Talk to strangers in Adventures in paradise

I went for a walk yesterday to my usual spot on my day off, in Newstead by the river. It seems to have become a routine the last few years. I’ll stop in at the shops, get a snack and go sit and watch the river. It’s nice.

I was walking back home when I stopped at the lights waiting to cross, and a tradie said to me, “I noticed you before. You look so chilled out!” I was like, “Thanks man.”
He then added, “I’m stressed as fuck!”
Then the lights changed and he ran across ahead of me.

I guess I was in a good mood. I’d had great sex with a chilled Italian guy the night before, my hair’s pretty long atm so I’ve been using my sunnies to hold back the fringe, I was just in shorts and a singlet, it was a lovely sunny day. I must’ve just looked relaxed. When I had a shower that night, I couldn’t figure out why the middle of my chest was all red. Then I remembered that I’d works singlet and the sun must’ve been directly above me. If I didn’t have pecs happening, that wouldn’t have happened!
Plus it was still my weekend. Pretty much everyone else is on hump-day when I’m on the final day of my weekend. I just didn’t expect a tradie to have taken notice of me earlier in the day and to mention something when we crossed paths again.

I was meant to write about this earlier, but when I was coming back from the Commonwealth Games on the train, there was this young guy walking down each train carriage chatting to every single person. As in, he was trying to strike up a conversation with everyone. He would sit near them or in spare seats right behind with a smile on his face and just say, “G’day! How’s your day?”

Most people assumed the position that he was a crazy person and ignored him. One Asian guy even threw his hands up in the air as though someone was trying to sell him something, “No no!”
It didn’t deter this guy though. He’d just be like, “No? Ok have a good one,” and would walk further up the carriage to someone else.

He got to where I was and I said a polite “hello” back to him, despite being wary (It’s the Gold Coast line after all) but the guys in front of me were quite talkative and probably had a 10-min conversation with the guy.

I just thought to myself, “Wow, this guy’s got confidence!”
It reminded me of when I came back from a week-long Christian youth camp and felt like I was invincible. It’s amazing what a cult can do to people! 😋
In hindsight, I should have asked him where he got his confidence from, but I guess my mood of just wanting to get home after a day in the sun made him think I was one of the majority of people who wanted the ‘crazy guy’ to leave them alone.

In reality, it should be totally normal to just strike up a conversation with strangers, but society has shaped people I think, especially me. As soon as he sat near me, my immediate thought was, “Oh here we go.. ”
How bad is that? Standoffish from the get-go. I guess past experiences of people chatting to me on the train haven’t gone down so well (ice-addicts etc) and so I didn’t expect any different. But he was just in a good mood like I was yesterday. Except he had balls to talk to strangers. I’ve never had that.
…But I can invite over a complete stranger off an app and stick my dick in him.
Something’s strange here.

Last updated April 19, 2018