Close Encounters With the Crypt Keeper

Earlier this month, in the sunny town of Auckland, the grand opening ceremonies for the Rugby World Cup commenced. It started out as a great day for Paddy, Erin and I as we wandered the ridiculously crowded streets and packed ourselves into the trains like sardines. Every bar was filled to capacity and then some, and all of downtown was alive with energy and excitement. The three of us wandered around for a while, found a bar called Cowboys and Outlaws but got rejected by the bouncer on the Cowboys half (they were over capacity) and returned about 30 minutes later and were able to sneak into the Outlaws side by crawling under a table with the help of some new found friends. This motley crew consisted of an Australian, some Kiwis, a Brit and a Samoan...all over 50 years old at least. We drank a couple steins and enjoyed watching the crowd for a couple hours, and watched the opening ceremonies and then the All Blacks dominate Tonga. Les, the bastard Brit, kept telling Erin she had shifty Yank eyes but her eyes were amazing. Her face, eh, but her eyes, beautiful. Backhanded compliment? And he would look at me and say "well you are lovely but she is amazing" about Erin. Whatever he was old. And I rightfully assumed that since he was married, the wrong side of 60 and infatuated with Erin's eyes I was completely in the clear. We had fun chatting with them and I even had to help Les text his wife back telling her he's "pissed as a coon". And then...tragedy struck. We were all leaning in to hear each other talk, and he turned and planted a kiss right on me. Not on my cheek, or forehead, or even nose or chin..all of those would have been so much better. Nope, I got full on kissed on the mouth by this man and his wrinkly old lips. I wanted to cry.  Florence, the Samoan, instantly became my surrogate mother and screamed at him for a good 5 minutes about how he is such a creep and she should punch him in the face and he needs to leave. God bless Florence. (She even gave us her phone number and address if we needed anything.) Les then proceeded to tell Paddy how it was clear how much he loves me as I shrank into his arms to try and get as much distance between us as possible, and told me to make him stop smoking. Then left. My otherwise perfect night to the start of our trip was ruined. It's no less traumatizing now but funny enough to tell the story. Old people are fucking dangerous.