Repeated shared presence converts strangers into approchable acquaintances over time
Evidence
The amount of time that will be required for any given pair of patrons to stan talking will probably vary, however, depending on sex, age, locale, and so forth. In the following rather sad story, a young man waited three months for the appropriate moment to approach a young woman: I had been working in Chicago for three months and during all that time it had been my practice to stop at the same coffee shop near my office each morning for about a half hour before going to work. On the very last day of my job, I was in the coffee shop as usual and was preparing to leave when a young man approached me. I had noticed him before but we had never spoken. He said that he had seen me every morning for the past three months and had not wanted to approach me earlier but felt that it was alright to do so now. He said he would very much like to get to know me and perhaps to go out on a date. He introduced himself and I replied by giving him my name in return. I told him that it was very nice of him to have approached me but that this was the very last day I would be on the job; that, in fact, I would be leaving Chicago tomorrow. The interesting part of all this is that I felt it was quite proper for him to have talked to me in this way, and had I been remaining in Chicago, I might even have agreed to go out with him. — Lyn H. Lofland, World of Strangers_ Order and Action in…, 1014
Categorization
- XREF: Directly relevant: the ‘appropriate moment’ hinged on the man leaving the city—anonymity moderated by co-presence and ending-status. Links to Cole’s flâneur logic where the observer’s very location-quality determines legibility of approach. — connects to: Environment and proximity can trigger sudden intimacy — Dolores DeLuce, Blow Jobs: A Guide to Making It in Show…, 232
- CANDY: A delightful, self-contained story: a man waits three months, approaches only on her last day, and his restraint is precisely what made the approach proper.