I am waiting for you

He had shyly taken his place on the bench facing me and a few meters away. He had just left the inn with his glass of red wine in his hand. He seemed to be fleeing the noise and internal din of the inn.  

The antique metal and wood bench seemed ill-proportioned as he sat on the end of it.
His posture suggested that he was waiting for something or rather someone, or maybe even both. His gestures, his movements, his gaze spoke volumes about the spirit with which he had come to isolate himself there as if to prepare or adapt to a future situation. His whole appearance, his gestures as he sipped from his glass of red wine suggested that a good number of hesitations, questions, scenarios were jostling in his mind. He alternately scanned the alley that led to this inn and the screen of his smartphone as if a virtual connection existed between this narrow alley and the information he could expect from its screen.

The way he held his balloon of red, the elegance with which he brought it to his mouth, the small regular sips he savored suggested that wine was for him a drink whose qualities he appreciated with discernment. The moment was undoubtedly ideal and opportune to allow him to put his questions and his shyness in phase, as if he were preparing for an event the scope of which he would not control.  

The inn was located in the heart of the village and was the only meeting place for regulars of this locality. He seemed to be both familiar with the place and sufficiently detached not to consider him a regular. He seemed to know everyone but he kept a distance in his remarks which gave him a somewhat marginal and respectable posture.  

He briefly consulted the alley and the screen of his phone before entering the inn with his empty glass of wine, only to emerge a few minutes later without a single drink. Closing the door of the inn he declared to one of his acquaintances that it would be better to wait for him on the outside bench and that his arrival was imminent. This brief information clearly indicated that his posture was linked to a meeting and that the expected person was undoubtedly a woman.  

Was this meeting a “date”? How would you have understood it through this story? leave me your comment below.  

Sitting a few meters from him, I felt a certain empathy with this stranger who seemed to be asking me his questions. No doubt I was embroidering a story that I had assigned to him solely through the observation of his posture. The abandonment of his glass of wine, the neutrality that he wanted to appear seemed to me to establish the imagined scenario of a first date.  

Throughout the observation that I was making and the sketch that I was drawing up of this stranger, I assigned to him a story whose veracity I was totally unaware of and which I took pleasure in attributing to him over the course of my sketches. pencils. It was around 6:40 p.m. and this end of summer carried a taste of romance that imposed itself.  

The balloon of red wine which had taken its place in his hands at the beginning of the evening must undoubtedly have presented a subject of possible misinterpretation in his eyes and he had therefore preferred to eliminate the possibility of any wandering thoughts on this subject. The serenity of the place and this situation which I had the leisure to observe for some time and from a neighboring table required me to stay to capture its evolution.  

The first completed sketch gave me an irresistible desire to create a painting of this subject and I would like to share it with you. I invite you to discover it here.