I have been silently annoyed about the following incident for long enough, so here it comes:

I attended a monthly “Stammtisch” that I had been going to since a year or two before Corona. It takes place over dinner in a local restaurant, and used to be enjoyable.

Then, a couple of months ago, a couple who had never been before arrived, and the man sat down next to me, and the wife directly opposite him. (It is probably a good thing that I did not catch their names because I would have been too tempted to name him here).

He very quickly started to talk to me and ask various (actually stupid) questions, and every time he did, he put his hand on my arm and left it there for what seemed like ages until I withdrew my arm. But he kept repeating the maneuvre. He also kept edging closer and closer to me. I tried to edge in the other direction, which had its limits since there was somebody seated on my other side. More often than not, his face was right “in my face”. It has to be added that he was very clearly not even remotely inebriated. His wife looked increasingly sour as the evening progressed, and whenever I tried to speak to her, she looked the other way and did not respond. After a while, it got so embarrassing that I left, rather abruptly, and have not been back since then.

We have all come across them, and yet, I still don’t know how to respond when people get too up-close-and-personal for my liking. Not least because I know that my body language is quite clear, so why do some people feel entitled to ignore it? And they even do it with an air indicating that women should be grateful for attention from a man – any kind of attention, apparently!

I keep thinking I should have done something to stop it, but what? (I did feel like planting my fork deep in the back of his hand …..). And why am I even feeling guilty in the first place? I am not the one who disrespected someone else’s personal space. That is what I keep having to tell myself.

Hello, this is me – who is pissed off because hugging left, right and centre seems to be back. I had hoped that it would stay away forever after Covid. And I no longer go to concerts or the theatre happily because the seats are too close for comfort. SO – calling all strangers – men AND women: don’t touch me, in fact, whenever possible, keep a distance of about 50 cm between us, and if we find ourselves at the same dinner table, leave your chair (and your face) just where you found it.

Don’t get me wrong – I am not against ALL physical contact – but it is reserved for the select few ;-).