Stranger in Moscow

My eyes were watching

Adrian

I never really seemed to connect with women on a romantic​ level the way other men did. I would just watch them with their girlfriends, talking in low voices and it all looked so alien. I guess it had something to do with the way I grew up. My parents were rich in the wealthy sense of the word. They also hated each other. I never once saw them being openly affectionate unless it was at a party, just to show people that their marriage was a success. They weren't bad people, but then again no one's bad really. People are just products of their experiences, they're made into who they are by the way life treats them.

I became the kind of man everybody expected me to be. With a family drowning in money, I was never expected to work. Instead I became a ​playboy​, a philanthropist, living off the money my parents poured into my bank account. I never really felt satisfied though. I always thought there should be something more to life than just passively living. Sure, I was involved in charity but that was all on paper. I said the right things and signed the right papers and everyone thought I was committed to ending world poverty. It wasn't about me though. It was about the money. I didn't feel like I was apart of it at all.

All I did was eat at fancy restaurants, go to nightclubs and get spotted with celebrities teetering on the edge of obscurity. I had sex but I never had a girlfriend. Nobody got to me in that way. Sure they could be funny, smart, sweet, generous, but there was no real connection. I always felt like I was watching myself in a movie, just completely detached from whichever girl I might be talking to. I heard people talk about love at weddings and anniversary parties and it sounded like, for want of a better word, bullshit.

Love wasn't real. I didn't know what love was. I guessed it was some pretentious way of people making out that they had a connection better than everybody else's. It was almost like they were competing. I knew the truth though; love didn't exist. Sure, you could like someone a great deal but love was nothing more than really liking someone. I didn't buy the whole 'falling in love' concept either. How could you fall in love with a stranger in a bar? Either you were a female and drunk, or male and wanting to get laid. That was it. Nothing else. ​But sadly enough, that was where everything changed.​

My outlook on life was a constant worry to my mother. I don't know why she cared so much. Maybe she wanted me to find someone special to spend the rest of my life with, so that my eventual marriage wouldn't be as much of a sham as hers had been. Or maybe, and more feasibly, she couldn't wait for an excuse to have a huge wedding. She loved organizing parties, sending out invites, excluding friends who'd minutely offended her and making a huge deal out of nothing.

Every time she managed to get hold of me, she'd make me go somewhere with her, somewhere she could meet all her friends who had daughters around the same age as me. It was a joke. I was never, ever, going to hook up with any of those kinds of girls. They were so fake, almost as fake as me. Designer clothes, designer jewelry, designer handbags, designer shoes... it went on and on and I couldn't bear it. The thought of spending my life with someone so pretentious made me want to laugh out loud. I endured it for my mother's sake, not because I felt any real affection towards her, but more because I felt like I should. She was the one who'd brought me into the goddamn world and I felt obligated to be the kind of son she wanted.

And so I played the part. I did all those things I saw doting sons doing, pulling out her chair for her, kissing her on her cheek, telling her about my life. I went to the opera with her, long walks in the park, going to art galleries, to Michelin-starred restaurants, even to the goddamn ballet. Ballet. Over-priced tickets, for over-rehearsed performances, surrounded by over-dressed people. I used to dread going to the ballet.

Ballet was a staple favorite of my mother's. I'd probably accompanied her to over a hundred performances throughout my life. I liked the music, and sometimes the dancing impressed me, but usually all I saw was a bunch of men in tights which I found pretty pathetic.

Things changed, one Saturday night. It was November, and we went to see The Nutcracker. I'd seen the show over ten times, and each production had been tediously similar. I didn't have high hopes. It started off the same as always; nothing new, nothing excitingly different. The first Act was unimpressive. Intermission. Cigar smoke. Lots of talking. A girl my mother wanted me to meet. Needless to say, she was as boring as the ballet. And finally, Act II which began with the Sugar Plum Fairy's solo dance. In a way, I knew it was going to be special even before it really begun; that ethereal, glockenspiel-like celestial composition, the hushed stillness of the audience, everyone's attention focused on the sole figure on stage.

The ballerina was okay but something else had caught my attention. I don't know what it was about her, but for once I found myself absorbed. Everything about her embodied joy and seasonal spirit. I'd never been so immersed on a woman before.

I didn't realize I'd been holding my breath until she was standing with the crowd clapping at the performance. The applause was riotous but I barely heard it. I didn't expect that anything could make me feel so much emotion. I sat quite still, my heart pounding even though I haven't moved a muscle.

"Who is that?" I whispered to myself but my mother had already heard me.

"Alejandra O'Neal. She was the understudy. Clara Sassoon was supposed to be the Sugar Plum but she was injured during rehearsals."

"Not her, her." I mumbled pointing at her as she continued to watch this damn play. Following my hand, a smirk graced upon my mother's face as her eyes landed on this gorgeous woman who's sight I couldn't get away from.

"Oh that's Drew Smith, she's down here as an intern writing a paper about New York. You know Unconventional Magazine." She mumbled. For the first time in my life, I appreciated her obsession with ballet.