Flirting
By: Allan Milne Lees
Tags: Autobiography, Intimacy

The other day I was walking in the rain here in Lausanne, on my way to the gym at the very top of the city. I love it up there; the trees overhang the roads and there are enough leaves in October for everything still to feel lush and comforting. When I turn around and look back, I can see Lac Leman below with the Alps majestic above.

On this particular day, I was about two-thirds of the way to my destination. The roads were already quieter than in the center of the city and fewer people were around me. Suddenly from around the corner a small boy appeared on one of the electric skate-boards that are so popular here. I’ve seen men and women use them while dressed in business clothing and I can see the attraction: downhill the braking force generates a charge that feeds a small lithium battery; going along the level or up a gentle incline the battery feeds a small electric motor. It’s a more compact alternative to cycling.

Unfortunately for the small boy, the pavement was wet and he wasn’t really in control. Almost as soon as I saw him he skidded and fell, sliding across the pavement and scraping his hands and arms. A few seconds later his mother came around the corner and brought her own skateboard to an abrupt halt.

The little boy lay crying, capillary bleeding making the scene worse than it really was. His mother knelt by his side but it was clear she didn’t have anything with her that could be of use. As I always carry a small medkit in my patrol pack, stuffed down underneath my gym clothes, I went over and offered to help.

The little boy looked up at me and his eyes widened. I realized he was staring at my Gore-Tex army surplus DPM jacket. I smiled at him; he continued to stare, apparently frozen in awe of my jacket.

I pulled my medkit from my patrol pack and carefully began to dab at his injuries with a wet-wipe, after which I applied a little iodine. I put elastic bandages on the largest scrapes. All the while he kept staring at my jacket, more or less at my chest.

His mother smiled at me, grateful I think as much for her son’s evident enrapture which prevented him from crying as for any practical help I was providing. I smiled back politely. She seemed to be in her early thirties, long shiny dark brown hair, brown eyes with the beginnings of crow’s feet at the edges, a sign of much laughter and smiling. She was very attractive and the thought flashed through my mind that I hoped her husband appreciated her.

I finished up. The boy was still enraptured by my jacket.

“You like my jacket?” I asked.

He nodded shyly, his eyes never leaving the middle of my chest.

“Would you like to try it on?”

He nodded again.

I unzipped the jacket and slipped it off. The rain wasn’t particularly heavy so I didn’t mind getting wet. I helped the boy to his feet and then had him stretch his arms out to his sides. Then I fitted the jacket over him and zipped it up a few centimeters. When I flipped the hood over his head he disappeared entirely. All that remained was a partially-upright DMP Gore-Tex jacket, alone on the wet pavement.

His mother laughed gently. I nodded slightly to acknowledge the humor of the sight. Her eyes stayed on mine and she smiled at me.

“Thank you for helping him,” she said.

“No problem,” I answered.

“Not many people carry first aid with them,” she observed.

“True.”

Then she did something that surprised me: she reached out and touched my left biceps.

“You are very strong.” Her voice was almost wistful.

“I am very old,” I replied automatically. I’m so accustomed to self-denigration that it happens spontaneously. In my world attractive women don’t flirt with me so when it happens my reaction is always skeptical. I could see she was taken aback by my answer, but she left her hand where it was. I felt the warmth of the palm of her hand against my wet skin. I felt her fingers gently holding my arm. Neither of us moved.

“Older men can be…” she let the sentence trail away.

Underneath my Gore-Tex jacket her son began to move. This made the jacket tremble. We both smiled.

“Do you want to come out now?” she asked her son.

There was a muffled answer in the affirmative. I knelt down and unzipped the jacket and a happy little boy emerged, smiling up at his mother as if he’d just had the best-ever treat possible.

“I gave him a soldier doll last week,” she told me. “The uniform is similar to your jacket.”

“I had a toy like that when I was a child,” I said. “A very long time ago.”

“Do you have children?”

“Yes, two. Both at university now.”

“I’d like to hear about them,” she said. “Perhaps we can have coffee one day?”

I stood there in the rain, looking at her, not knowing what to say.

Twenty-seven years in the USA killed my ability to flirt, to make personal conversation with an attractive woman. My mind automatically was doing two things simultaneously: scanning for danger and discounting her smile. In Russia it’s typical for an attractive woman to be the distraction while two or three men proceed to relieve one of one’s possessions. And the psychological literature is clear that in most cases when a woman meets a man for the first time she smiles and sends various other signals which are evolved behaviors designed to lessen her chances of being harmed. Men habitually misinterpret these signals as signs of interest in them; I lean the other way and assume they mean nothing personal at all.

Europeans still, for the most part, flirt. It’s seen as a harmless amusement, a way of paying compliments to one another. Flirting is quite different from creepy harassment in the same way that consensual joyful sex is different from rape. The problem is, US culture is so sex-negative, so neurotic, and so terrified of personal intimacy that everything gets conflated and the worst possible interpretation is always the one that wins.

Try flirting in the USA outside of very narrow circumstances (everyone drunk in the local dive bar) and you can easily end up with a sexual harassment suite. Flirting is inappropriate, a micro-aggression, a psychological assault, an imposition of the Patriarchy, and who knows what else. It’s certainly not something a professional white male can do without the risk of dire consequences.

I felt the rain streaking down my face. My t-shirt was now thoroughly soaked.

Her eyes, her beautiful large brown eyes, were still looking into mine.

I wanted to accept her invitation to coffee. I told myself it would be an opportunity for conversation, for continuing to elevate my French language skills. My mind was struggling. What was her situation? Was she so lonely that a little kindness seemed worth holding onto?

“I’d like that,” I said.

She pulled her phone from her pocket. “What’s your number?” she asked.

I gave her my number, deliberately substituting two integers. Her future call, should she decide to make it, would never reach me.

As I walked on to the gym, my jacket in my left hand, I felt an unbearable weight of sadness. I lived too long in a world in which every gesture, every word, every act could potentially be used against me. I lived too long in a world that is fearful and dead inside. The process of attrition was so gradual and my focus was so much elsewhere that I didn’t even notice I was becoming dead too.

As I walked in the rain under the weeping trees I hoped earnestly that somehow, sometime, the part of me that used to be able to flirt harmlessly may eventually live again.