well-intentioned strangers
writing about life, but mostly about people
Sitting in my bedroom, painting my nails pink, wishing my best friend still lived five minutes down the street. Anyone who’s ever had their phone stolen will know that particular cocktail of violation and inconvenience; you’re suddenly cut off from the world but also, perversely, free from it.
When it happened to me in February, I swapped books with a 25-year-old woman called Sofia on the train home. It was dark; the train had clicked to a temporary stop between stations. The carriage had reached that restless moment when people begin to rise from their seats, surly, driven by their desire for nicotine or simply to move. Like dying insects, the fluorescent lights above us buzzed and flickered. I jokingly call myself a Late Traveller - I like to pretend time stops for a small while; here we are, stuck together, for however long.
Sofia had a very rustic look to her, almost nomadic, with nails cut down to the bone and a canvas bag that had seen better days. You could tell at a glance that she had been living rough, or at least living deliberately, shoulders slightly hunched from carrying everything she owned. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, restless from trying to sleep through endless train journeys. She came from Boston, she told me later, from a family of string players, but her own dream was to sing. When the train finally lurched back to life, moths jolting backwards, we swapped books; two strangers passing talismans in the dark.
I seem to attract well-intentioned strangers. A couple of months later, I got lost in Hackney, and a stubby, broad-shouldered Floridian offered to help me home; I had never seen teeth look more American, aggressive in their perfection. In our drunk stupor, with the vim of ten tequila lemonades and a few beers between us both, we climbed onto the wrong London bus and sat on the top-front-left seat of the abandoned decker. The night-lit streets of East London rolled past below us, steam and psychedelic shop signs, which snapped, crackled, and popped.
A deep purple backwards cap permanently grafted to his skull, his hair static and long, streaked with grey at the persistent age of twenty-six. With the earnest pride of someone explaining their life’s calling, he told me he had been a baseball player since the tender, grey-free age of six, now living the American dream transplanted to London; paid to pitch and party, rent-free. On Saturdays, he coached little league, proud to pass on the gospel his father’s side of the family had drilled into him since childhood.
We got spectacularly lost. Took another wrong bus, failed to acquire an Uber, finally ducked into the brilliant lights of a 24-hour convenience store. The electric buzz was immediate and harsh. Only two boys in the stark, multicoloured landscape of energy drinks, recovering from their night out. One had a fresh packet of Benson and Hedges, the plastic half-ripped off, shining under the overhead light. The other looked like a young David Beckham if Beckham had grown up on late-night shifts and corner shop cigarettes, matte blonde locks falling diagonally across his forehead, cheeks raw from drinking. Our voices filled the bright space, drunk and chaotic, pinballs in a neon-coloured box.
They took pity on us immediately. Without being asked, they shepherded us back into the speckled night air toward the right bus stop. The beautiful one shook cigarettes from his packet, one for me, one for the American. Under the orange streetlight glow, smoke mixing with our breath in the cold air, we talked in that easy way strangers do when normal social barriers have dissolved; about nothing important, everything important. The grey-pink promise of dawn was creeping up behind the buildings, making us all look softer, more forgivable. There were quick hugs and goodbyes. Something like an asymptote; paths that would never cross again.
By some ridiculous chance, a black cab hailed itself from the dust. Slumped in the back seat, I watched the city transform from night creature to something respectable and morning-lit.
Now, sitting in my bedroom again, painting my nails pink, Sofia’s book sits idle on my shelf opposite the balcony. I never did finish it; it’s a lot of biting and chewing - long, long sentences, a long, long journey to the end - concrete-hard to sink your jaws into. Perhaps if I persist, I’ll develop the aggression of American teeth, unclaimed by Benson and Hedges. Which is to say, I love self-governing, well-intentioned strangers, and I love my best friends more. I wish we could all live five minutes down the street from each other.