He was dressed like a man charged with protecting an ex-president, black suit, black tie, Armani shades; shoulders squared off the same way as his chin, and a confident walk leading him directly to my table.

“You don’t look like an alien,” I said, offering my hand. He shook, a perfect grip, firm, yet it wouldn’t crack an egg.

“Well, we’ve had to make some changes—they say the people might not react too friendly were I to walk around as I usually do.” He smiled, actor’s teeth, dimples.

“Of course. I could see that being a problem.” I said.

He ordered a diet coke, with extra lemons, and I ordered a glass of dry Riesling. When the drinks came, he squeezed all five lemons into his diet coke, and mashed the peels with his straw. He scanned over the menu for twenty minutes before finally deciding on a burger, and French fries. While we waited for the food, we began the interview.

“I am interested in sex,” I said. “I’ve heard some great things about the lack of sexual differentiation on your planet, and I want to hear all about it.” He told me that sexes did exist, but held no place in major definition of one’s character--one’s sex became a trait more like one’s eye or hair color.

When the food arrived, I was explaining to him about my research as a sexologist, how I wanted to use his studies to write an article comparing it to the gay and lesbian communities on Earth. He seemed to have lost interest and engrossed himself in his burger, piling ketchup onto the meat, then the bun, and then smothering the fries. He ate with his hands, completely unconcerned with the ketchup smeared on his arms, chin, and his shirt.

As soon as he finished, he began to talk as if my original question had been posed only moments before. “A lot of your habits perplex me,” he said suddenly. “Your government, for one, has to appeal to the people, but there are so many of them. It seems like the powers that be would say whatever they think the people want to hear.”

“Yes, that’s right.” I didn’t follow politics and hardly recalled the textbook definitions of conservative and liberals, and I wanted that talk to end there, but he kept going along the same lines. He was fairly redundant, often restating the same points but attempted to clarify them in order to get me to react differently. I had to stop him. I interjected.

“I would like to talk about the ages of sexual maturation now,” I said.

“But the issue you face is one of solidarity—or lack thereof,” he continued with the social crap. “Our people have no individual goals or unique means of surviving through life.” I had read something about this: apparently his people were assigned positions and occupations, and innovation or class mobility was unheard of. Everyone was equal.

“Look, I don’t care. I’m not here to talk to you about the differences in society and government, and how much you guys pay for movie tickets, or what you call soda. All I want to do is talk about sex,” I said.

All of the while he kept sipping on his fifth diet coke. He had finished and slurped at the remains, and the ice bobbled around at the bottom of the glass. I stood up and grabbed my jacket, strangled it under my arm, and left him there to pay the bill.