Small town?

Tonight I was biking from Brookline, returning home from dinner with friends. As I cruised through a well-lit business district, a couple walking towards me caught my attention. I looked just solidly enough to not be staring....but sure enough:

The man was someone I dated for a time in the not-too-distant past. A time that ended in spectacular awkwardness.

Oh, the intrusion into my personal space! How dare he walk down the street in this town. I should be grateful it was dark and I was speeding by, unfashionable in bike helmet, and didn't have to a) think of a social nicety I didn't mean or b) potentially deal with him pretending not to notice me if I had been on foot and, ergo, visible crossing his path.

I'm still taken aback in Boston to run into men I once knew in the Biblical sense. Granted, several I am now friends with, and am long past the point of recalling intimacies when we see each other. (We even try to see each other.) But part of the joy of not living in a small town is that you live in a town big enough to avoid seeing people you don't want to see. Boston, Brookline and Cambridge combined have about 13,000 different streets. Is it too much to ask that certain people don't walk down one of those streets when I'm doing the same?

Seeing these men can still bring pain....usually because, sometimes years later, I have to whack my head at the memory of being seduced with an unfortunate result. To wit: One night, while boarding the Green Line at Park Street, I noticed the guitar and voice of a subway musician.... like Damien Rice doing acoustic "Cannonball".... and was drawn to see who was creating this trance-like beauty. Sure enough. It was one of my one-night-date men from several years before. Whom, in the midst of making out, turned on a porn video to instruct me, quite seriously, on how to better do what I was trying to do. A year later he is there on the T, sounding like Damien Rice, attracting throngs of female admirers.

D'oh!

The man I saw tonight, I knew slightly better and cared quite a lot more. He was in animated conversation with his female companion. My first thought was that he once shared my bed; now he walks down the street, and will walk down many streets in the future, like we never knew each other. Generally, this makes me glad. We did not end well.

Yet, for those seconds....

Damn small town.