TRAIN WRECK?  TRAIN WRECK?  DID SOMEONE SAY TRAIN WRECK?  How about a double, triple or quadruple train wreck?  That’s about the way the weekend started.  In my last post, I managed to solve my communication problems with Jolly through emailing back and forth, ultimately 23 times, until we got all our plans straightened out, and agreed to meet at the train station at 7 am, an hour and 5 minutes before the train was scheduled to leave.  I thought the meeting time was a bit overly cautious on his part, but I was willing to err on the side of caution after all the problems with my telephone. 

 

It was so hard to drag my butt out of bed at 5 am.  I can’t remember the last time I’ve had to use an alarm clock.  But I was glad that I had time to make myself a nice breakfast before heading out.  I was running late by just two or three minutes, and because of his track record for punctuality, I expected that Jolly would be waiting for me already at the passport photo booth where I suggested we meet.  But, he wasn’t there yet, so  I set about waiting… and waiting. 

 

By 7:15, I thought that maybe he had thought he’d said we should meet at 7:30, because, after all, 7:00 was a ridiculously early time to meet.  There’s no check-in or security to go through like at an airport.  So, I wasn’t too worried yet, but as 7:30 approached, and there was no sign of him, I began to get a little tell-tale knot in my stomach.  I’ve had that feeling before, and it’s usually not wrong.  I knew in my heart that he wasn’t going to show up, and yet I went through the motions of making a sweep through the front part of the station a couple of times just to make sure he wasn’t waiting for me in another spot (and to make sure there wasn’t a second photo booth in the station).  There weren’t all that many people in the station, so I was sure, if he was there, one of us would spot the other.  But I didn’t see any sign of him.  I went back to my post.  I thought about checking out the train platform where our train would leave from, but I realized that he didn’t even know the name of the town that we were going to. 

 

At ten minutes before 8, I thought, there’s still time to make it, if he gets here soon.  Maybe he overslept.  I wished I had a way to contact him, but I hadn’t even brought the phone number of his hostel with me.  What was I going to do if he didn’t show up? 

 

I couldn’t believe that he would have set me up like this.  I had already bought the tickets, and they weren’t cheap.  If he didn’t want to go, why didn’t he just tell me?  We had just finalized our plans at 11 the previous night.  I knew guys that would set me up for this kind of an experience as a way of telling me to get lost, but I didn’t take Jolly for one of those guys.  This just seemed so out of character, but then again, people often act out-of-character.  It’s not so much that they’re acting out-of-character, as it is that we misjudge their character, because we don’t know them as well as we think we do.  Could that be what was happening?  Something told me no.  And I decided that he must have overslept.  I made up my mind.  I would wait at my post until the train left.  After that, there was no need to wait around.  I would go and try to find him at his hostel. The tickets were unreserved, so we could use them for any train bound for Poprad that was leaving that day.  Maybe, if he had just overslept, we could catch a later train.   

 

Oddly, while I was waiting there, I felt somehow calm.  For some reason, none of this really surprised me.  I just had to accept that it was happening, and go through the steps to exhaust all the possibilities, even though, I had a hunch that I would never see Jolly again. 

 

Our train’s departure time came and went, and no Jolly.  I made one last sweep of the train station before heading out.  During my sweep, I noticed that there was an internet café, and I was going to check my email and see if Jolly left me a message, but I saw that it didn’t open for another hour, so I had no choice but to set out in search of Jolly’s hostel.  I had to rely on my memory as to the address of the hostel which I had never been to before.  I guess the previous night’s calamity with the telephone was a blessing in disguise, because I had looked up the address of the hostel at that time, in case I had to go there to get in touch with Jolly.  I remembered the street name, Dlouha, and I had a hunch that the number was 33, but I couldn’t be sure.  I had seen that street the day before while I was wandering around the city center looking for a bookstore, so I had a vague idea where it was.  How to get there from the train station was going to be tricky, though, because when I had cleaned out my purse before leaving the house, I had taken out all my Prague maps.  It was going to be hit and miss.

