“We sometimes encounter people, even perfect strangers, who begin to interest us at first sight, somehow suddenly, all at once, before a word has been spoken.”
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky
On the final weekend I lived in New York, I had the pleasure of interacting with two women, two complete strangers, that have impacted me in ways I never thought possible. Both of them are beautiful women. They intersected with me at an emotionally bizarre time, in light of my move to L.A., my recovering heart, and my eyes being lost to future's uncertainty. I didn't think for one second that in the last 72 hours of my watershed life experience (living in New York), two of the three people I spent true to life time with would be complete and total strangers.
But they were.
And now my head can't seem to stop orbiting around them or this concept of 'the stranger'.
Our lives depend on the kindness of strangers without us even realizing it on a day to day, moment to moment basis. My life, in particular, seems to have been wrought with oddly intense interactions with people that I meet and either never see again, or see them again, but that spark, that ignition has flitted away into the ether. Most of these people are women, as I have a fascination and inclination towards them that I have learned goes far beyond the physical, though that tends to play a role in these interactions. Something about a woman, about eye contact with them, smelling them, touching them... makes me a better man. A better human.
The boundless joy and crackle of heat in my body that I felt with one was mirrored by a subdued force of expression and questions with the other. And then they switched and my brain went "what? I've been here before". Questioning the basis for these experiences became something that careened to the front of my thoughts for the last 5 days. What about one woman made me stay in bed with her for an entire 10 hours, spending half the time just talking, our clothes and cares strewn about like a child's room, on my very last Sunday in the city? What about the other made me sit in a deserted McDonald's waxing poetic about all things fears and desires and idiosyncrasies, staring at this untouchable beauty as if it were our last night on earth?
The funny thing about all of this, is that both experiences involved conversations on serendipity, synchronicity, and the F word:
Fate.
Never before have I given real credence to this word as being anything other than a word. But these women, an Aquarius and a Pisces, much like the only two women I have ever loved (thanks, Universe!), brought fate into my head and it's stuck. There has to be a reason I met both of these women in the same weekend right before I started the biggest chapter in my life, and no matter how hard I try, I can't bring myself to think otherwise.
I have kept in contact with both and I will continue to until they don't want to anymore. They are too important to me and my journey not to. Someday I may find them both to be just my friends, or one lover and one friend, or two lovers. I don't know. What I do know is that I am going to find out.
This fate stuff gives me an unlikely and unnerving feeling in the pit of my stomach. But sometimes, in one's life, there's a shift. And these two spectacular, flawed, gorgeous, and giving women may have been a part of mine. For two strangers, that is pretty god damn impressive.
