An Encounter

[...] I was walking to college one day with my friend and we were busy talking when this boy came towards us that my friend knew.  He and I just stopped and started at each other with eyes like saucers and our mouths open, it was a very peculiar feeling and my friend found it hysterical.  I had never seen anything so beautiful, he was tall, cinnamon-coloured and had hair like a gypsy.  He was exotic and delicious and I had never encountered anyone like this in the miserable town where we lived.

I didn't any longer go to the college but as I was kicking around not dong much I used to go in with my friend sometimes.  After the stare-off I did get to meet him again outside a classroom and I sat on the edge of a table swinging my legs like a child and eating crisps while he painted an extremely awful portrait of me.

We ended up going on a sort of date, although I already had a boyfriend.  The friend, myself and him all went to the pub together and then she left us an we agreed to meet up that evening back in the pub.  I don't remember the time of year, it wasn't winter but it was colourless, cold, damp and dismal.

We wove our way back to his house in the dark in the early evening with a storm chasing our heels and a cheap pizza and wine.  His flat was on the seafront, the waves were crashing up over the barriers and by the time we reached the entrance we were windswept and soaked, which added to the romance.  I knew nothing about him and he seemed to be a bit of a loner, but it never occurred to me not to go off with him on my own.

His flat was minute and sparse and seemed to be in a retirement block, which was an odd place for a 20 year old to live, I think he had inherited it.  His artwork was all over the walls, it was bad, childish and unconsidered in its approach and the subject mater was wolves, monsters and men devouring women.  In his tiny bedroom he had an array of weapons on his windowsill: knives and equipment used for martial arts.

We got even more drunk, ate the pizza and ballroom-danced around the flat to Pyscho Killer.  We stood out on the balcony and watched the sea roaring, it felt desperately romantic and as we were so high up it looked as if the sea was directly below us and we were right out in it.

I never got to meet my friend that evening, but I also never saw him again, his deliciousness was offset by an attentiveness that gave me the creeps.  When I think back I am not sure if he was a really lovely man and I was too young to appreciate the potential or he was a complete weirdo - sometimes there's a fine line.