Before I talk about the nipple incident I need to discuss the way I walk. I walk very quickly, with long, even strides. I tend to look at the people I'm passing. Sometimes I stare at them in a very disconcerting way. If I'm not looking at people's faces I look straight ahead.
When I am on a collision course with somebody, I change direction. I telegraph the direction change from a long way off by reorienting my entire body, rather than just my feet. After making eye contact with people, I look towards the ground, so as not to be misconstrued as aggressive. The whole eye contact and reorientation thing gets stressful, because I never end up walking in a straight line, but is on the whole rather pleasant, because this is typically how other people behave.
Well, geeks beware, because apparently this kind of footpath politeness marks you as someone of low social status. I was reading one of those horrible pop-evo-psych blogs on the nature of social status. I'd like to summarise the argument of the blog post so you don't have to read it, but it was quite scattergun and not very coherent, so I am having trouble. On the other hand, the post is quite scattergun and not very coherent, so I don't recommend you read it.
The post does, however, link to a completely innocent improvisation blog post on low- and high-social-status walking behaviours. This was interesting because it presented lists of behaviours for actors to convey low and high social status to audiences.
One of the low-status walking behavious is "gets out of the way of other people". Others include walking jerkily or with unnecessary movements, looking up at people (head tilted forward), slouching, and so on. High-status behaviours include looking down at people (head tilted back), not looking at low-status people at all, and assuming other people will get out of your way.
So tonight while walking home I thought I'd live the high life. Instead of making eye contact with people I stared directly at where I was headed, giving the impression that I knew where people were but that I wasn't going to waste time looking at them. I didn't check to see whether people had noticed me. I didn't smile at all. And as usual I walked quickly, smoothly, and without slouching. Essentially, I acted as if I were more important than everybody around me.
The first thing I noticed was that walking this way was very relaxing, because everybody got the hell out of my way. The second thing I noticed was that walking this way was a little stressful, because every so often I would encounter somebody who had the same idea. This essentially turned a simple thing (walking home) into a ridiculous dominance challenge.
And this is when we get to the nipple encounter, because there was only one person who didn't move out of my way. This guy was rather muscly, taller than I, and obviously not used to encountering geeks role playing at being street poseurs. We strode confidently toward each other. I figured we were actually going to just bounce off each other, a prospect I wasn't looking forward to as inertia was clearly on the other gentleman's side. Fortunately, at the last second, we both did that awkward 45-degree watch-where-you're-going-you-jerk twist common to street theatre. Unfortunately, we were extremely close to each other at the time, so there was a fair bit of chest-to-chest sliding involved.
And that is how I rubbed nipples with a well-built man halfway along London Bridge. It was easily the most homoerotic thing I have ever done on London Bridge.