Being Nice to Mickey Rourke (almost).

 Okay, so I'm in the grocery store...it's Friday, I've just dropped my man off at the airport and I have decided to buy myself some food-stuffs for the long and lonely weekend. And I'm feeling happy and breezy and plotting the curry I'm going to make myself for lunch, and at one point during my shop-a-ganza, I cross paths with an older gentleman of the Mickey Rourke variety. You know the type? Overly tanned, long-haired, could be 40 could be 60, possibly...drunk? No major interaction, just a crossing of paths and I noticed him noticing me...with my girl radar. My lady readers know the radar I'm talking about...it's the tiny warning light that goes off when someone of the male persuasion is overly aware of your existence. It's a little built in lady-alarm that just calls out, "be aware! Be aware!".

So, I don't think much of it, until said Rourke-esque figure ends up in line behind me at the checkstand (out of the blue) and starts chatting me up about my hummus. Yes, my hummus.

Not-Mickey-Rourke:
Hey, I didn't know they had that hummus here!

Me:
Oh, mmhmm. It's right over there actually. (And I point to the distant corner where they keep the hummus and where, I'm hoping, he will go.)

NMR:
They sell the big size of that kind at the Armenian Market.

Me:
The Armenian Market? (I don't know why exactly I'm continuing this conversation except, A. This is my very favorite hummus we're talking about and I would actually LOVE to find a place that sells "the big size". B. I think that Paul would really dig an Armenian Market and maybe I could take him there, and C. A friend of mine just did a film with "the Armenian Tyler Perry" (no joke) and I guess I'm kind of fascinated with Armenia.)

MNR:
(Tells me locale of Armenian Market. Sort of smells like booze.)

Me:
(giving wan smile, pretending to dig for something in my bag, really frustrated that check-out girl is taking her sweet, sweet time.)

I was SO uncomfortable readers, so uncomfortable that I had to ask myself WHAT exactly it was that I was uncomfortable with? Am I scared of Not-Mickey-Rourke? Do I think if I talk to him in any kind of direct eye-contact actually engaged conversational way that he's going to chase me out of the store and down the street to my house? Am I worried he's going to somehow divine secret information about me based on my purchase of almond milk and chicken breasts and henceforth have some kind of power over me?

And as I'm contemplating all of this, the check-out woman finishes with my groceries and turns toward Mr. NMR and starts to ring him in. And as I'm putting my credit card back in my wallet I hear him greet the check-out woman...and he says hello to her in the most, I don't know, warm way that I immediately feel like a...jerk.  He is so respectful of the woman behind the register and present with her in a way that I definitely was NOT (as I was busy trying to avoid making eye-contact with NMR) that I realize that maybe, just maybe, I have built an entire story about this guy based on absolutely nothing. Maybe he was just trying to be friendly and tell me about a good hummus store!

I attempted to salvage the moment by thanking him for the recommendation as I picked up my bags, but I kept thinking about it as I made my way out to the car. I felt frustrated, frustrated that as a woman in a large city I feel a certain kind of prickly defensiveness in the face of any un-asked-for attention from a man I don't know. Some of this is wise, I suppose, or at least definitely warranted...but it makes me feel closed. And I hate feeling closed.

And so as I set my many plastic bags into the back of my car I made a promise to myself, that I would not continue to close myself off to the world...not when I'm in an obviously safe situation (like the grocery store) because who knows how many Armenian markets might pass me by un-visited, and how many perfectly nice strangers might feel like they were just a bit more invisible than they ought to feel, and mainly because, I don't want to be that woman in the world. I don't want to pretend to dig for my keys when I could be making eye-contact, and I certainly don't want to feel like the world is a place that I have to be afraid of.