There are some questions in life that you never expect to be asked. One of these questions was asked to me when I was 18 and waiting for my friend in the bus station. We had meant to be catching the same bus, but my friend was late and I saw him looking a bit confused as the number 27 to town went trundling past him, with me sat inside. Life went in slow motion at that moment as our eyes briefly met. My mind was crying "Noooo...." but I didn't say it out loud because I would have looked weird. Judging by what happened next I must have looked pretty weird anyway.
The bus pulled into the station and I got off at the main platform. I had been in textual converse with my friend ever since we'd momentarily caught each other's gaze and he was sure he would be arriving within the next ten minutes. Excellent, I thought. I will just stand here and wait like all these other people are doing, clearly in a similar situation. Apparently a lot of people had arranged to go out that night but had unfortunately not met up with their friends on the bus like they had planned to. So I stood there, leaning on the metal railings in front of me. I cannot be sure what I was wearing, but I imagine at the time it was something along the lines of skinny jeans and a leather jacket. I still wear that now, as it happens, but I had longer hair back then so the look is now completely different. Shut up, it is. I am an image of beauty. Anyway, buses kept pulling into the station. In the next ten minutes at least three of them bore the number 27, yet my friend was not on any of them. I had noticed that the scattering of people also waiting with me were a fair bit older than I. Most of them were somewhere in their 50s, and I remember finding it a bit odd that so many members of the older generation were planning on making the most of the Thursday night pound entry offer at Scream. Sure, they might have been going somewhere else, but that would make them uncool. All the cool kids went to Scream. You could get a lukewarm bottle of beer for just one pound in Scream. Bargain.
Ten minutes turned into half an hour and that turned into forty minutes, still no sign of my friend. I'd seen a few of the congregation around me looking in my direction, clearly their friends hadn't turned up yet either. One woman was wearing a rather fine fur hat and I think I was a bit jealous of how much volume it possessed as the breezy bus station conditions had made my hair look pretty drab. It is all about the volume (and the confidence, of course) and I now looked more like Michael Jackson after his death than when he was in his moon walking prime.
Then it happened. This first question that I never expected to be asked, at least not by this particular individual. He approached me fairly casually, standing about two feet away from me and mimicking my pose by leaning against the railings. His hands clenched each other over the top of the bars and he let out the sort of sigh that says, "Hey, look at me. I'd say hello but that might be awkward so I will let this sigh do the work for me." I turned to acknowledge his existence and I may have even smiled so as not to appear rude.
"Hello," he said. His voice was quite rough, as was his face and attire. He probably wouldn't fit in at Scream but he was a bit old and probably past caring all that much. VKs were only a quid too, he might have one of them. We took part in the early stages of pigeon conversation, with the usual "how are you?" and "good day?" all thrown into the mix. But then, out of nowhere, bang. He cut to the point. Looking me dead in the eye and without his voice changing in the slightest, he uttered the immortal words of...
"Fancy a f*ck?"
You know when someone says something unexpected to you and because you don't want to answer it you pretend you didn't hear them? Like when someone you don't fancy asks you out or a friend you don't like being seen in public with asks if you want to go to the pub? Yeah, it was like that, only more rapey.
"Sorry?" I replied, urging my friend's bus to get here immediately. Jump out the window as it drives past, friend. Get out and run if you'll get here faster.
"Fancy a f*ck?" the old man repeated, nodding his head in the direction of the seedy looking station toilets over on our right. I like to think I'm quite good with words, but in this moment of panic all I could muster was a laid back, "I'm alright, thanks," as if he'd offered me a coffee rather than a quick perverted shag in the gents. The man looked genuinely hurt as if he'd fully expected me to say yes. I've been mistaken for being gay quite a few times and apparently even bus station predators can sense something homosexual in me.
I'm not gay. But that wasn't what he was interested in, oh no. He looked very obviously down at my crotch, thinking about what he just lost out on, and then back up to my face. I looked away, trying desperately to see the number 27 bus rolling on in. It still wasn't there.
"So," the man continued, "are you married?"
No I am not married, old man. Why are you trying to suggest that marriage is the only reason why I would turn down your offer? Again, I didn't say that. I didn't respond with the tone of utter disgust I should have used, because I have manners and am a bit of a wuss when it comes to conflict. I just said, "Nah," as if it was just because he wasn't my type or something unimportant like that. He didn't talk to me anymore after that. He just stood there, looking out into the sea of departing night buses and casting his filthy breath into the cold, dark air. Then he checked his watch as if he had somewhere better to be and wandered off into the city center.
Then my friend turned up.
"Hey, friend. Did you know that Thursday night at the bus station is apparently the perfect opportunity to land a quick lay with 18 boys?"
"What?" he answered, as I would have too if posed with such an odd statement.
"Oh, it's just some old man wanted to have sex with me, that's all."
"Oh. So, do you know if anyone else is out tonight?"
That friend and I don't go out as much anymore.
So that was the first of the questions in life that I never expected to be asked. The second came just the other week from a far less disturbing source and is likely to scar me far less, but still, it caught me off guard.
Since my degree finished all those months ago I have had to find new friends. My old lot have departed and I either had to become a social recluse or force new people into liking me. I chose the latter option. Force was literally my action plan. I talked to them, I made hugely inappropriate jokes to them and I pretend I was cool so that they would like me more. I don't know if they do like me or not, but they don't ignore me when I talk so that is a good place to start. One of this group of new people was walking with me the other day. We don't talk as much as I do with some of the others, but we still chat. We co-exist. She has quite an abrasive front to her which is a bit off putting until you get used to it, but I don't think she realises this about herself. So, looking up at me like some sort of higher power, she asked the second question. A question which as I sit here, spending my Thursday night not being chatted up by an old man, but not really doing much else either (not a bad thing, relatively) seems pretty ridiculous. As I sit here, knowing that I have gone all day with my only human contact being with the man at the post office collection center seems really quite laughable.
She asked,
"Ash, tell me how to be popular."
I laughed. I brushed the question off. I'm not popular, far from it. I am just a very good pretender and it has seen me get through life fairly adequately until now. It won't get me an awful lot more than adequate, though. So my best advise to her would be to ignore everything I say and do and go in a different direction.
Don't go to bus stations at night and don't act like the fool to get friends. They will use you for the fun times and then forget about you if you get dull. I build their expectations up and now I have to live with such a burden.
Fortunately I don't have to live with the memories of rape, so in that respect, I can't really complain.
