Playing Your Part Ch. 01

When she looked up from her book, there he was. Sitting directly in front of her. Her look was one of puzzlement and confusion. She had no experience with strangers brazenly approaching her in public like this.

He smiled, said hello, and asked her name. She told him her name was Helene almost as a reflex while she tried to size him up. She showed her nervousness about his appearing out of nowhere. Her guard was up but he knew she was too polite to simply tell him to get lost. He had the initiative and he meant to use it.

"You know, I like to people watch." he said.

"I am sometimes fascinated by the people I see. I must confess that I have watched you in here on a few occasions and became quite interested in you. That is why I wanted to meet you. Have you ever noticed that you can really see a great deal about a person's character just by observing them in a public setting?"

Helene was trying to process what was happening here and what to do. She was asked a direct question. Part of her thought this required an answer but the whole event was foreign enough to make her want to start with some questions of her own - to back things up a little. Who was this guy and why was he bothering her? Also, there was something about the look on this guy's face. He was so calm and relaxed. His manner was so matter of fact. It was as if he was merely continuing an ongoing conversation instead of starting this peculiar cold call.

"I suppose everyone makes assumptions about people they see." she said.

Before Helene could start asking any of the questions piling up in her head, he continued leading the conversation.

"I want to tell you a little bit about myself and explain why I am so interested in you if you will simply listen for a few minutes. I promise it will be brief and all I ask is you listen without interruption."

He scarcely waited for a response before he continued.

"First of all, my main interest in people watching is usually occupational. I am a writer by trade and I am always trying to hone my skills in sizing people up and understanding how they will respond to various situations. I work very hard to get an insight into their interests, their motivations, and their desires."

She felt like this was a new kind of come-on. It seemed like an elaborate sales pitch to her but she was listening to it nonetheless. She was curious to know how this ploy would develop.

"I had been working on something in particular for a new story." he continued.

"I was trying to write a new character in a story but I had been seriously stuck. The problem was that I didn't feel like I could really penetrate the emotional range and response of the character in the way I normally require. While I was struggling with this problem, it just so happened that I began to notice you and start watching you. You became important to my story."

He could tell the delivery of this line created the intended air of anticipation - albeit mixed with mild anxiety. He was committed now and there was no turning back.

"I will explain in a very general and simplified sense what the connection is. The character I am interested in is a woman who is in a fundamental sense of good character. She is kind, sensitive, responsible, thoughtful , genuine - in a way she represents to me many of the idealized feminine character traits that are so often lacking in men. That is to say, she is more more thoughtful, more sensitive than most."

He paused briefly and observed her face to gauge her reaction.

"She is someone who has an appreciation for the arts, is an avid reader, and craves new experiences and intellectual stimulus. Lastly, she is a bit sheltered in her experience. She has always been a good girl and a bit cautious by nature. Because of this - for the purposes of my story - she has a certain void in her life that she is perhaps only dimly aware of. She doesn't realize that there are parts of her nature that have long been held in reserve. A nature that is primitive and powerful that would surprise her by virtue of its intensity and the reckless abandon it might promote."

"In my story, this woman meets a man who understands this part of her character, and who views the role of revealing these latent desires as the most erotic and exciting thing that can occur between a man and a woman. It is a story about desire more than anything."

"As I mentioned I have been watching you. Almost everyday you come in here and I have been carefully studying you. The more I studied you, the more I wrote with you in mind. The more I wrote with you in mind, the more convinced I became that you are just like the character I have created. I think I believe this so strongly because watching you helped so much to make real progress on my story. I initially thought about just giving you the story out of the blue to read with no real explanation and walk away. I imagined what would happen if you recognized yourself in the main character. And so it began. But my imagination didn't stop there. I became fascinated and obsessed by the idea of living out the fiction I created in reality - to have my story become non-fiction you might say. What I propose is that you and I should become these characters in real life for a time."

Her eyes became very round and wide at this point and he wondered for just an instant if she might make a dash for the door, but she continued to sit and take it all in with her full attention. and As he began to reveal the details during this encounter, she could feel her heart start to beat a little bit faster and the blood start to rise. She could feel herself beginning to blush at these words and was trying to compose herself enough to think straight.

At first, she was trying to decide whether he was off his medication at the moment or just being put up to this as some kind of stunt. She did not feel afraid of him though. He was well spoken and concise . He seemed to be enjoying delivering this little speech and showed a certain confidence. At times he seemed amused as if he couldn't help see some humor in this absurd little proposal he was making.

Above all, he struck her as very sincere somehow. This was no put-on. She believed that she really was being offered a role to play whatever it might be. Her curiosity for the moment was eclipsing a host of other thoughts. She had a million questions now. But again, he gave her no time to take some initiative in this unusual conversation as he pressed on.

"Here is what you need to know if you choose to play along with your role to the end. First, it will last 6 weeks weeks. It will require thirty minutes one day each week, and it will require at the end of the sixth week on a Friday night a total of four hours. You will be only required to be yourself, and respond to events however you see fit. You will be presented with situations and choices where you may simply choose to play along. The characters in my story are concerned with risk and control - the having and the surrendering. That is important to keep in mind when you make your decision."

