractive woman, but even if I was, by 6:30 PM on a rainy Friday, I STILL wouldn't be a traffic-stopper.



So here I am, damp and frazzled, standing on the corner waiting for the bus, ignoring most of the people who walk past.



Barely within the range of my peripheral vision, a man walks past--then stops and spins to look at me. "Hello!" he says.



He's tall, gangly, skinny, unshaven; obviously suffering from some sort of neurological deficit, maybe cerebral palsy, maybe Parkinson's, something that affects his motion and his speech. But he's not threatening, and he has a sweet smile. Charming, in an odd sort of way.



"Hello," I say.



"You have the" (something garbled) "incredible sense of feminine beauty," he tells me. Typical of me, I duck my head, blushing, and smile. "Thank you," I say; he reminds me a little bit of Carlos, how taken he was with me.



"I have this friend, Peter?" he says, "I'm Tom, by the way--but I have this friend Peter, and he's" (something else I miss completely) "...but YOU'RE even better than HE is! So you MUST be actuated," he continues. I'm still blushing, still grinning; even if he's some sort of lunatic-fringe philosopher, even if what he's saying doesn't entirely make sense, it's still clear that he means it as a compliment. "That's a nice thing to hear on a Friday afternoon," I say.



He then goes into a lengthy exposition about how he's "just one WORD in the book, but you're, like, the WHOLE BOOK!" and how at least that means he's part of SOMETHING good; between the traffic and his difficult speech, I catch maybe 40% of it, but again--judging from his expression and his tone--it's CLEARLY complimentary.



Finally, he turns to go. "Later," he says, with the same big smile. "Take care," I say, still smiling too. As I watch him walk away, I think to myself: I bet you say that to all the girls.



And later, I wonder: What is it, exactly, that makes me so reluctant to interact with people in situations like that? I know lots of people--Kim, for example--who would have struck up a whole conversation with the guy, and they would have ended up hanging out or something. But I'm not like that...I have this overwhelming defense mechanism, that keeps me from letting anyone in, even if they manage to get through my initial barriers enough to strike up a conversation. I can see, too, that I'm not yet the person I want to be, that there are still some things where my tolerance is not quite what it should be.



Regardless, it's nice to know that someone finds me beautiful. It's kinda like what me and JP used to talk about: There's a hell of a lot of good to see in me, and some people can even see beauty--but you have to be pretty goddamn unusual to even see it.