 

I set off on foot.  The city was eerily still at this hour, and I wondered when things start waking up here.  After nearly an hour of wandering in the early morning heat and asking directions a few times, I finally stumbled across the hostel.  I hesitated to go in, not wanting to know what I might discover.  But in I went.  I told the guy at the front desk that I needed to get in touch with one of his guests; I gave him Jolly’s name and asked him to see if he was there. 

 

The guy looked like he wasn’t going to help me.

 

“Even if I could find his name and the room, I can’t let you go in there.”

 

“Can you go in there?” 

 

“Well, I’m on duty alone here, and there’s no one to watch the desk.”

 

“But he was supposed to meet me at the train station for an 8 o’clock train, and he didn’t come.  I think he might still be sleeping.”

 

That seemed to do the trick.  The guy got out his ledger and asked for Jolly’s name again.  We went through the entire ledger, pages and pages of it, but Jolly was not to be found.  I couldn’t believe my eyes?  Had he lied to me about where he was staying?  This just wasn’t adding up.

 

“Are you sure he was staying at this hostel?  Maybe he’s at a different hostel.”

 

“I’m sure, he said he was staying at Traveller’s Hostel.”

 

“Are you sure it was this one?  We have four different locations in the city.”

 

“No, but he said it was Traveller’s Hostel, and that it was very close to the center.”

 

“Then, it could be this one,” he pointed on a map.  There was another hostel, with the same name, on the other side of the center.  I asked him if he could call over there.  He did, and talked to the other hostel for a few minutes before hanging up and telling me that Jolly had been staying there, but he already checked out.  I asked if he knew what time he’d checked out.  He didn’t but said it was that morning.  Flashbacks of a time, nearly twenty years earlier, when a boyfriend who’d been living in a hotel, suddenly checked out without a trace, bolted through my mind.  I asked if I could use the internet.  The guy said sure, and as I was walking over to the computer, he added,

 

“They said he left his bags there and he’ll be back in two days…”

 

“Yeah…”

 

“Oh, yeah… you know.”

 

So I sat down to the computer and opened my email.  There was no message from Jolly.  I sent one off to him:

 

JOLLY, WHERE ARE YOU?  I WAITED UNTIL THE TRAIN LEFT, AND NOW I’M AT YOUR HOSTEL.  THEY SAID YOU CHECKED OUT.  THE TRAIN TICKETS ARE GOOD ALL DAY, SO WE CAN STILL USE THEM, IF WE CAN FIND EACH OTHER.  I’M GOING HOME NOW.  I’LL KEEP CHECKING MY EMAIL.

 

KRUU

 

On the way home, I stopped at the train station again.  He had obviously intended to follow through with our plans.  Maybe he had gotten a late start or run into some other difficulty.  Maybe he was at the internet café right now, trying to contact me. It would be open by now.  I made another sweep of the station… didn’t see him.  Went to the internet café.  He wasn’t there either.  Went home with a heavy heart. 

 

As soon as I got home, I fired up the computer… I remembered how Jolly had laughed at that expression.  My plan was to check my email, and when I didn’t find anything, to blog like crazy about what was going on, while continuing to check for missives from Jolly.  But when I got to my inbox, Jolly’s message was already there.  Here it is:

 

i was at the photo kiosk till 8:00  then \i realised there are 2 photo
kiosks, im back at the hostel i will check me email after i shower, its real
busy sometimes to chek email ill wait and check bak with you in a few
minutes

 

The message had come an hour earlier… just about the same time that I had left the hostel.  Below it was another message that came about half an hour later:

 

Kruuyai, did you get my last email, I will continue to check it, I still
want to go.

 

So, I told him to email me his hostel’s phone number, and I would call him there on my computer.  The first time I called the number he gave me, and the receptionist said she couldn’t find that name on her list.  I said, he must have just walked up and asked you for the phone number.  Is there someone hanging around there waiting for a phone call?  She couldn’t be bothered.  So, I called the other branch of the hostel, the one I had gone to earlier, and asked them for the number of this hostel.  They gave me a slightly different number, and I called it and finally got through to Jolly.  We made plans to meet up at the same photo booth that we were supposed to meet at in the morning, now that we both knew where it was.

