strange encounters I

I know why people are sometimes hesitant to talk to strangers. Oh my god, what if you have nothing to talk about? What if it gets awkward? I feel like this sometimes too, but if someone you're with does all the talking, takes all the risks, well I'll stand back and observe...

I was waiting outside of a bar in Oakland with my girlfriend and her girlfriends, and they had to pee. All of them. We were all caught in that awkward space right outside the bar's doors where you're just inviting people to creep up on you. An older black woman approached us. She was obviously drunk and asked for a cigarette.

Everyone fumbled around, some excuses were made, but one girl Meagan, easily the sweetest of the bunch and not much of a smoker, she struggled to get a cigarette out of its pack. First a crumpled one, not polite to hand that to a stranger so she shoves it back in. An awkward urgency set in just then, that anxiousness which precedes social rituals that aren't going as planned. With nervous fingers Meagan plucked the next cigarette from the package and hurriedly handed it over to the woman. It was half-smoked. It hurt to watch.

The woman wasn't reacting at all to this. Her eyes were glazed over, she was hunched over, but our encounter wasn't over. She started with some obligatory small talk, which everyone quickly tried to turn away from and ignore. We were just leaving, nobody wanted to get sucked back in…

One girl listened, said a few words to the woman, engaged her. I can't remember the last time I saw a woman dressed with that kind of timeless 70's class. A nice shiny blouse, bell-bottom pants, and a matching afro made me realize that this woman was time-traveling. That's why I watched and listened.

The woman leaned with a serious hunch in her back and her hips pressed to the wall, truly needing the support as she took slight puffs of the cigarette. She appeared to move in slow motion. She was that kind of drunk where anything can happen, where you're surprised a person can still talk but you listen because you know anything can be said. Barely standing, barely able to keep her eyes on us, barely able to get the words out of her lips but she had something to say to us, a bunch of young white college students. Her words need little context.

"EDUCATION" she said, "we've got to educate ourselves, so the educated can stand up for the rest. Elsewise nobody's even gonna realize what's going on."

We were already on our way out, people were looking to have a good time and nobody was going to "waste" another minute to listen to this woman. As we were leaving she asked us to remember something.

She summoned strength, pushed off from the wall and found her balance. She raised one arm.

"Together we stand… and divided we fall."

Her eyes lost their focus, her knees trembled, and she fell.