Strange Encounter

Slept late afternoon yesterday, so I had trouble sleeping last night. Christine’s incessant barking made it worse, I had to get up from bed at 2:30 a.m. and decided to have a light snack at Chowking's, a few blocks away from where I live.

While seated near the see-through glass panel windows waiting for my order, a figure dressed neatly and impeccably in black-and-white striped polo shirt, sporting a shortly-cropped hair, in his early twenties, passed through my viewing point outside and glanced back towards my direction, as if waiting for a cue.

Didn’t really think much of it, though, until I realized this guy was waiting for me all along, outside. Seated on the pavement, he followed me upon stepping out of the door. I thought, well he couldn’t possibly be a hold-upper, the security guards at the fast-food joint and the nearby bank were a few feet away, and he didn’t appear like he could carry out a stick up; and then it hit me: what if he were trying to pick me up, after all this wasn’t the first time complete strangers came up to me, men and women alike (Ems, I’m not making this up so remove that smirk off your face) ostensibly hoping for more than just a handshake.

I stopped walking and he quickened his steps as he approached me, surprisingly as if I were a long-lost friend.

“Hi. Have trouble sleeping?”

Maybe it was obvious.

“Yeah, and I got hungry so I decided to come here” I said politely. I’m friendly even with strangers, as long as there isn’t any gun or knife tucked away somewhere.

“Just came from work in Makati, haven’t had any sleep for a couple of days as well, because of the erratic schedule”. He spoke in a mix of English and the vernacular typical of people who went to expensive Catholic schools. Perhaps we can form an insomniac’s club, I wanted to say.

And so it became clear to me, my life wasn’t in any danger. It seemed like he was just looking for someone to talk to and wasn’t hitting on me. And besides, he’s just too young to do that. I wanted to shout, “why me? We barely know each other, I don’t even know your name!” but I realized he simply wanted me to do a Big Brother thing. My gad, do I look like the brother he never had? So I decided to just sit it out in the pavement and listen to him do all the talking. I thought I’d spare just five minutes of my time before walking on home.

Why he decided I’d make a good sounding board a la Dr. Phil is beyond me. Maybe he was drawn inexorably to my presence which radiates a positive aura or energy so infectious he just can’t help but succumb to it (Ok Che, you may strangle me now).

He talked about his work at a call centre in between cigarette puffs, his misgivings about his job, the pressure and the physical toll on his body, you know, like not getting enough sleep. Dude, I wanted to tell him desperately, if you want me to listen to you yak all night long about how miserable your life is, buy me some beer, preferably Cerveza Negra, so that at least at some point I’d probably pass out to even care. But since I’m a nice guy, too nice in fact, I smiled and simply grinned all throughout the ordeal. Why I even bothered to accommodate him I don’t really know.

After my self-imposed five-minutes elapsed, I got up to leave and we finally shook hands. He held on to it a wee bit longer but I didn’t think he meant anything by that. As for me, my eyelids started to fail me, I had to head home and hit the sack.