 

He was there waiting for me when I got there, and we still had an hour to kill before the train left.  We checked on a few things, and he asked some more questions about travel… it’s like I’m his travel trainer… he has so many insecurities about traveling alone… he just can’t seem to figure things out for himself, like where to buy the ticket at the train station, for example.  I can kind of relate, because I was about the same way when I started traveling.  It just surprised me with him, because he’s been to Europe plenty of times, but he was always visiting friends or traveling with someone who did all the legwork. 

 

We got on our train around 12:30 and had a seven or eight hour train ride ahead of us.  Our compartment was occupied by two young, Turkish men who had the window seats, and I sat in one of the seats by the door.  I hoped that Jolly would sit next to me, but he took the seat across from me.  I handed him the guide book that I had bought the day before and told him to take a look through it to see where he wanted to go and what he wanted to do.  I suggested that, if we came across an interesting place on the way, we didn’t have to go all the way through to Poprad.  I noticed, as he was reading the book, that his hands were trembling, and I wondered what that was about.

 

He didn’t come up with any definite ideas, but we kind of agreed that it might be a good idea to get out at Zilina, where we would have to change trains anyway, and see what it was like.  Then, Jolly proceeded to sleep through most of the journey, his head bobbing up and down, his eyes occasionally opening and then closing again. 

 

I had decided to take the advice that you all gave me and try to just have a good time and forget about trying to make a romance happen, but I have to tell you, it is impossible for me to look at that man and not get turned on.  And I couldn’t take my eyes off him.  Fortunately, I found a way to avoid having it look like I was staring at him (which I was).  His reflection in the glass door was as clear as a mirror, so I just looked at that for the most part, but it freaked me out every once in a while when he opened his eyes, and his mirrored eyes seemed to look directly into mine. 

 

At one point, I decided to do a little probing and popped a question that I’d been meaning to ask.. innocent enough…, “When’s the last time you were in Europe before this?”

 

But my intentions were not quite so innocent.  He had mentioned several times, a girlfriend whom he had visited while she was living in Spain and how she had dumped him during the visit.  I wanted to know how recent that breakup was, and although the answer to this question wouldn’t tell me for sure, because I didn’t know if that was the last time he was in Europe, at least it would give me a minimum time that it happened ago.  He said it was in 2005 (so anywhere from a year and a half to two years ago).  Then, he added, after a few moments, a sort of apology, saying that that was when his girlfriend had broken up with him, asked me if I remembered that story, and said that he usually got a little terse when he talked about it.  (Yes, he actually said “terse.”)  He was smiling when he said it, and I jokingly told him that I wouldn’t bring it up again.

 

Then, we lapsed into silence again, and I kept my eyes on his reflection.  His long, curly eyelashes were blinking as if he were trying to hold back some tears, and I had a sudden insight as to what might be coming between us.  He was probably still in love with this ex-girlfriend, even after so much time.  I felt so sad for him.  I wondered if I should say anything.  I didn’t.  I kept the thought for later, though.  There might be an appropriate time to bring it up.

 

We got to Zilina in the early evening, and after some initial difficulty with ATM’s we managed to get some cash and decided to fill our stomachs before looking for a place to stay.  Zilina is a lovely town, with a beautiful pedestrian mall and a charming town square, complete with an imposing, old cathedral and arcaded outdoor cafes all around.. fountains and statues in the middle… it reminded me of a typical Mexican town, only cleaner and in better repair. 

 

Looking for a restaurant with traditional Slovakian food, we accidentally straggled into an Italian restaurant in an outdoor, covered patio.  Partway through our dinner, it began to pour, and we had to wait it out.  We were both pretty zoned out, and just wanted to find a place to stay and get some rest.  There were no hostels listed in the guide book, and that didn’t bother me, because I had quite had it with hostels and this man by now anyway.  He seemed a little disappointed by that, though.  We couldn’t get any good information from the people at the restaurant about where to stay, so we tried to find the cheaper of the places that were listed in the guide book. 

 

The first one was a pension just off the town square.  The entrance was behind the sidewalk café portion of a restaurant.  We went inside and climbed the stairs following the signs that were posted.  And when we got to the top, we could see that everything was closed up.  This wasn’t a good sign.  There weren’t that many places in town, and some of them were pretty expensive.  I decided to ask in the restaurant.  They sent me to the next restaurant over, and they had to call the owner and see if there was any availability.  She told us the owner would be over in about 15 minutes.  I said to Jolly after we sat down that I assumed we were going to be able to get a room, because the guy was actually coming there.  We joked about him showing up and saying,

 

“Oh, are you the folks that wanted the room?  Yeah?  Well, sorry, we’re all booked up.”

