The party was declared underway. The DJ dropped a beat, people scattered with their collective groups, and the overwhelming feeling of being alone kept me company. I talked a little here and there with the people I came with, but I was terrified to introduce myself to anyone or make any new friends, even though when I looked around, I saw people shaking hands and striking up interesting conversations. I made sure my glass was filled, laughed a little too loud at someone’s jokes, took frequent trips to the bathroom or the coat area and generally lingered around hoping I could disappear.
I and Ana, the girl who I had barely known for a couple months had agreed that we would stick together so we wouldn’t have to face the clumsiness of wandering around alone. I don’t think she needed to do that since she knew the crowd and even if she didn’t, she would still have made it fairly well. We floated around like UN observers, talking about who we liked, who was drunk, whose vibe was weird, whose outfit looked smashing. Sometimes we drifted apart. I briefly talked to a guy called Minocher who aspired to be a life-coach and he was asking me questions that I was getting very uncomfortable with. I kept looking out for her to come rescue me but i did not see her. She was off having what seemed like a myriad of conversations with other people. The music was worse than I expected it to be. I finally found her in a corner talking to her friend Farnaaz, laughing and generally having a good time. Our eyes met across the room and she must have seen the miserable look on my face because a couple minutes later she was standing next to me, looking at me with an amused face. I didn’t know what to tell her but I did say that I was having a good time and I had talked to a bunch of new people that I did not know. She laughed.
I asked her if she wanted to go outside. She pulled back and angled her head so she could look at me before saying a yes that was as small and sweet as a tiny drop of honey, barely audible over the music. We got up from the couch, walked down the stairs, and found a spot in the garden. On either side and all around us people were laughing, drinking, revealing a bit too much than they should, too loudly, just letting go — Things that they might regret in the daylight tomorrow, if they ever remembered.
We sat down facing each other and began to talk about something that I can’t recall anymore, but I do remember the feeling of suddenly feeling very comfortable, like I finally belonged in this place, in this time. My fingers accidentally touched her and instead of her it was me who flinched. She just sat there with a raised eyebrow looking at me quizzically — Possibly wondering what she had been dealt with this evening.
For someone like me, this was a fairly new feeling and I did not understand it. The why’s or the what’s. I had sat next to girls, had even touched them fleetingly and yet this was somehow different. I felt like I had known her all my life even though I could not put a finger on this feeling and yet I felt as if I did not need to — That just being here, looking at her was enough. Just right. I did wonder or hope that this moment or the night never ends.
When your face is that close to someone else’s, there is a magic that happens. It is almost like they became a different person entirely, or rather everything you though you knew about them — the way they dressed, how they talked, where in the social order they fit — all of it disappears entirely, replaced by the wonder working of a warm feeling that you cannot describe that well. Something else manifests, comes through, something clear, something simple and old, something that both is and isn’t. A spirit? an essence?. I didn’t know. Maybe they become human in precisely the same way you are, without the tiniest shard of separation, and for a brief moment your eyes meet theirs breathing the possibilities of the entire universe without you being aware of it. It probably happens for an instant, a mere breath, barely a wink in time. It’s the kind of thing where if you don’t pay close attention, you might miss it entirely. That moment, I came to believe, in that moment, is closest to what I called another word for love.
Later when I was back at the hostel alone, trying to remember that evening, to have it fossilized so that I could feel it forever and call upon it again and again, I felt like it was not working. I could not wrap my mind around that moment. I did not have an emotional language with which to understand what i had experienced. There was a level of peace that we had found together. A peace that had to with who we were in that moment and not what was expected of us, not how we were expected to feel . We were moving as Adrianne Maree Brown said, at the speed of trust. I didn’t want anything more than what I had — To be around her, surrounded by her aura of calm and a natural sense of happiness — Something that I had not felt in a very long time.
I climbed off the bed in my dark room, dragged my blanket over with me, changed into my night shorts, put on a hoodie and sat exhausted , outside on the steps, under the bright moon, alone with the sound of an occasional car or people passing by until the sun came up.
In the morning, I walked with an old friend from college and told him about the party last night and he laughed. I laughed too. But it was forced and weird. Sitting on that bench that night with her, talking dispassionately or soaking in a comfortable silence contemplating the inevitability of everything, it was one of the few times I remember being, in the purest sense, …happy.
