May 24, 2007

Perfect Strangers

When I originally began this post, some 12 hours ago, sitting in an uncomfortable chair in Omaha's Eppley Airfield (it isn't even big enough to be considered an airport, I suppose), I had intended to discuss all the memorable events in my three day venture to what has to be the most bucolic and mind-numbingly nondescript city in vast, abysmal expanse known as Middle America. However, upon further reflection, I realize that besides arriving on a plane in which I was literally one of four people under 200 lbs. (the other three were the female flight attendants—enough said), nothing about this trip was worth remember beyond a week (or even a day)—that is, until my flight from Denver to San Francisco, when I met what in another time and place might have very well been my soulmate.

OK. Fine. All the recent positivity aside, I'm not idealistic enough to actually believe in the concept of soulmates (though I do find it to be a nice idea), and even if I did, I am certainly not optimistic enough to expect that I might one day meet mine—especially in Denver, Colorado, of all places; but, ignoring all that for the moment, the fact remains that I met someone—a perfect stranger, in fact—with whom I felt an incontrovertibly immense connection. Just how incontrovertibly immense, you might ask? Well, suffice to say that in the roughly two and half hours (gate to gate) that I spent next to this woman, we talked about things that I have never shared even with those with whom I am (supposedly) most intimate. We talked about life, death, and everything in between with an air of honesty and vulnerability that I am for the most part completely incapable of generating.

What is it about perfect strangers that brings us to our most vulnerable in a way that our closest friends and family cannot? Is it the lack of intrinsic judgment? The safety of anonymity? The excitement of mental attraction (a much more potent force than physical attraction, in my opinion)? Who knows? Not I, that is for sure. But I can say that it does, and has before for me, just not quite as poignantly as today.

So, what happened afterwards, the curious reader might want to know? Will my potential soulmate be making an appearance on Rohit's Realm? A guest post, perhaps? Alas, it is with mixed emotions that I must report that she will not. As we were getting ready to disembark the plane, I realized that though she knew almost all that there was to know about me, and I about her, we did not even know each others' names. I made eye contact with her as I stood up, and held it for a long time, waiting as the sands of time inevitably ran down our time together (and the slow-moving idiots in front of us finally began to file out). Finally, she stretched out her hand: Valerie. I accepted the greeting (and valediction): Rohit. It was a pleasure.

And with that, I turned around and started walking up the aisle. As I did, my thoughts turned to all the shit I had been taking recently from Audrey, G-Unit, et al., for not contacting another such perfect stranger. I stopped and looked back. Should I ask her for her phone number?

At that moment, she once again made eye contact and gave me a smile that I will possibly remember for the rest of my life. No. Some moments are best left unsullied by the uncompromising platitudes of reality. Without another thought, I turned back around, continued forward, and left the plane, never once looking back. Such is life: brief, fleeting moments of pure happiness lost amongst days, weeks, months, and years of tepid monotony.

(Oh, and by the way, please feel free to leave any disparaging remarks attacking my masculinity in the comments section below. I much prefer caustic written comments to arbitrary phone calls late at night calling me a little girl [ahem, Katie!].)