 

Jolly was also a bit impressed by my tenacity in getting the room.  He said,

 

“If I’d have been here alone and went in and saw those doors closed, I would have just given up.” 

 

When the owner came, we followed him to his office, and a girl was there to translate for us.  The rooms were about twice as expensive as our guidebook had said, but the prices were posted on the wall, so I knew we weren’t being ripped off. 

 

Jolly made very sure to verify that the room had two beds, and I felt so deflated.  It definitely wasn’t going to happen.  I might as well just let go.  We didn’t go out again that night.  We just took turns showering and got to bed early.  There was a terrific thunder storm during the night, and I thought how nice it would have been to have been snuggled up next to Jolly.  I also thought, for my own sanity, I was going to have to bring up the subject of what was or wasn’t going on with us.  Even a definite “not interested” would be better than all this limbo.  I thought, the next chance I got, I was going to ask him,

 

“Why do you feel so uncomfortable with me?”  and see where it went from there.  I resolved to do it first thing in the morning.

 

By the morning light, I could see that he had his blankets wrapped around him like a mummy.  So protective.  Did he think I was going to crawl into bed with him in the middle of the night?  And was the thought so repulsive?   I felt pretty depressed, but tried to push my negative thoughts out of my mind and just plan to have a nice day.  I just had to wait for him to wake up.  Meanwhile, I just lay there, fading in and out of consciousness.  Finally, I heard him say,

 

“It’s almost 9 o’clock.  Should we get going?”  Such a friendly way to start the day.

 

I handed him the tour book and told him to pick out something for us to do while I used the bathroom.  I went in to get dressed and decided to not pull any punches today.  I was going all out with my dress.  I’d been dressing fairly conservatively the whole time I’d been around him, but today, I was wearing my very short denim shorts, which by the way, look great on me, and a form fitting sky blue polyester spaghetti strapped top with a cut out pattern that left nothing to the imagination except for color. 

 

I decided not to bring up my question quite yet.  We still had some time to spend together, and I didn’t want to take a chance on causing so much stress for him that he’d decide to leave early.  Much better to wait until there was nothing left to lose.

 

He suggested a traditional music and dance festival that takes place in Terchova during late July and early August.  I agreed, and we set out to find the bus station.  As we approached the station, Jolly was full of questions about how we were going to get information on the bus schedules, and I told him that we would go in the station, and hopefully there would be someone at a window or there would be information posted.  (He really has minimal independent travel experience, but he approaches this like a real student… I don’t know how many times he thanked me for teaching him so much about independent travel).  And I added that, if there was no one at the window and no information posted, we would have to walk around to all the bus platforms in the terminal (there were about 20 of them) and look at the schedules that were posted there.

 

“We just walk around to all 20 of them?” He asked incredulously.

 

“Yep.”

 

As it turned out, the station was locked, and so there was no window person, no was there a timetable posted, so we started making the rounds of the platforms and soon found what we were looking for.  Jolly told me,

 

“I was kind of being facetious when I asked if we were going to walk around to all 20 of the platforms, but that is what you do, isn’t it?”

 

Silly boy.

 

After about a 20 minute ride, the bus dropped us off in Terchova, a small, but sprawling mountain town.  The place reminded me of some of the more forested mountains in Colorado.  After we got off the bus, he asked,

 

“Okay, we’re here… so what do we do now?   How do we find this alleged music festival?”

 

I laughed.  “Follow your ear, my dear.”

 

We headed off down the road, just admiring the peace and serenity of the village.  It sure didn’t seem like this music festival was very popular.  Other than us and a couple of backpackers who were heading off toward the mountains, there didn’t seem to be any tourists around.  We passed a few restaurants that smelled pretty good.  Jolly asked me if there was anything to see in this town.  I told him there was an aluminum statue of a local Robin Hood like folk hero who had been tortured to death, and there was also a museum. 

 

“Where’s the museum?” 

