The Infiltration of The Stranger
Strange moments with strangers.
Strangers occupy most of my notable memories. There is something about a stranger leading the moment that makes it special…more fated, maybe? That isn't to discredit the moments with those I love and am familiar with, as they are usually responsible for my happiest moments. But the moments that really stick with me, that I often let define certain places or even periods of my life, are brief encounters with strangers.
The woman who did my nails in her living room in Ithaca and sobbed to me about her children choosing their father over her in what seemed like a disastrous divorce…one of the first times I remember feeling like an adult. I wasn’t being spoken to like a child anymore, an adult was oversharing with another adult. My Uber driver who pulled into a dark parking lot to do a line of blow and run laps around the car…the first time I ever felt true fear for my life. The incredibly old lady I met parking our Citi Bikes (yes, she still biked) whose zest for life touched me. The bubbly waitress in Dublin wearing her silly antiquated restaurant uniform who said “I'm usually quiet, then I put on this dress” in a thick Irish accent. The boys at the club in Belfast who told me I look like I sell cocaine. The Uber driver who was writing a novel and asked me for a quote and I said, "I'm Anna and I’m undecided on my major and on my next move in life, but I have great friends.” The beautiful bartender in Budapest who was just on the same page. The super of the apartment in Palma who made me feel safe there alone. The alcoholic mother I nannied for who left me a five minute voice memo about how horribly I clean toilets. The baby, whose mother put her in my lap while she went to the bathroom on a flight, that made me really want one, like actually biologically need one. The man who put a finger gun to my head on the subway and screamed to everyone what a slut I was and that I should be hung. The three guys at the airport that invited me to come to the Blue Lagoon with them when we landed in Iceland. The tiny, uptight woman who pulled me aside and told me those guys wanted to “tap my ass.” The list goes on and on. They all feel like puzzle pieces. I picture them all swirling around in something similar to Dumbledore's pensieve. Maybe I’ve touched some of them like they have me. Maybe I’m a piece in some of their puzzles. Hopefully.
I write about this now because I recently had a moment with a stranger that felt particularly cathartic. Mars, one of the three guys I met at the airport about a year and a half ago, and I were on vacation in Oaxaca, Mexico sipping cheap cocktails at an upscale bar. I don’t think I've ever been happier than I did sitting there. He sipped on a double reposado on the rocks, I sipped on some sort of smoky and spicy mezcal drink with a twang. We ordered birria tacos and juicy sliders. We chatted, but I can’t recall what about. Throughout the hour or so we sat there, I kept catching the eyes of two middle aged women sitting across the bar. They were glaring in an incredibly indiscreet manner. I was positive that they were talking about us, so I tried to look my prettiest and most interesting for them. I felt like I was on display, like we were, and I didn’t mind it. They were in their sixties or so, and looked like two old friends from Santa Fe or some sort of western US liberal city (but not LA). They didn’t look like New Englanders or southerners. They looked like they preferred warm weather and did yoga and shopped at clothing stores with baggy linen clothes in pastel colors and strange chunky jewelry that's neither gold nor silver and no one actually buys. They both wore large cowboy style sombreros, that they clearly didn’t bring from home, and thick rimmed glasses, the kind all creative types in their 60s wear. If I were to be discussed and looked at by anyone there, I would have liked it to be them. I couldn't tell if they were staring at just me, or Mars too, but looking back it was probably mostly Mars.
We threw back the last drops of our drinks, licked the last splashes of birria oil, paid in pesos and headed out hand in hand. As we approached the exit, I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, one of the ladies hastily scurrying away from her table, and before I knew it she was facing me, standing right between us and the outside.
“This is going to come across rude” she blurted out in just the American accent I pictured her to have- not the Carolinas and not New York. We laughed awkwardly and nervously.
“Are you Indian?" She said almost playfully to Mars. Oof I thought, maybe she is from the south.
“Oh, no I'm from Bangladesh" He responded politely.
“Ah, anyways…well my friend and I were debating.” She began to ramble and then paused as if to refocus and kind of waved her hands about dismissing herself. “I really wouldn't do this unless I had a few drinks in me, but yeah.. I had to come over and say something. My friend and I noticed you two and just got to talking….and we just thought you were so attractive and so in love…and probably on your honeymoon or something, and we were just really enthralled by you. We couldn’t stop watching you two!” She looked so vulnerable and I immediately softened to her, redeeming herself after the ethnicity guessing game she led with.
We were both touched. She looked mostly at Mars when she spoke, especially when she said the word attractive. I, however, drunk off my one mezcal, was the one who eagerly responded. I spewed a slew of “Wow, thank you so much. You have no idea how nice that is to hear. We are so touched…“ The truth was I know how happy we looked, because I felt that happy. We exchanged a few very warm smiles and alcohol-induced wet, glossy eye contact, and then we thanked her again and she wished us well. She seemed proud of herself for stopping us in our tracks. And I felt reassured and less ashamed of my main character syndrome…the assumption that we were being watched, discussed etc. Besides disclosing Mars’ ethnicity, we gave her no more information about us, we let her and her friend’s conclusions of it being our honeymoon and where we must be from and how in love we were just settle into their memories of us. Upon reflection this was classic middle aged white liberal lady fawning over a mixed race couple and just how great young people are! But also, it did touch us and it made our love and our happiness feel special in that moment. It feels good to be seen, especially by a stranger. It was yet another minuscule interaction with a stranger, but that will always come to mind when I think of Oaxaca and when I think about how happy I was, almost like she was the proof of it.
Strange moments with strangers.
I like trying to connect them, the puzzle pieces, to convince myself that together maybe they define me in some way. I am not religious or very spiritual, but I am drawn to the idea of fate. These interactions do feel fated and they feel important in my own assessment of the world and how I fit into all of it. Mars makes me believe in fate, the way we met started as a flukey interaction between two strangers just like all the others. And so I yearn for these kinds of strange moments wherever I go as if I am trying to collect them, to collect an understanding of people at face value. Maybe some of it is a need for external validation and what’s more external than a stranger? Validation that I’m existing as I envision that I am. Validation that I am who I think I am. Validation that I believe in fate.