“May I help you?” I asked. He said something to me in a language I did not under

“May I help you?” I asked. He said something to me in a language I did not understand. I regarded him, puzzled. “May I help you?” I asked. “This is incredibly fortunate,” he said, softly. “Sir?” I asked. “You bear a striking resemblance to someone else,” he said. “It is remarkable.” I did not speak. I had thought he might have begun by asking if he did not know me from somewhere. That stratagem, the pretext of a possible earlier acquaintance, hackneyed and familiar though it might be, still affords a societally acceptable approach to a female. If she is unreceptive, he may, of course, courteously withdraw. It was merely a case of mistaken identity. “It was almost as though it was she,” he said. I did not encourage him. I did not, for example, ask who this other person might be. “I do not think I know you,” I said. “No,” he smiled. “I would not think that you would.” “I am also sure that I am not this other person,” I said. “No,” he said. “I can see now, clearly, that you are not. Too, I can sense that you lack her incisive intellect, her ferocity, her hardness, her cruelty.” “I am busy,” I said. “No,” he said, his eyes suddenly hard. “You are not.” I shrugged, as though irritated. But I was frightened, and I think he knew it. I was then terribly conscious of his maleness and power. He was not the sort of man to whom a woman might speak in such a manner. He was rather the sort of man whom a woman must obey. I wonder if you can understand that. It was very strange. I had never met a man of this sort before. Surely I had met many boys, and men, but this was the first time I had ever been so acutely aware of the difference, this special sort of difference, between women and men, or between women and certain sorts of men, and, in particular my difference, in this special way, from men, or, perhaps better, from this sort of man. He was very different from the men with whom I was familiar. He looked down upon me, and I felt very female before him. Perhaps that was what was so strange, my sudden disturbing sense of the radical difference between us, my sudden, alarming understanding of the momentous physical, psychological, and emotional dichotomy dividing us, dividing the sexes.