 

“Next to the tourist information office.”

 

“Where’s that?”

 

“Next to the museum.”

 

That was the only information I had.

 

We took a leisurely stroll down a back road and found the aluminum statue high on  a hill.  We followed a group of Polish tourists (that we hadn’t spotted before) up the hill to click some photos.  It was a tad difficult for me to clamber up the hill, and I couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t offer me a hand up. 

 

After we checked out the aluminum statue, we just walked along the mountain ridge for  awhile, and Jolly surprised me by saying,

 

“This is fun.”  I had kind of thought that this excursion might be boring him, but he took everything as such a learning experience. 

While we were up there, we heard some music and thought it might be the start of the music festival.  We went back down the hill and tried to track it down.  It sounded like there was an announcement of some kind.  But by the time we got to the bottom, the music had stopped.  We figured maybe it had been someone’s car stereo.

 

We decided to get some lunch, and I had a delicious Slovakian Halusky… potato dumplings with sauerkraut, mushrooms and bacon…yum!  We had a nice conversation over lunch.  I don’t remember much what we talked about.  I do remember talking about music, and him saying that he likes happy music, because he tends to have a deep brooding personality and likes music that uplifts him.  I wondered if that was part of the problem between us.  I kind of have a deep, brooding personality, too, and I’m attracted to his deep, brooding personality, but maybe he’s attracted to people that can lift him up, too, not just music.  So, I was feeling a little inadequate.

 

Meanwhile, I kept looking at him, because suddenly, his face looked very familiar to me.  Yes, I know, it should, since I’ve known him for a month, but he was reminding me of someone, maybe a famous actor, but I couldn’t think of who that would be.  I would have to ponder it some more.

 

After lunch, we went into a sporting goods store to look at hiking boots (I was hoping to find a good deal).  I asked the woman about the music festival, and she showed me a poster on the door.  The music festival isn’t until the 10th and 11th of August!  Strike two for the Rough Guide to the Czech and Slovak Republics.

 

We decided to go back to Zilina and hang out there, since it was such a beautiful town.  When we got off the bus in Zilina, it came to me. 

 

“You know what famous person you look like?”

 

“Who?”

 

“You’re not going to believe this… James Dean.”

 

He laughed without surprise.

 

“Do you hear that a lot?”

“Yeah, I guess it’s the hair.”

 

“No, it’s more than the hair.  It’s the eyebrows, nose, lips, deep brooding character… everything.”

 

He told me that he had been to Madame Tussaud’s the wax museum in London, and that the figure of James Dean did look a lot like him right down to stature.  I didn’t realize that James Dean had been short.  (I like short men).

 

We talked about short, famous men on our way to the train station to get information and buy tickets for our train ride back to Prague on Monday.  Jolly said he wanted to get back to Prague as early as possible on Monday, like early afternoon if possible, because his flight leaves early on Tuesday, and he didn’t want to take any chances.  My heart sank.  Was he so desperate to get away from me?  So, our whole trip to Slovakia was going to last for basically one day?  Yep.

 

I let him find his way around the tiny train station and figure out when he trains were leaving.  There was one at 6:25 in the morning, and another at about 5 pm.  It was a five hour ride.  Jolly said he’d prefer the morning train.

 

“I can’t get back to Prague at 10 o’clock at night.”

 

“Why can’t you?”

 

“Well, I guess I could.  It’s just that I left my stuff at the hostel, and I haven’t paid for my bed yet.  I want to make sure I have a place to sleep.” 

 

“You could make your reservation online.  I’ll help you.”

 

“Yeah, I think I better just get there early.  So I don’t have to worry.”

 

Sigh.

 

We bought the tickets, and then did a little grocery shopping.  I asked him if he drank wine, and he said he did.  I asked if I should get a bottle of wine for that night.  He looked slightly doubtful, but I cajoled him into it and asked him if he wanted red or white.  He said red (I like white, but I can go either way).  I said that we’d have to get a bottle with a twist off cap, but he said he had a corkscrew.  That’s what I like… a man who’s prepared.  We headed back to the hotel to use the bathroom and I suggested that we try to find the castle that was supposed to be about a mile outside of town, and he agreed, so we set out.   The castle was off the map, but the way was marked, so I figured we could find it.  We got as far as the freeway, and could see the castle on the other side, but couldn’t see a way to get across.  He asked,

 

“Are we supposed to just walked across that highway?”

