Random guy at the bar has a lot of questions about my netbook. How much RAM? What kind of processor? Why Ubuntu? Do I work in software? What am I going to do now that netbooks are dead? He thinks I look like Bill Pullman. He asks leading questions of the woman to his left, trying to get her to back this up, and eventually sort of cajoles her into agreeing with him. It’s clear she’s just trying to be polite.

I pitch some questions back at him, friendly-like, the usual getting-to-know-you thing; it’s hardly a new game, after all. “No no”, he laughs, as though this next bit is funny, “this conversation is a one-way street.” He’s serious about it, too: he won’t even tell me his name. How does he know all the right questions to ask about my computer? Does he work in the industry, too? Where’s he from? He won’t say – he offers nothing. He just keeps on smiling and asking questions.

It’s suddenly creepy. What? Really? How far off the wall do you have to be to say something like “this conversation is a one-way street” and actually mean it? How do you get to be late-forties or early-fifties or however old he is and not understand how making conversation works? Really, random dude, you can just ask whatever you want, and tell me nothing, and that’s okay with you?

I grinned even wider, dawdled around for a few more minutes, fed him a few of what Huck Finn might have called “stretchers”, settled my tab, and left. I don’t know what his game was but I don’t want to play it.