A cross-hemispherical encounter

The first night when my South-East Asian date blew me off was when I met someone else. He was a European guy from Western Mediterranean region traveling after having finished an exchange semester in the Southern Hemisphere. He sent me a message via the dating/hook-up website I use frequently and after a few back-and-forth's on the site, I suggested meeting up for hot chocolate after work. By 'hot chocolate', I did mean the hot chocolate (a warm beverage).

When I arrived at the chocolaterie, he was already waiting in the line to purchase some hot, sweet and tasty drinks. He insisted on paying for my order which was kind of cute. He turned out to be a tall, handsome, Mediterranean guy with a beautiful smile revealing an impeccable line of nice, white teeth. Prior to our meeting I had told him I would have only an hour since I was going to have a meditation class exactly an hour after work. He was ok with that. We spent a nice hour, talking mostly about each other as this was the first time we had met. I felt like I wanted to meet him again but he was leaving two days later and my social agenda was already tightly filled. I told him I would contact him in the evening and maybe we could meet up for a drink.

On that day, I was going to meet up with my South-East Asian date but he cancelled on me saying a friend had called and offered him to play volleyball. My date could not have possibly refused but I was not really upset and I quickly informed the European guy I would be available to see him around 9 PM. We met up close to my house and headed towards the favorite part of my neighborhood full of nice restaurants and cafés. I felt like going to one of my preferred French lounge bars/restaurants. It turned out there was some cabaret/burlesque show that night so the whole atmosphere somewhat special. We sensed we were magically taken somewhere to Montmarte in Paris. It did not feel like the Southern Hemisphere at all. My new friend was enchanted by the soirée. We did not talk about sex, dating or relationships at all. We rather discussed traveling, living in Europe vs. the Southern Hemisphere, being a foreigner while living abroad etc. It was a very pleasant night after which he went back to his hostel and I went back to my place.

I wanted to meet him the day after but I was going to the cinema after work and then having a dinner with some friends. I promised I would text him if I was to be free which seemed unlikely given my busy social schedule. But the day turned out a little bit differently and the ending was quite unusual... Since the very morning I had had an annoying pain in my ear and in my throat. Unfortunately, I knew it could be an ear infection. The joint ear/throat ache happens every now and then but usually goes away after a few hours. On that day, it was not the case. It was getting worse hour by hour. It started being extremely annoying and painful while I was in the cinema. I still went for the dinner but the pain prevented me from enjoying it. Around 10 PM, I decided I would not be able to cope with it and I went to the emergency. It was nothing serious as I suspected but I needed some painkillers... and antibiotics as it later turned out. While I was sitting in the waiting room, I got a text message from the Euro guy. It was around 23.30 PM and he said 'I am free now and if by any chance you are free for a drink as well then I would be really happy to hang out with you'. I replied 'I don't think I will be able to go out to a pub or a bar now but if you want to join me at the hospital, come over. I'm at the emergency'. I guess that (sub)consciously I wanted to make it sound a little bit dramatic and serious so that he would come. One of the reasons of that was that I felt like seeing him again. But on the other hand, I was at the emergency and I felt sort of lonely at that particular moment. There was quite a few people in suffering (including me) and the atmosphere was overall dreadful. It was a hospital after all. The emergency was a few minutes away from my place and also very close to the Euro's guy hostel. He showed up after a few minutes. Some time later, my doctor arrived and I had my consultation. Half an hour, more than hundred dollars and a few pills later, I was free to go home. The Euro guy and I headed towards our neighborhood. It was a quiet, nice, warm and quite an uneventful Friday night. He decided to walk me home. When we reached my place, I hugged him good night which was also a big 'Thank you for coming to see me at the emergency'. After all, we had only met the day before and bluntly speaking, we were strangers to each other. And yet, I found myself waiting at the hospital with a random European guy who decided to come over and accompany me in pain (almost literally). It was too cute.

The Euro guy was leaving the Southern Hemisphere the day after (Saturday) around 4 PM and as usual my social agenda on that day was filled with meetings, brunches and parties. I decided I had to see him anyway. He was a very nice person and he came to see me while I was in pain at the emergency. So I squeezed him into my busy day. We met up for a coffee before 10 AM on a Saturday morning. We went to the modest coffee shop a few steps away from my house. It was a sunny and fresh morning filled with the smell of caffeine. At some point, he took a book from his backpack and showed it to me. It was a guidebook of the city we were in. He said he would no longer need it as he was leaving and he asked me whether I wanted it. The main idea of that book was to show tourists how to enjoy that very expensive city without making them spend too much. One of the first pages said 'The best things in life are free'. 'I love it!' I exclaimed in ecstasy. It had been a while since I heard last time. I said I could only accept the book if he dedicated it to me. For a second, I felt bad to have said that because my vain request seemed to have confused him. He try to get away without writing anything by saying I would have no space in my luggage to take the book with me but I replied that I could always tear out the page with his dedication. And so did his struggle to write a dedication begin. After a few minutes of silence, he handed the book over to me. The page he had chosen to write the dedication was the one with 'The best things in life are free'. He wrote that meeting me had been the best proof of that saying and the the book was useless as there was no guidance as how to encounter people like me. But I only read that a few days later as I wanted to postpone the pleasure of discovering his message for as long as I could. After giving me the guidebook he took a very old-fashioned Polaroid out of his bag and decided to take a picture of me. As I later realized he only had a few Polaroid negatives as they are quite hard to get for his camera and thus expensive. Had I known that before the shot I would have done everything to have a perfect smile and hair-style. But the photo was nice anyway, especially when he wrote the date, the name of the city and my name on it. He offered it to me even though it was still being developed. I had another souvenir of that exquisite Saturday morning. After a few minutes we both had to leave. I had to proceed to the next point of my social agenda. We left and hugged each other goodbye as we had done less than 12 hours before.

I was really enchanted by that amazing moments that I manage to attract into my life. Another thing is that this encounter was totally deprived of any talks on sex, dating or relationships. Needless to add, there seemed to be no sexual tension between us either. I guess we are both quite handsome and good-looking but yet nothing sparked. And thanks God for that! I do not need another date, boyfriend or fuck buddy. A friend will be much better. Because friendship are far more likely to last longer.