The very first...

What exactly is one supposed to say, or do, when confronted with the person they gave their virginity to?

That night will forever be etched in my mind (and immortalized in text online), but I've never given much thought to just how to react if I were to ever see him again. So a couple days ago, takeaway in one hand and a shopping bag in the other, my response and response time to the as yet unanswered question was fairly subdued.

I crossed the street with my typical tunnel vision fully set in, causally unaware of the people surrounding me, trying to balance the load in my arms while flicking through songs on my iPod. I had barely made it as the light changed to amber, then red. I half-stopped in my tracks, deciding last minute to cross the street again, now that the light flicked green. And in that moment of decision, I noticed him standing mere feet from me, coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

It was the briefest of glances, but enough to get my blood pumping in overdrive. My body seems to react in a funny sort of way when presented with such 'surprises'; my heart will pound harder, my legs feel a tingle, my vision goes wonky and my head tries it's best to make a graceful movement away from the subject.

During the entire encounter, I never actually stopped walking. But in that brief second, that night replayed in the big screen of my mind, and a sly smile crept across my face.

It never occurred to me to stop, to say hello or acknowledge my recognition of him. If he even noticed me, he chose to react in the very same way. There was no magical unspoken moment between us, but an almost polite attempt to pretend the whole thing never even happened.

I'm not really sure if that's how everyone reacts to everyone else in this type of situation, but it seemed to fit. The guy himself and I never became anything more than bed buddies, though he was a sweet person and genuinely interesting. But seeing him once more didn't, for whatever reason, compel me to wrap him in a hug and buy him a cup of coffee.

Not to mention the fact that the chance meeting seemed to have come completely out of the blue, since to my understanding he, being a visiting American student, shouldn't have even been in the country anymore...

Ah well. It was what it was. A moment from the past shoved past the tunnel vision into the present. And it made me smile, and it made me feel good about who I am and where I've come from.

And that's something I'll always remember.