 

I didn’t recommend it.  But we were walking along the freeway on a bridge over the smelly river, and I saw that there was a path along the river that went under the viaduct, so I suggested that we go down there.  He wasn’t convinced that it was a good idea, in fact he really tried to talk me out of it, because it was kind of deserted, and he thought it might be dangerous, but I can be stubborn when I want to, and since we came so close to the castle, I wasn’t about to turn back without seeing it.  We had to walk about a block or so back before we found a spot where we could easily walk down to the river valley.  He kept muttering about how uncomfortable he was with this the whole time, but I paid him no heed, because there were kids and other people down there fishing…not many, but enough to reassure me.

 

We came out on the other side of the freeway to the castle grounds in a beautiful park with an enormous Maple tree that we stopped to admire.  We had just missed the castle’s opening hours by about 15 minutes, so we snapped a couple of photos.  As usual, Jolly asked me to take some photos of him with his camera.  I asked if I could take one with my camera, too.  He posed for it, but he didn’t seem too thrilled that I wanted his picture. 

 

When we were done looking at the castle, he really wanted to find a different way to go back without having to walk along the river bed, but there really was no other way, so I pledged to protect him.  I don’t know how much faith he had in that, but he had no choice.  We had to go down another slippery slope, I in my sandals, and again, no assistance forthcoming from Jolly.  I began to think, maybe he’s really not the right guy for me, after all.  Or, is that an American thing, or is it just him? 

 

We crossed under the freeway, and he started to climb up an area that came much before where we had originally descended.  It looked kind of tough to me, but I followed along valiantly.  When we were nearly at the top, on a steep part of the slope, he turned back toward me, and I thought… finally, he’s going to help me out. But he just whispered. 

 

“Let’s go back down.  There’s a huge dog there, barking and baring its teeth at me.”

 

I just had to chuckle as I made my way back down.  By the time we got back to town, we were both pretty tired of walking, but it was still early, so we set out in search of ice cream, and ended up at one of the cafes that rings the town square.  We were there for hours, and here’s where the conversation gets interesting and somewhat muddled, because I drank three glasses of wine during the course of the evening, and he had about six and a half liters of beer.  So, my memory isn’t working so well, but sad to say, it was necessary to get drunk for us to eventually open up enough to talk about what was going on, and even then, it took awhile. 

 

So, as I said, I can’t remember the whole conversation like a script the way that I normally would (and you are all probably thanking your lucky stars… I don’t know why I have to write all these unnecessary details… I just do… it’s part of a process for me), so I’ll just give the highlights in the approximate order that I think things may have been said.

 

It was a night full of alternating conversation with long silences, and as Jolly consumed more beers he got more talkative and he talked more about personal things.  Somehow, we got on the subject of death again, and he told me about how his mother had died about six years earlier, and how it had been for him, holding her hand as her life slipped away.  And then, two years later, his girlfriend had broken up with him.  (I know, the math doesn’t add up… I’m just telling you what he said, or what I remember him saying).

 

Then, he started talking more about this ex-girlfriend.  If you remember the story from our trip to Cesky Krumlov, he had originally told me that she dumped him because she couldn’t make a commitment.  But now, a lot more details were coming out.  She was an idealistic, young girl (about 25) who got a lot of financial support from her grandmother, and just wanted to run off and be a free spirit, but she was pretty naïve and didn’t realize that he couldn’t just take off and do the same, because he actually had to earn a living.  He said that a lot of the things I said, and my lifestyle,  reminded him of her, but that I was a lot more intelligent about it. 

 

He went on to say that she had also started sleeping with some guy who was thirty years older than her, and was into “whole foods” which she was also into.  Jolly’s opinion was that this guy was a predator and just found one young girl after another to sleep with, and there was no real relationship between the two.  So, when she came back to him, he took her back.  And when she strayed a second time, he took her back again.  And after the third time, he broke it off.  He asked me,

 

“I had to break it off with her, didn’t I?”  as if he were still trying to convince himself that he’d done the right thing.   I told him, of course he did.  No one can keep going back and forth like that.  I also told him that it seemed to me that he hadn’t moved past it yet.  He said that he had moved past it, that he had dated a lot of other women since then.  That left me feeling even more confused.  If he’d dated a lot of women, then he obviously wasn’t shy with women.  So, had I misinterpreted the early signs?  Was he really repulsed by me? 

