There's Friendly and There's Too Friendly

Yesterday morning, waiting on the platform for my D train to Manhattan, I set my purse and gym bag at my feet and reached up to shake out my damp hair (another drizzly morning here in not-quite-spring-but-almost-summer land).

A friendly-faced elderly gentleman, clutching two well-worn plastic shopping bags, approached me and asked, "Well, didja stay dry?"

I smiled and replied, "Yes, pretty much."

The old man—sporting khakis, a windbreaker and white tennis shoes and wearing his remaining half-dozen strands of silvery hair in a comb-over fashion reminiscent of Rudy Giuliani—got a bit prickly: "And why ain't ya carrying an umbrella, young lady?"

I quickly withdrew my compact umbrella from my purse and showed him, proudly, that this young lady came prepared today!

We talked about the weather a bit and then, in his charmingly thick, old-school Brooklyn accent, the old man began blabbering away. He was on his way to visit his secretary in the hospital and one of the plastic bags he toted contained a box of her favorite cookies, which her husband had neglected to get for her the day before. He owned a chain of restaurants and was planning to open a 7-11 on 57th Street. He told me how much he adored and appreciated his secretary and how she was being treated for a tumor in her breast, but they didn't know yet if it was malignant. (Yes, it was a long wait for the train that day!)

Short, stocky Mr. Chatty introduced himself as "Pete" and exclaimed over and over that I'm just "bee-yoo-tee-ful." Sweet as he seemed, he startled me a bit by suddenly grabbing my left hand and shouting, "Where's ya ring? Don't tell me you ain't married!" He asked if I had a boyfriend and when I said I did, he exclaimed, "Well, why ain't 'e married ya yet?"

I tried—over his repeated, cheerful compliments—to explain that I'm in no rush to get married and he shouted, "Aw, a bee-yoo-ty like you? I'd-a married ya straight away!" and described how his secretary's husband was in the dog house for not bringing her cookies but that, "See what I nice guy I am? I brings her dese cookies."

This is the point when things took a turn for the awkward (at best), creepy (at worst). Pete exclaimed, "I can't believe a bee-yoo-ty like you ain't married! If you was my girl, I'd keep ya tied to the bed..." (gives unnerving physical demonstration) "...and nevah let you go!" Hmm... scary. I mustered a smile and leaned over to look down the tracks for the train I so needed to arrive at that moment!

In between anecdotes about his secretary, Pete, quite shockingly, reached out to brush a strand of hair away from my face. Now, as a woman who likes to think the majority of humans are compassionate and inherently good, I wanted to believe Pete was just a sweet old man, trying to enliven a dreary day by being sociable with a friendly young woman. But the part of me that has lived 36 years with varying degrees of cynicism and who reads the news every day and knows people can be evil was, understandably, a bit frazzled by Pete's open adulation and a lack of boundaries that was astounding, even by NYC standards. A tip for the future, Pete: kind words for a stranger are welcome. Touching? Not so much.

Posted by ayelet at May 23, 2008 12:16 PM