"Are you know about sex"

On my last day in Barcelona an Indian man who looked like a tourist came up to me and asked for directions. I gave him the directions and waited politely for a few seconds because it looked like he had another question.

"Are you alone?"

He was twice my age. I nodded, expecting a lecture about traveling alone. His next question took me completely by surprise.

"Are you know about sex?"

I ended the conversation and walked away. I didn't feel immediately threatened by him. Kenpo has given me some confidence in my ability to deal with out-of-shape middle-aged creepers, and the neighborhood was not completely deserted.

Not feeling immediately threatened is not the same as not feeling threatened at all. I'm twenty-one years old, healthy, and generally capable of taking care of myself. I was spending my last day in Barcelona walking in the Park de Montjuïc so I could see places from Carlos Ruiz Zafón's books. I was wearing converses, jeans, a t-shirt, and my black jacket. I had my blue backpack on my back, full of books, and the only thing on my mind was whether I wanted to stop for a croissant and a cup of coffee.

In other words, I was having a normal day. I had started to talk to this man because he needed help (directions) and I could help him. Somehow the conversation turned into him asking me about sex. Somehow, in his mind, it was okay to come up to me on the street and ask me, "Are you know about sex?"

I chose to travel alone in Europe rather than in India or Nepal because I knew that it would be safer for a young woman alone. That is, I let reasonable concerns about my safety stop me from traveling somewhere completely new. I wasn't happy about it when I made the choice, but I knew that it was a rational one to make.

Don't get me wrong: I've enjoyed Spain immensely. I just don't enjoy being here for the wrong reasons. It makes me angry and uncomfortable to have those reasons confirmed.

I also don't have a lot of things I can do about this. I could swear at him--escalating the situation without accomplishing anything. I could punch him--tempting, but also a terrible idea if he hasn't laid anything more than his eyes on me. Or I could walk away and spend the next two blocks looking over my shoulder to make sure that he isn't following me, because I am not sure what to do if he is. I could walk away and make sure that there are other people around, and know that it is the correct thing to do, and hate feeling like my best option is to rely on other people for my safety because if I rely on myself alone and I'm wrong the consequences could be so bad.

Nobody touched me. I wasn't harmed. But the utter lack of logic to what happened still makes me feel less safe. The only way to make it logical is to say that it was a result of being alone and talking to a stranger. The only way to make it so that I could have done something to avoid this is to say that it was my fault to be who I was, where I was, and that I should have changed one of those.

You could tell me that I shouldn't have told him I was alone. You could tell me I shouldn't have engaged in a conversation with him. You could tell me that I should not have been alone.

I don't believe any of that. The fault lies with him, not me. If the only way for me to avoid such conversations is for me to always travel in a group and to not go places that aren't full of tourists, I'll take the weird conversations. Better would be for a question like "Do you know about sex?" to be just as unthinkable for a stranger to ask me as it would be for me to ask it of him.