Indecent Exposure

I was out last night with Miss P., my awesomely awesome friend from Ecuador. Miss P. is one of those unassuming people who have had an amazing life: she’s lived throughout the United States, she worked for five years on the Galapagos Islands and has a Masters degree from Westminster University in London. On the Galapagos Islands, she met Kofi Anan, Hollywood A-listers and heads of state. The closest I’ve come to a brush with a celebrity is seeing someone who slightly resembled Paris Hilton when I was in New York last summer.

So, off we went to the movies last night to see The Taxi Thief; a Spanish film set in Barcelona. European movies fall into one of two categories: socialist propaganda or pornography and this was most definitely the former.

The indie cinema showing the movie was in my city’s party precinct, fabled for its food, and Miss P. and I went out to a Japanese restaurant for dinner. We took a table next to the wrought-iron railing dividing our sushi palace from the sidewalk and the (slightly drunk) revelers passing by. We were engaging in a conversation of intellect and sparkling wit over our raw seafood dinner when a shocked look on Miss P’s faced brought things to a screeching halt. In her gorgeous accent, she whispered, “Look behind you, I think that man is going to take out his pee-pee.” And sure enough, there was a man standing at the wrought iron railing fiddling down there. On our table was a soup spoon which I picked up and gave the guy a look which could only say, “If you continue with what you’re doing, I will remove your nob with this spoon.”

Our almost-flasher departed, but left behind a large suitcase; one of those suitcases on wheels…the kind you’d take on an international flight. We wondered if it contained some kind of explosive. Semtex, maybe? There was no ticking noise, so we weren’t THAT worried. A minute later, he came back to pick up his suitcase (how he could forget it, I don’t know) and wandered off, without going down there. And two minutes later, he was back, being dragged along by three burly cops and thrown into the back of a police cruiser. We didn’t see what he’d done, but we had a pretty good idea. And by the way the cruiser was rocking backwards and forwards, we think he was up to the same thing in the police car.