An Encounter

In the summer of 2017, I began a relationship with Caro. I had met Caro in an aerobics class. Our first interaction was at the back of that class, by a wall on which the aerobic mats were hung up and stored. For some reason, Caro and I were the last two members of the class to get mats that day, and even though we didn’t know each other, we immediately began laughing the moment we came into each other’s vicinity. A few months later, we saw each other at a train station in a borough of Hamburg called Altona and began talking. The rest is history. 

One thing I learned very quickly about Caro was that she didn’t like to be idle. She liked doing things. She liked adventure; she liked travel. She liked to be in motion. I also learned that she expected me to be quite active, too, that lying around the house when the sun was out really wasn’t acceptable.

As such, it should come as no surprise that on one Sunday afternoon a few months into our relationship, Caro and I headed out on a day trip. For a while it had been fun to do things locally, but it was time for a change of scenery, or at least Caro thought it was, and in all honesty, I had no problem with going somewhere new. The place we settled on for that afternoon was Finkenwerder.

Finkenwerder (pronounced fink-n-VAIR-duh) is a rural township on the south side of the Elbe River, about 10 miles west of downtown Hamburg. There is not much in Finkenwerder. There are fields, apple orchids, places open for cherry picking in the summer and then apple picking in the fall, cross-timbered farmhouses and fenced in areas where sheep graze. Finkenwerder’s one claim to fame is that it’s home to an Airbus production site. The plane-making site, which has its own runway and control tower, is massive and is almost a city unto itself. 

Caro and I said that our plan once we arrived in Finkenwerder that day would be to take things as they came. Because Finkenwerder is best reached by ferry, we thought we would just take the ferry and see what awaited us. At the time, I had just gotten back into basketball, and Caro had played the sport in the past, so we decided to take a basketball with us on our journey. The idea was that maybe if we found a court we would shoot around.

When we arrived we stuck to our “plan” and just began strolling. I was somewhat familiar with Finkenwerder because I had taught English at Airbus for several years, and Caro was very, very familiar with Hamburg in general, so no matter what we were not going to get lost.

After a few minutes of walking, we came to the main thoroughfare of the township, a street on which one can find two-story houses made of brick, charmingly outmoded looking shops and a few restaurants. There really isn’t much in Finkenwerder, especially on a Sunday, so we jumped at the first chance we had at eating. We stopped at a restaurant and ordered pizza and ate it out front, al fresco.

After the pizza, we decided to keep strolling around and maybe begin to look for a basketball court. It was around 6 p.m. and there was still plenty of light, but the sun had just begun to go down, and though everything appeared pleasantly golden, it wouldn’t be light out forever. I’m not sure what Caro and I talked about as we walked, but I must have told her something about all the adventures and misadventures I had had teaching English at Airbus.

Eventually, we found ourselves on a side street, away from the thoroughfare. The street led to an apartment complex and I thought there might be a basketball court somewhere among the apartment houses. After weaving our way through the buildings on several narrow paths and finding nothing, we arrived at the end of a dead-end road that was flanked by two long, one-story buildings that looked like barracks. These barrack-looking buildings were actually outdoor storage units for the residents in the apartment complex. It seemed as though Caro and I were completely out of luck. But just then, I noticed that up the road there was a park and in the park a basketball court.

We were happy about finding this court and the small victory it represented, which makes what happened next all the more ironic.

Across the street we saw a man talking to himself. Or talking to us. It was hard to tell. What was clear was the man was disturbed. We had to walk by him to get to the basketball court, but Caro froze.

“Come on,” she said, “Let’s walk this way.” She wanted us to walk a little bit out of our way to avoid the man.

But I thought, No. We’re going to go straight on. We were the only three people around and I thought it would be safer if Caro and I just went straight through the danger, as it were. I remember a little bit of adrenaline going through me, but also not being all that scared.

And so Caro and I marched right on. I put my arm around Caro’s waist and we walked, and the whole time I looked the man in the eye, and not only that, I looked at him with a look that said, “Yeah, what the fuck do you want?” Essentially, I was going “all in.” I definitely did not want a confrontation with this person, but figured it would probably be safer to pretend I was 0% scared. Secretly, there was also a small part of me that wanted to impress Caro. There was a part of me that wanted to show her that she could trust me and could feel protected in my company.

As Caro and I walked, the man held my gaze and kept talking, but he also kept walking. Once we passed him, I looked back over my shoulder to see what he was up to, if he was going to do something weird. I wasn’t scared to look back over my shoulder to show that I didn’t trust the man; I didn’t.

When we got to the basketball court and were finally “out of danger,” Caro and I talked for a little about how we both didn’t like being in dangerous situations. I think I told her a little bit about some of the strange situations that I had sometimes found myself in, growing up in New York and how I had handled myself in those situations. I remember thinking that Caro didn’t seem too impressed with my stories. She also didn’t seem that impressed with my “brave” behavior a few moments prior. Instead, she seemed more upset, or frustrated, that things such as what had just happened can happen and that people can make you feel the way the man had made us feel. But there wasn’t any mention of my standing tall or of my taking her around when there was “danger.”

Eventually, Caro and I began doing what we had come to the basketball court to do, shoot around, and once we did, the negative feelings began to lift. After a while, I asked Caro if she wanted to play one-on-one. When she agreed, I thought I would win handily. After all, I had been playing basketball regularly again for about three months by then. But Caro was in better shape than I was. She was also tall and could play defense very well, and she had these amazingly long, Vishnu-like arms that seemed made for swatting. But, really, and most crucially, she was fitter than I was. Where I was huffing and puffing and pouring sweat, she was absolutely fine, and in the end, she beat me.