So much has happened in the last day and week and month that I probably need an entire ‘catch up’ post, but for the sake of this hilarious story, I feel it must be said, right here, right now.
A few days ago, I accompanied JJ to the visa office for her visa interview. She was feeling pretty nervous, so I was trying to do everything I could to make her feel more normal. I decided to stay at a nearby coffee shop while she was waiting and since the US Consulate has a reputation of being incredibly busy every day, I had a feeling this might take a while. Luckily, the coffee shop had internet and turned out to be a really relaxing place to work for the early part of my day.
So I sat down, ordered a large latte-mocha-cappuccino-coffee-something-or-other and sat down in the corner of this shop, in one of these nice little couch chairs that coffee shops tend to have. There were only a few people in the place at this time and I basically sipped my coffee, opened my computer and kept to myself.
About twenty minutes later, a young man sat down at the table beside me, facing me. I immediately noticed there was something odd about this guy, he was talking to himself, licking his lips, brushing his teeth with his index finger. These peculiar tendencies led me to believe this guy was high on drugs, no doubt about it. No worries though, he was talking to himself, not bothering me.
Then, he started talking to me. Damn. At first, the questions came to me were normal: “Oh, you are a foreigner, where are you from?” “What do you do in Shanghai?” “Do you like China?” I answered at best as I could, I was impressed because this guy looked Chinese but his English was pretty fluent.
Then out of the blue, I was asked: “Do I have a boyfriend?”. Now, in hindsight, most people in this situation might get a little freaked out and probably even politely decide this was the time to leave the situation and the coffee shop out of pure awkwardness. At the very least, they would have used the opportunity to answer with “No, sorry I don’t swing that way. I’m actually waiting for my girlfriend right now.” (hint hint). Instead though. I replied politely and somewhat satirically, saying “No actually not right now.”.
No surprisingly, this guy continued on, his questions getting more hilarious by the second. Keep in mind that interspersed between questions were him mumbling and fiddling to himself, what you’d imagine anyone cranked out on drugs to be doing. He eventually asked me if I knew what ecstasy was and that he had taken a pill from his friend about an hour before and had not know what it was until after he had swallowed it. In all honestly, I kind of reassured him that the drug, albeit illegal (and probably VERY VERY illegal in China), was essentially harmless to his body after taking it only once, that it has little addictive qualities to it and that it could even be a fun experience under the right circumstances (which was not sitting in a coffee shop at 9:30 in the morning by himself).
Beyond this discussion though, he took a different direction. He started to tell me how handsome I was, how attractive foreigners were. The ecstasy in him was clearly boosting his deep homosexual tendencies. He moved even further, boldy telling me he wanted me, he wanted to have sex with me. He was describing his ’sexy Italian boyfriend’ who was away on business in South Korea for two weeks, who he desperately missed. He even asked me about Prop 8 vote in California to my astonishment. Finally I had to slip in some information that I was in fact waiting for the girlfriend, maybe at least the sex talk would thin out. Wrong intuition, it turned out. He continued on the same path, this time always with the caveat of “I know you are straight but … “.
All the while I was trying to mix work, fixing bugs in a few of our applications and speaking to my co-workers online, with this priceless situation. Eventually the guy “came down” from his ecstasy as it were and left the coffee shop.
The things that happen to me, I swear. Do you ever feel like you are Truman in The Truman Show? Just a very bizarre situation inside a remote and peaceful coffee shop.
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