 

I told him a story about an intentional community in Portugal where the people had learned how to live in harmony with rats and snakes through a program of meditation.  He said that that was the kind of story his girlfriend would hear, and she would say, ‘we should go and live with the rats and the snakes, because people do it, so we can, too.’  We talked about that some more, and also about meditation, and he told me that so many things about me reminded him of her.  I wasn’t exactly taking that as a compliment the way he’d been talking about her.  I told him,

 

“I’m sorry I remind you of your old girlfriend.” 

 

He said, “No, no.  You remind me of the good things about her… the things that I loved about her.” 

 

I was taken aback.  This was good news, wasn’t it?  But why did I still feel such a distance?

 

The café we were sitting at closed, and we went to another one across the way.  We continued to sit and drink and had a lengthy discussion about Che Guevara during a downpour of rain which cooled things off sufficiently that I suggested moving inside (I was still in my skimpy clothes from the day trip). 

 

We sat down inside, and I started wanting to steer the conversation toward something more immediately interesting than Che Guevara.  He looked a little lost in thought, so I asked him,

 

“What are you thinking right this very minute?”

 

I honestly don’t remember his answer, but then he turned it around and asked me what I was thinking.  I thought, well, here’s your opportunity, kruu, but I just said,

 

“Oh, you don’t want to know what I’m thinking.”

 

There was a moment of silence, and then he said,

 

“I have a girlfriend…”

Hiding my surprise, I calmly took a sip of my mint tea and let him keep talking.

 

“…in North Carolina (he lives in Minnesota).  I don’t know where things are at with her, or where they’re going, but I’m pretty sure they’re not going anywhere…”

 

He said some more things… I may have said some things, too.  He reiterated that he was pretty sure things weren’t going anywhere with this girlfriend, because he had decided that she wasn’t the one for him.  I don’t remember exactly what this was in response to, but at one point, I looked him in the eye and asked,

“How do you feel?”

 

He looked at me, almost in disbelief, and asked,

 

“Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about?”

 

I nodded. 

 

“I can’t have sex with you.  I mean, it would change everything.”

 

I took a sip of my tea.  He went on,

 

“Have I thought about it?  Yeah, I have.  I’ve thought about it a lot.  You’re a beautiful woman, and you’re worldly and wise (ha! he must have been reading soulcast).  But it would change our friendship, and you would probably never want to see me again or have any contact with me.”

 

“Having sex does change things,” I agreed.  Then I asked him, “Would that even really happen, though.  Would you really keep in touch with me?”

 

“Yeah, of course.  But, I mean, most women want a commitment…”

 

I nodded, “Have you ever wanted to just experience someone in the moment?”

 

“Of course, I have.  But I really value our friendship, and it’s out of respect that I haven’t pursued that.  Would you want that?  To just have sex and then never see each other again?”

 

I told him, “I don’t want to have sex with you.  I would love to make love to you, but I don’t want to have sex with you.”

 

He talked a bit more as he continued his inner struggle.

 

I told him that I wanted him to know that my attraction for him wasn’t just physical. He started to come back with something, and I said,

 

“I’m not trying to change your mind.  I just wanted you to know that.”

 

“I know that,” he said.  I told him that I had never met anyone, male or female, who feels so much the same way about things that I do.

 

He laughed and said, “and you’re not likely to find another.”

 

He added, after I’d made it apparent that I wasn’t trying to talk him into it,

 

“Would you want to be with a guy who would cheat on his girlfriend?” 

 

I smiled and said,

 

“Well, I have a different philosophy on that than most people.”

 

“What’s your philosophy?”

 

“Oh, I just don’t believe in ownership… but I do respect that other people have commitments.”

