Strangers Cry to Me

the urgency of fleeting connections

Recently, a stranger cried to me. She worked in a hotel I was writing about in the wilds of Texas. We had met the day before when she’d shown me to my room, where the sliding bathroom door had come off in her hands. We’d struggled together unsuccessfully to get it back on its rails, finally leaving it propped against the wall. She was strikingly beautiful, with a thick, black braid pulled over one shoulder, big turquoise earrings, and a pre-Columbian carving of a face. Now it was morning and I was sitting at the bar, blowing gently on my first cup of coffee, on the verge of opening my laptop. She was bartending, or whatever you call that job at 8 a.m. Our reunion was a joyous one. We had been through something together. We had failed to make a door behave like a door.

My room in that hotel. Isn’t it great? (You can see the propped-up door on the left.)

We didn’t discuss the door, but our small talk, too, came off its tracks. She’d been suffering for years. It was complicated family stuff. A small child was involved. A wealthy narcissist was involved. I had work to do, and then somewhere to be, but I listened for an hour, consuming so much caffeine, my eyes dried out.

I have been cried to all over the world and that’s a point of pride. I’ll be late for whatever I’m supposed to be doing besides sitting with a crying stranger. I always let the stranger end the conversation because nothing is worse than crying to someone who decides, mid-cry, that she’s had enough.

I ask a lot of questions; a woman from Haiti once called me Larry King. I listen with great interest. I’m not going to add, “…and I don’t judge,” because I am not the Buddha. I have constant opinions, endless analyses. But I won’t let strangers down. What is the point of travel if not to merge, momentarily, with strangers?

Cabo, 2018. I don’t remember this woman’s name, or who took our picture, but I remember how quickly and deeply we connected.

I’ve always hated that self-satisfied Eleanor Roosevelt quote (sorry, Eleanor Roosevelt) about great minds discussing ideas, while small minds discuss people. I don’t want to hear your theory that the universe is a hologram. I want to hear about your life. I love a good story. Give me the whole messy blob of it, but chronologically and with concrete specifics, please.

As far back as I can remember, the people closest to me have insisted, [Insert stranger] is not your responsibility. I remain unconvinced. Why isn’t she my responsibility? What does that even mean? We all have to give what we can, and what I have to give is not $10,000 to a worthy charity; it’s myself in the form of a Kleenex. I reject the very premise that strangers are other people’s responsibilities. That’s a dangerous belief, and a cultural one.

One clear night when I lived in San Miguel de Allende, I saw a very old man I recognized from the expat bar taking a slow, shaky walk. We stopped and looked at the moon together, a nickel on a crisp black sky. I had just been hypnotized because some woman had talked/hypnotized me into buying a ten-pack of hypnosis sessions from her. Each time I left her place, the earth looked sharp, the way the letters look at the eye doctor when he lands on your prescription. People I’d never seen before would engage me as if we’d been interrupted mid-conversation and could finally resume. Everything was weird, but not really. Everything was finally normal. The world was cracked open, the gauzy curtains between strangers yanked from their rods.

While we were admiring the moon, the man fell. It was a terrible fall, time stretching, slowed footage of a building collapsing. He was quite drunk, so he didn’t brace himself, and then he just lay on the cobblestones, making no attempt to get up. Even before he fell, it had been apparent to me that he was nearing the end of his life (I did hear a couple months later that he’d died) and I was terrified that these might be his final minutes, no one to bear witness but me.

When I tried to help him to his feet, I found I was ill-equipped. Too short or something. Too afraid of hurting him. Within minutes, a young couple appeared out of nowhere. This was Mexico, where help appears out of nowhere. I’ve never lived around so many helpers. In Mexico, I learned so much about helping. Americans are trained to fear Mexico, but I’d rather have a problem there than here. These two people had the man standing in seconds, and then they walked him home, each gripping one of his arms.

I think about this night fairly often because I have deep regret about it, though paradoxically, I don’t know what I could have done differently. When I imagine doing something besides what I did, I’m fantasizing a version of myself that has never existed, a version with arms so muscular, I walk with them held away from my sides, like those guys in tank tops at the gym.

It’s no surprise that I failed at restoring a whole man to an upright position. I’m a natural in the face of an emotional fall, but sadly, not a physical one. But I can feel the failure to this day. I can still feel his bones in my hands.

The streets of San Miguel de Allende

When someone cries, it’s tempting to ask, “Have you spoken to a therapist?”, but I don’t want anyone to feel pawned off. I don’t want anyone to infer, If you must cry, you should pay for it.

Or, If you must cry, do it elsewhere.

It’s trendy to be “boundaried,” but I’d rather be cried to. And maybe the crying stranger can’t afford therapy. And maybe she’s too embarrassed to confide in the people close to her. Or maybe no one is close to her. Maybe she’s been suppressing tears for months, and now they’re falling, and the nearest human happens to be me. Anyway, it’s not like I’m adopting her. In fact, I’m hyper-sensitive to clinginess; listening to someone cry is not an invitation into my life. For the most part, crying strangers seek no such invitation. They just want to cry and move on. To blow their noses, shift their gazes, and get shuffled back into the big, wide world.

Love,

Diana

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