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On the Kindness of Strangers
by Maureen Fogarty
Whoever
you are...I have always depended on the
kindness of strangers." (Blanche Dubois in Tennessee
Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire")
On a recent
trip to London, I arose early to get same-day
tickets (£10) at the Royal National Theatre. On the bill was Glenn
Close as the lead in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Fancy that,
an American traveling all the way to London and walking through ceaseless
rain to join strangers huddled against the cold, all in the hope of
getting tickets to see an American actress in an American
play. A bit daft, I must say. Yet there I was, pulling
my scarf tight around me, praising the ugly concrete
monstrosity which is the National Theatre complex for
keeping us all, if not warm, at least dry. Passing the
time amiably, welcoming the chair brought by one
stranger, asking another to watch my belongings while
I went to buy a cappuccino, trading smiles with a
similarly inclined chap in the cafe. Eight-thirty.
Nine o'clock. Nine-thirty. Finally, at ten, the doors
opened, and despite being only the eleventh person in
line, I had to settle for not front row seats
(somewhat undesirable to the Brits, and thus a
bargain), but "slips." (More about that in just a
bit...)
I can never
sleep on airplanes. Intellectually, I try
to convince myself that this is the perfect time to
get some shut eye. If I'm in the air, chances are I
also didn't really sleep the night before, and since
I'm going to some exotic new place to sleep in an
unfamiliar bed or two, it's doubtful that I'll be
getting much sleep when I arrive at my destination.
Yet on my most recent flight to London, armed with
fresh earplugs and a sleeping mask, I tried my best to
seduce the gods of sleep. It didn't work this time,
either, and I think I've finally figured out why: when you are on an
airplane, the journey has already begun. The flying is part of the experience,
not just an obstacle to be endured. A murmur of sounds leaked through
the earplugs, and I had to smile. It was, I realized, the sound of strangers
warming up to each other, opening themelves up and simply talking. Where
are you going? Where have you just come from? How can I sleep with this
pleasant hubbub going on? My plane companion, Mary, was born in the
US but raised in the UK, and had just returned from her mother's 90th
birthday party in New York. Nearby was Mark, a UK-born-and-raised sax
player studying music in Boston, coming home for a wedding. Across the
aisle was Russell, a native midwesterner living in New York these 12
years, making his way to Berlin, a place that calls to his soul in a
mystical language. (I'm glad to hear that someone is so deeply moved
by German. Maybe I, too, can learn to love it this way...)
These strangers
are not obstacles to be endured. They,
too, are a part of the journey. And no small part, at
least not for me. I seem to have an unquenchable
yearning for whole fresh new batches of strangers, and
what better way to feed this hunger than by leaving
the state, leaving the country? In this "foreign"
country, the birthplace of my native language, even
the words can be strangers (lift, lorry, loo), and
forget about the idea that numbers are a universal
language--what does it mean, after all, that I weigh
roughly eight-and-a-half stone? On my trip to London this past November,
I was literally pulled off the street and fed by strangers (the human
kind.) People I have never met wrote in reply to my e-mail essays with
thanks and
positive commentary. (I'm getting a taste of what it
feels like to have a "reading public," presumably full
of strangers. I could definitely get used to this...)
My uncle handed one of my travel essays to an office mate, who dashed
off an e-mail inviting me to share a drink--and we had tea the next
afternoon.
Of course,
I don't always get close enough to a
stranger to have tea. Sometimes I like my strangers to
keep their distance. On the Underground, I shift my
weight away from a guy whose leg is leaning into mine
just a bit too chummily. I smile politely to a tea
sipper in the Hungarian pastry shop in Hampstead, but
I don't mean to start a conversation. It's nice
sometimes to have people nearby, like when I'm writing
in my journal while sipping a half-pint of cider in a
pub near the Hampstead Heath. Nearby, but not too close.
Speaking
of Close...my aunt Pat and I rendezvous'd in
the city just before seeing "Streetcar." I confessed
that our tickets were not in the front row, but in the
"slips." "What's that?" she asked. We went into
the
theatre together to find out. Much to our shared
chagrin, these seats were set one in front of the
other snugly against the side walls of the theater,
toward the rear exit doors. Sitting in them required a
special sort of gymnastic ability that neither my aunt
nor I seemed to possess--the chair faces rigidly
forward, but in order to see the stage you have to
turn your body at a forty-five degree angle, at which
point you are greeted by a wall just high enough to
barely see over, so while turning you must also
stretch. We speculated as to the possible origin of
the name "slips"--did they "slip" these chairs in
as
an afterthought? Would we maybe "slip" a disc trying
to sit here for three hours? Should we "slip" out
during the intermission and look for better seats? Or
at least switch with our suffering companions on the
other side of the theatre, to give the corresponding
muscles the same workout?
From where
we were sitting, Miss Close and ensemble
were not, in fact, very close at all. And the Southern
accents affected by the all-Brit cast were sometimes
close, sometimes not. But still, we enjoyed our
evening, and I'm sure a day at a London spa would have rendered our
backs as good as new.
Leaving
the theatre that night, I saw the lady who sat
next to me in the ticket line that morning. We shared
comments about the play, acquaintances now. And
there's the cappuccino guy from this morning! What did
you think of the show? Loved it, loved it.
How quickly
strangers can become acquaintances. Lovely, that.
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