 

He nodded his head.  We talked more about what we each wanted out of life.  I had to admit that I didn’t know what I wanted.  At that very moment, I wanted him (I didn’t say it), but in general, I’m, still pretty confused.  He said,

 

“Well, I know what I want. I want to have a family.”  There was that old sticking point again.  I just nodded.  He already knew my feelings on that issue.  He continued, still sounding as if he were trying to convince himself,

 

“I don’t even sleep with my girlfriend.”

 

I looked at him. 

 

“I mean, I have.  But not anymore, because I know that she’s not the one for me.  I’m in love with someone I haven’t even met yet.”

 

The conversation went on.  At one point, I told him that the things he was saying were just making me fall more deeply in love with him.  He said he knew it (sympathizing).  I wanted to ask him if he would just sleep with me that night… just sleep, but I never got around to it.  The conversation finally fizzled out.  It was after 1 in the morning, and we agreed that we had better take advantage of the four hours that we had left to get some sleep.

 

We went back to the hotel, and I crawled into bed while he took a shower.  I thought once again about asking him to just lie down with me, but the beds were so narrow, I thought it would be rather uncomfortable, and I was tired enough to just drift off to sleep.  So, I did.

 

The alarm went off too early.  I thought about asking him for an early goodbye hug, because things would be sure to be hectic once we got to Prague, and our farewell might be rushed, but I didn’t ask.  We got ready in a hurry, and made our way to the station.  Things were more relaxed between us than they had been the day before, but not nearly as intimate as they had been the previous night.  Some of the old reserve had returned. 

 

We got an empty train compartment, and I closed the curtains to discourage any intruders, so we got to ride alone for the first hour or so.  He slept almost the whole way, and I sat across from him and studied his face, trying to burn its image onto my corneas, sure that I’d never see him again.  I thought about how our parting moment would be.  Would I have the courage to ask him for that hug that I so needed?  As we approached the outskirts of Prague, I thought,

 

“This is it.  This is the moment when he walks out of my life forever.”  And my tears began to flow.  I looked away from him.  He was awake now, and even though he hadn’t looked at me much during the trip, I could sense that he was aware of what was going on.  I looked in my purse for a tissue and couldn’t find one. I wiped my tears away with my hand, but they kept falling.  I looked outside.  The comforting cool rain that had accompanied us on most of our trip had dissipated, and all that was left was the oppressive, bleak blueness of the sky with its tyrannical sun. 

 

I struggled to regain composure as the train pulled into the station.  I stood up and turned my back to him, getting my overnight bag off the shelf.  I dug around in it for the tissues I knew were in there, but couldn’t find them.  They were probably buried at the bottom.  I turned toward the door of the compartment, and he was waiting for me there. 

 

“Do you want to go to Muzeum together?” he asked (the metro stop where I change for the tram).  I nodded.  If he hadn’t seen my tears before, he certainly couldn’t help but notice my tear streaked face now.  I felt a little embarrassed.  On the way to the station he said,

 

“Thanks for showing me around, and taking me places…”

 

“You’re welcome.”  I didn’t do much to hide my distress, and we walked the rest of the way in silence. 

 

  I went to buy a ticket for the metro, and as I walked past the stamping machines absentmindedly, he reminded me,

 

“You better stamp that.”

 

I thanked him and went back to stamp it.

 

As we stood together waiting for the subway train, some more tears flowed.  I brushed them away impatiently.  He looked at me, and I said,

 

“Sorry.”

 

“What for?” he asked.

 

“For getting so emotional. 

 

He grinned sheepishly and said,  “You got pretty attached to me.”

 

“Yeah,” I said.  ‘You have no idea,’ I thought.

 

“Well, we can email each other,” he said, his voice softening for the first time.  I nodded.

 

“Do you still have my email address?” he asked.  I did.  “And I have yours,” he said.

 

We just had one stop to get to Muzeum where we would part ways.  He had to transfer over to the green line, and I was going out to the tram.  I don’t remember what he said in parting, but he reached out and gave me a hug.  It was brief, but I didn’t have to ask for it.  It was freely given.  As he stepped on the escalator going down to the green line, he smiled and said,

 

“Wish me luck.  I’m going home.”

 

“Good luck,” I said,  “Wish me luck.  I’m not.”

 

“That’s what you do,” he said smiling up at me as he descended into the depths of the transit system.  Our eyes locked for a moment, and then he was gone.