by DANI CUGINI
You start calibrating. Quickly.
It’s 1am. The airport is pretty much deserted except for cleaning staff, and your plane’s not until 7am, but accommodation is expensive in Norway. The surreal, clinical calm of the airport is somehow pleasant, and you’ve been listening to music and working on an article.
Music. If you keep the headphones in, will he go away? He sits down; you take them out. Politeness. Alertness. Oslo: safe country, but city has bad reputation at night.
He’s about 35, give or take a few years. Does it matter? It matters. You don’t feel panicked; the cleaning staff circle the airport in a complex rotation, and one is currently visible across the large, bare, modern expanse of foyer. He’d hear you. The acoustics are good, particularly with the place silent. English-speaking is pretty much a given in Norway – he’d understand you, too. Probably.
The man says hello; you say hello back. He’s smiling. He was smiling when he spoke to you earlier, as well – an hour ago, when you were pacing around (regular walks prevent DVT: your mother is always anxious on aeroplanes). He asked you where you were going in slightly broken English, smiling. You thought he was airport staff or had noticed your circuitous route, and politely informed him that it was alright, you knew where you were going. You think he stayed still and stared after you for a little while.
The smile is a friendly smile; assertively friendly. You switch your focus to spatial awareness – you’re tucked into a corner of the main foyer, on a row of three chairs next to the escalator; you’re on the end, he’s taken the middle. Slightly hidden from view. Pang of concern, but it’s muted. Did he look through the whole airport for you? There’s about five more people upstairs, two working on laptops near the café, a man turning hot dogs 100m away. They’d hear you.
He asks you about your plane, friendly tone, his finger touching yours on the armrest. You consider lying and saying it’s going out in an hour, but you both know there’s no more planes for at least five hours. You give a noncommittal answer and ask where he’s headed.
“You’re going to be in the airport overnight? Uncomfortable!” The smile has never left his face; it’s getting a little unnerving, but not enough to risk being impolite. “I have a hotel room if you need a place to sleep.”
Confusion. You say, in a mild tone (purposefully mild, flippant) that you’re okay in the airport, that you like it here. He laughs and doesn’t leave.
A few moments of silence. He’s looking very pointedly at you, and he’s still smiling. He looks a little older close up. Your focus switches to how you look; you’ve not slept properly in two days, dark circles, mussed hair, assortment of warm clothing, bright shell-blue backpack. You look young. You are young. You look like a tourist. You look like you’re travelling alone.
“Come on,” he prompts. “It’ll be much more comfortable. You can come sleep with me.” Yes, he uses the words: it’s entirely unambiguous, though your brain scrabbles for possible cultural gaps, shifts in tone, something that says something other than ‘come with me to my hotel room and have sex with me.’
You take a swig of the cherry Pepsi Max and, still ever-polite, assure him that you’re fine in the airport. You never say that you don’t want to go back with him, you say that you’re happy in the airport. Careful language. His smile is intrusive now.
He’s not touched you, not really, though his hand has shifted down and his fingers are on the hemline of your coat.
After a few more moments of silence, he gets up, winks at you, blows you a kiss, and walks through the front doors of the airport.
You scan the foyer again. One person is just visible – their arm peeking out behind a bollard.
* * *
The evaluation is calm – it feels like you’ve watched a peculiar, stuttering film in general studies class, and now you’re filling in the groaned-about question sheet.
Why do you think he came up to you?
‘He probably thought you were a prostitute,’ a friend’s mother says, unwrapping a chocolate, a week after you get home.
You wonder about what prostitutes are supposed to look like; you wonder if it would have mattered what you looked like.
Did he do anything wrong?
You think through the forgiving side: there’s no laws against having sexual interest in someone. He didn’t touch you, he didn’t threaten you, he left (eventually) after you refused. If he actually did think you were a prostitute -
but the way he commandeered your space; moved your arm out of the way; pushed the conversation so quickly out of plodding small talk and into empty beds –
you think worriedly about a couple of previous incidents with older men, of the disturbing undercurrents of fetishisation that come with looking like you do; a little baby-faced, a little sweet. The regular at work who said he’d like to see you in that ‘pretty doll dress’ again, from when you came in straight from a previous engagement. The boy on Tinder who told you you looked twelve, but then persisted in starting a sexualised conversation.
You find the simile that you were looking for: the smile on his face – it was like a child finding a new toy.
Did you do anything wrong?
Remember the personal attack alarm: but you weren’t attacked. Its screaming peal feels, somehow, like an embarrassment. Like hysteria.
Actually get accommodation: but the kroner exchange rate is abysmal and it’s not really in your means. Plus, it could have happened at any point during your wanderings: the sculpture park at sunset, the iced-over streets before the opera house. Maybe you should have just kept moving. Though, you think to yourself, you’d really needed some rest.
Would you do anything differently?
Every situation has potential threat attached to it, and I like leaving my house, so there’s only so much I can do. Basic safety precautions. Next time, sit closer to the girl on her laptop. Or, more usefully, the man at the reception desk.
Are those answers enough? They don’t feel like enough; but class is ending, and I have places to be.