Little Intimacies
Graphic by Zoe Gigis
A weathered man walks into our restaurant for lunch with hospital papers still in his back pocket, but I don’t know that yet. Soon, I’ll show him to the little table in the back with the two chairs I turn over, head down, at the end of the night. I’ll read his hat and thank him for his service in a war I don’t know about, not like he does, at least. I’ll bring him soup and he’ll eat it, alone. He’ll tell me his name—look, it’s written right here, on these crumpled admission papers—and that he’s just OD’d again. According to him, the drugs dull the night terrors he wants to run from but is forced to stay because he has to love his wife. I’ll disagree with him when he calls himself a pansy for crying into his soup, into his hands, and we’ll bond over our shared PTSD—he’ll look at me and say “rape?” I’ll just nod because it’s easier than going into detail and all of it will happen within the hour.
But first, he walks through the door.
Life is comprised of days, comprised of doorways—transformative moments in which we catch ourselves walking in and out of relationships we didn’t expect and never would. As an embarrassingly klutzy hostess, I expected to go to work and find new and inventive ways to break an ungodly amount of wine glasses. Instead (or let’s be fucking real, in addition to doing just that) I shared a moment with a seventy-three-year-old man that remains to be one of the most intense moments of connection I’ve ever had in my life.
I haven’t seen him since.
That, though—the one-hour duration of our relationship—is so irrelevant when it comes to the impact this gentleman has made on my being. So often, I think we connect longevity with intensity when the truth is—intensity can kick you in the ass whenever she wants. It’s the spark, it’s the second of complete vulnerability. It’s Ben Howard’s depth over distance every time my dear—-a song playing in and out of the moment as if through water. Really, time measures nothing.
“There is no time variable in fundamental equations that describe the world.”
-Carlo Rovelli, a theoretical physicist
The veteran in the restaurant (I know his name but it is something I want to keep and hold) is one of the first people I told I’m a survivor, too. He is one of the first people I’ve hugged through their sobs. He is also one of the first people I’ve ever experienced like a movie. I listened to the man's voice, to the earnesting in his milk eyes, and saw his whole life splayed out on the table. He needed someone to talk to. I needed someone to need me to listen.
In an interview, Ira Glass, the host of This American Life, said, “If you’re falling in love with someone, you have conversations where you’re truly revealing yourself…I think small intimacy that doesn’t extend beyond a simple conversation is still intimacy.” This kind of intimacy used to scare the hell out of me—the “showing yourself to someone and having it end.” It just seemed unworthy of the effort and the pain.
But now I wonder, isn’t it more painful, though, to live an unconnected life?
I have nightmares where I’m a tetherball, yellow, untied and floating over city houses. I never land.
In these moments of fear and doubt, I forget all about the soldier and the table and our “spilling ourselves out to each other.” I forget how it isn’t sad to think I’ll never see him again because it’s so much sadder to think he never happened. When you really open the door to someone, even if they go, you hold on to the memory of your encounter and all of the ways in which it grew you. And it did—you have grown.
After an hour with a weathered man in a restaurant, I am braver. I am more open. I am closer to the better version of myself and, most beautifully, I am honored in knowing that there is another person out there now that feels a little less alone, just like I do.
So, please, for others and for yourself, get out there. Share your story and learn another’s. Experience a very sweet version of love with a no-longer-stranger.
Don’t be afraid to watch them leave.