"I am putting in front of you a card with my email address on it. I don't expect an answer right now, and I am no hurry to receive it. Just think about it for as long as you need. If and when you are ready, just simply send me a message saying you are ready to start and I will direct everything after that. You will get instructions which you will either follow each day or not. If you choose not to follow at any point, then the book is closed and our meetings are at an end. I will not contact you after that. Think what you will about all of this but I am certain of one thing; I am offering to you something no one has ever offered you before. I look forward to playing with you. I know you will."

He began to rise from his chair and gave her a fixed look as he slowly and gently grabbed her by the hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it. After that he abruptly got up, and walked away without looking back. As suddenly as he appeared, he was gone.

As she watched him go, Helene began to smirk a little. She was already beginning to dismiss the whole encounter as something ridiculous. It was of course flattering in a way that someone would go to so much trouble to entice her into some future meetings, and with such an imaginative presentation. But things like this do not happen to normal people and normal people certainly do not entertain such strange proposals.

She looked down at the card. The side facing her was blank. She turned the card over and saw only a generic email address. No name was on the card.

"What the fuck?" she thought.

"He never even told me what his name was. Why would he not even mention that detail."

It just reinforced how peculiar the exchange really was.

She held the card lightly between her thumb and forefinger as if she were at any moment to release it and let it drop out of her sight and mind. But she hesitated. There was the undeniable thorn of curiosity that had pricked her. Could she take this business seriously? Of course not. But, it would be amusing to know what this man had in mind. She was not ready to close the door on knowing more about what was being offered.

Without really thinking through the reasons, she simply pocketed the card and left the cafe. She had to return to work and had no time for this silliness.

Later that evening as she walked back to her home, Helene was alone with her thoughts in the quiet streets under the dim street lights. She began to re-live the encounter. She was playing the brief exchange over in an endless loop trying to capture all the details.

She thought about how the man looked, the way he spoke, and the peculiar sensation and effect it had on her at the time. It seemed so foreign - so surreal. Almost like something she would have read in a book. She had to hand it to this guy. The writer who wants you to help live out a fiction, and even with the first encounter you already feel like you are within the pages.

Helene had tried to put it out of her mind that night as she got ready for bed but little flashes of the scene kept coming back to her and she kept asking herself a myriad of questions which she could not untangle.

"Why did he pick me, really?" she wondered.

Did he pick her because she looked gullible? Was this just a new style of pick-up strategy? Just another angle yet to be revealed by the host of women's magazines who were always the vanguard on dating strategies, and what men were thinking? Perhaps she ought to write one of those magazines and get the word out.

She could easily imagine the article caption; "Watch out for the latest come-on ladies - its a stunner."

"What was he trying to sell her on anyway?" she wondered.

The idea was that she had needs - secret hidden desires. Wasn't that the angle? Who was he to make such claims about knowing anything. Wasn't that remarkable arrogance? Imagine telling a stranger you know what they need better than they know themselves. She really couldn't imagine.

That night, she read her book a little before falling asleep as she always did but her focus was diffuse. She kept reading the same lines without retaining the content. When she finally fell asleep, she had made no headway on the plot.

When Helene woke up, she sat up and stayed motionless for a time. She was trying to hold on to something that was usually so elusive to her. She was thinking about the dream she had just been having. The images had been so vivid that she was keen to sketch them on her waking mind.

It was the type of dream where you wake up fully awake, and are relieved to find out you were in fact only dreaming. She had been on some remote foreign beach she had never seen, with a large group of people having a party under a dazzling canopy of millions of luminous stars. There was a vast sandy beach where giant tumultuous waves crashed down with ferocious energy upon the shore and raced back out to sea before gathering their energies for the next assault. Torches were set up all around to illuminate the area.

Some strange almost tribal Caribbean festival was taking place with music, lots of drums and dancing, and a tangible air of joy and celebration. The focus of the celebration was centered around a large fire pit. People within the crowd were demonstrating that they could walk across a bed of coals. She remembered watching with fascination. There was a tremendous excitement in the crowd as everyone struggled to get a good view of the spectacle. They roared and howled their approval as one by one, men and women, young and old, stepped up and performed the act.

She was sure that she could smell the burning of flesh as they strolled casually along twenty feet or so of glowing red walkway. She cringed and squirmed with each step wondering what madness had taken them over. Yet each one would step out with conviction and end with a smile of revelation. It was as if they knew what no one else knew - a secret of the ritual thus revealed.

One man who finished this feat caught her gaze and held it as she stared in bewilderment. He walked back to where she was standing. As he approached she asked him if she could see how burned his feet were.

He came up beside her with his knowing smile and put his arm around her shoulders with an air of affection and kindness.

He said, "Lovely lady, why don't you take a little stroll for yourself on the coals. It is the only way to know what you need to know."

She was terrified. For a moment she was afraid he was going to push her onto the path, and she violently jerked away from him. He seemed not the least surprised or upset.

He turned back to the bed of coals with a sweeping gesture and said "The coals are everywhere." She felt like she had been suddenly jolted with electricity and was afraid to look down at her feet. She was forcing herself to look down with a powerful feeling of dread.

And then she woke up.