"Do you always talk to strangers about their strange problems?"
I asked, twirling the gin and tonic with my right hand, resting my chin on my left.
He smiled lightly, his eyes squinting a little.
"I'm standing here for 5 hours, might as well have a chat with those who need it."
I was quite sure I was not drunk. I haven't even had a sip of my gin and tonic. Yet, I could swear there was a sort of mysticism around him, like there was a cloak of protection nobody could see. It was as if he was protected from everything, like he was bulletproof. Through his slanted thin eyes and somewhat mischievous looking smile, he looked almost as if he was a man full of plans.
In these situations, I may as well be straight up. I was confident in my beauty, and judging by his witty way of putting things, I was sure jumping around shells around him was foolish.
"What kind of women do you like?" I asked, tilting my head towards the back to an angle which I could look downwards towards him. I was flaunting my lipstick in rose red and the shadows of the makeup of my eyes, I was sure synergised well with my downward angle of sight.
He shrugged a little, while preparing for another glass of whiskey for the man sitting to the opposite send of the bar table from me. Everybody looked quite mellow in this table, and luckily I was the most sober one. This gave me a good window to keep making advances.
"The generic answers are sometimes the right ones." He said, almost as if he was reciting a phrase from a classic.
"Just someone with a nice personality that loves me."
'Love'. It's that damn word again. It indeed was a generic answer, and the one that didn't even humour me. 'Nice personality' and 'love' were two phrases that I could argue plagued the world.
Ask any man, any 'decent' man, even a 'social saint' - "would you marry a fat, ugly old woman with a nice personality? or a beautiful, young woman that may lack it?" - and I can assure you; those who choose the former are liars and therefore lack the credibility of decency.
'Love' is a fancy way to cover up the better, more honest word that could go in its place - "lust". Doesn't take an Einstein to put two and two together and figure out that the reason looks are so important and 'nice personality' is an empty ideal type is precisely because love is just a sugar coated version of lust.
"You didn't seem all that impressed by the answer." The boy chuckled in his low voice, as if he read exactly my mind.
"Well, everyone can say that, but not everybody lives like that."
"You see, I'm not a looker myself." He started, raising one of his eyebrows while maintaining his smile,
"So, consider it selfish, but I want my future woman to look less at looks, and I'd return the favour."
What a strange answer.
"So you wouldn't mind marrying a fat, ugly old woman if she turned out to be a saint?"
Are you a hypocrite or a liar? was my question hidden underneath it.
As if he read exactly what I really wanted to ask him, he simply replied:
"What's ugly to you? could you tell me?"
At this moment I was trying to figure out how to reply to this. If I gave him a standard, would that make me look shallow? If I didn't, I was sure he was simply gonna say 'yes' with his twisted standard of what 'ugly' was.
"Also, why would a saint fall in love with me? I'm a one big sinner." The guy chuckled as if I just entertained him. He dodged the question, in the strangest, most slyest way.
"You're just-"
"Dodging the question?" He cut me off. I lifted my head from the hand it was resting upon, and my right hand put the glass it was playing with down at the table. The light clash between the thick bottom of the glass and the table made a noise.
"Then I'll give you a clearer answer, if you cannot deduce it yourself. Marriage is a commitment. If I get to a point where I have to even consider marrying this person, then clearly it is due to the fact that I saw something in this woman worth marrying for. So your question, to me, is quite rhetorical beyond need. It can be just answered simply with an 'of course'."
I was stunned for a second.
"...Then why didn't just you answer with an 'of course'?"
This person is a hypocrite. I knew so. I was talking about his desire, and he knew exactly that I was. If he really thought that my question was something rhetorical, then he would have answered with more confidence.
"If I simply answered with - "Of course I will", then wouldn't you have called me an hypocrite or a liar?"
He stared at me, with his slanted eyes opening up to look directly at me in the eyes. I had chills on my back.
"Conversations tend to go all over the place. What a strange thing indeed. Don't you think, miss?"
I drifted off. Did he make me drift off on purpose? Did he already know the kind of person I was? These questions floated around me. I felt like I was stripped bare, naked in flesh, being stared at by this mere bartender boy. I hated it. It was disgusting. It was exhausting.
I'll find my way out of this. I was going to pull him by a string. I knew I could do it. It was my strength. I had to believe in myself-
"What a strange phenomenon indeed." The boy's words cut through my anxious dribble of thoughts. I was lucid, I was breathing heavily. He hit me with his words, with bull point accuracy and his enounciations so sharply precise, before I could think of a way to get rid of my embarrassment.
"You haven't drank a sip of your gin and tonic, yet you're already red. Is something wrong?"
The smile.
It was so haunting.