Walk It Out

Oh good, let’s keep walking.

This story if from Dahlia, a 28-year-old actress in NYC, as told to Raz:

I was waiting for some friends at a restaurant in Little Italy when a guy approached me holding flowers. He told me he liked my peach coat. I was a little sketched out that this stranger was chatting me up, but I couldn’t really go anywhere since I was waiting for friends. So we talked. He told me his name was Greg, and he’d bought the flowers for his mom (Awww). Before we parted ways, he gave me his card—a post card advertising his business as a pop artist.

So of course, when I got home that night, I looked up his website. His stuff was really cool, and I think I’d actually seen some of it around NYC. Since he was kind of cute and hadn’t seemed especially aggressive, I decided to reach out. I emailed the address on his site to ask about his art.

We emailed back and forth for a while and he eventually invited me to his studio to see his work and then go for lunch. Little did I know that when he said “studio” he meant “studio apartment.”

Yup, there I was in a strange man’s home. Maybe he could sense how uncomfortable I was, so he asked almost immediately if I wanted to take a walk. I wasn’t exactly dressed for a walk—I was wearing very high heels—but I wanted to be a good sport, and I definitely didn’t want to stay in his apartment.

We started walking around the lower east side, then we walked uptown, then we walked west. I was more focused on the pain in my feet and not falling over than the conversation, but I do remember him mentioning his ex girlfriend: “She was kind of a bitch,” he said, “but a really great ride.” Inappropriate!

Then there was the time he mentioned Salsa dancing and decided to grab my hips mid-walk for a demonstration. Yeah, I almost fell over.

All in all, we walked for 2.5 hours. I was dying.

At the end he told me his 40th birthday party was that week, and invited me to come. 40?! I was only 24! I hadn’t realized how old he was. I politely declined his invitation and quickly limped home.