Jane, you silly bitch.

I got on the bus one morning and saw Jane. She was crying.

“What’s wrong, Jane?”

“I did something very stupid.”

Again?

“I decided to meet with someone for a drink last night. And that person is not someone I should be meeting for a drink.”

I was mildly intrigued. Jane’s misfortunes often entertained me.

“What is it with older men?” She asked me.

“Older men?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and let forth a cavalcade of emotion.

It was like I was inside her head. There was shit piled up everywhere, spilling onto the squishy, pink floor of her brain. There was no use trying to navigate through the mess.

“Naively, I assumed that it was an entirely platonic interest. My gut feeling should have told me. But ahead I went. And what did I really expect? I feel so embarrassed. I was slightly frightened. And I really do not like being scared. He actually sang to me. He kept touching me. Kissing my hands. Trying to dance with me. Every time that happened my mind froze with fear. I was beyond uncomfortable. I was paralysed with shock.”

She pushed her long, ratty hair away from her face and sighed.

“This man is 44 years old. And I am 21. He is more than double my age. What was I doing?”

“I don’t know, Jane. I wasn’t there.”

“He wanted to kiss me.” She continued, “He wanted to do a lot of things, I could tell. But I got so scared that I insisted upon leaving. I only went back to that share house to smoke his stash because I thought there would be more people around. He made it sound like that. He brought me a rose in the shop. That terrified me. Especially when the other customers looked at me. I could tell what they were thinking.”

You whore?

“He told me that when I touched him on the hand once, all of his hairs stood on end. The things he was saying about my dress and my skin and my body and Christ it makes me cringe. I can’t even open my eyes if I think about it, it is just too embarrassing.”

And yet her eyes were open, staring into my face for some kind of validation. She wanted me to say everything was all right, that she wasn’t a whore. But I didn’t say anything.

“I don’t know why I found it so intensely mortifying, but I did. I hate the attention. It makes me feel silly and self-conscious. There is a part of my brain that obviously doesn’t mind it. I think I am half crazy sometimes. I read in the paper that your brain does not mature until your mid twenties. What’s your honest advice?”

“Just tell him to fuck off.”

“I don’t want to hurt his feelings.”

Jane, you’re an idiot.

“Well, this is my stop,” I said cheerily. (I was actually still three blocks away from my destination.)

Jane looked at me forlornly.

“See you later,” she called as I stepped off the bus and into the rain, glad to be away from the girl who never knows how to say ‘no’.