Why write?

"If you don’t write, you can’t really be aware of who you are. Not even mentioning of who you are not."
Pascal Mercier

Friday, 21 September 2012

Middlesex, or in the middle of an airplane


She had small, dark, intriguing eyes of  someone endowed with strong personality.  The nose of just the right size, fine cheekbones and cute lips – I’ve seen such lips in Romania before, but not in Germany. The French have nice lips too, but in a different way. French lips are muscled – that’s from years of pronouncing their vowels, but not always of a nice shape. Sometimes they are just full, that’s it.  The French lips are full of vowels, but hers weren’t. Her language was full of consonants. And her lips -  full of character, but rather child-like in their size.
She finished her first bottle of red wine (it may sound big, but you know, this was one of the airplane-size-wines), which gently stained her lips. When the stewardess asked her “Would you like some coffee or tea?” she simply ordered another bottle. I wanted to start a conversation with her, because she reminded me of someone. I couldn’t remember directly of whom, but that must have been someone I liked. My brain automatically associated this type of eyes with goodness. It’s funny how that works. She might just as well be a very nasty person, but I assumed she wasn’t because she reminded me of someone else, someone indefinite but definitely good.

-          You’ll get completely drunk before the plane lands. – I said, and immediately thought I might have sounded patronizing, without having the intention.
-          No, it’s just that the flight goes much quicker in this way. And I still have a long way to go. – she explained, composed, showing no emotion.

And instead of getting drunk before the plane lands, we just continued the conversation. She had an easiness of talking, her words flew swiftly, and while she spoke I looked at her eyes and followed the movement of her lips.

If I was a man, I would have been enchanted, because this girl was out of the ordinary.  She was subtle, intelligent and calm. Her beauty was not dazzling, but one that gets to you gradually. First there were the eyes, then the lips, then the elegant shape of her face, framed with hazel hair. Her personality wasn’t flashy either: everything she said sounded reasonable, but she was out of the ordinary in her calm, composed manner. In her slight accent and intriguing intonation in English. Maybe that’s the reason she sounded calm, as her phrases didn’t raise with enthusiasm or fall with doubt. She wasn’t excessive in her gestures, she was a kind of girl that you’d really like to have as a flight companion: not imposing their presence, but eager to talk when invited. I remember the advice a colleague of mine gave me just the day before : “Listen more than you speak” and wondered if I wasn’t overwhelming her with my questions.
I wanted to tell her she was beautiful, clever and interesting. If she was a man, she would have taken it as an invitation to have sex (see book “What men think about when they don’t think about sex” – such book really exists, but its pages are blank). Fortunately she wasn’t, and the only thing our conversation had to do with sex was that she’d read “Middlesex” by Jeffrey Eugenides, and strongly recommended it to me.

Before I left the plane she reminded me, without knowing that of course, whose eyes these were. She introduced herself. She had the same name as my school girlfriend, a very kind-hearted spirit.
I didn’t tell it to her then, but I’m doing it now “You’re beautiful, clever and interesting. I’ll certainly read that book.”

 

No comments:

Post a Comment