Leipzig and the man in the S&M pants.

By itchingmyknee

I like Leipzig. It’s sort of a student-cum-retirement town in east Germany. It took us two days to actually see anyone working. These happened to be office-workers in the building opposite our hostel. Male office workers. We caught them peeking at us while changing one morning.

That was sort of a theme during the holiday, this sort of voyeurism. We were a group of four girls. Laughing, foreign, pretty, we’re usually a target for unwanted male attention. But this time things were different; people just stared.
We’re all different personality types. One will enjoy a chat and a flirt, while another will spurn even the most innocent advances. We are a curious mix, but we were all baffled by this lack of communication.

We went to watch a blues band, headed by the wonderful Stan the Man. A Scottish emigrant living in Prague. Folks there stared too. Some looked on with interest. But that was it. They stared, and sat nearby, but not a word was spoken. No chat up lines, no drinks sent.

Things became clearer when we took a trip out to a swimming lake in the suburbs. We took a dip in the freezing water, and sunbathed for a while. A German man, dressed in jeans and a shirt, wandered down the beach, spied us and parked himself a small distance away. He then began to strip off to reveal the most revolting pair of fishnet pants your imagination could conjure. They were so foul that I surreptitiously took a photograph for all the non-believers back home. You could see everything, and it was nothing you’d ever want to see. The man was middle-aged, maybe a little older, and he spent the next half an hour sitting in the sand and watching us, occasionally narrowing the distance by passing our group so we were separated from his aged flesh by a mere couple of feet. The most unnerving of his actions was that he played with himself constantly. He seemed to be aware of his shortcoming in that area (pardon the pun) and was trying to bolster his confidence by walking around with a semi.

The whole episode held a sort of gross fascination. Was this man the missing link? Did his behaviour expose something of the German attitude to courting? You lay your cards on the table, place yourself in an advantageous position, but keep your distance. It is only after a succession of small approaches from each side that contact would be made. Unfortunately for fishnet man, he was quite revolting. But as lessons in cultural studies go, he was certainly a memorable teacher.