Foreign Love

On the sidewalk, moving towards where I sat at a red light, were some Japanese tourists. Especially in Tumon, this is quite ordinary and normally I would have just kept tapping my fingers on the steering wheel in beat with my tunes. However, I like that word, because you can insert the most unrelated anecdote and it manages to link the two worlds, I was looking up and that is all there is to it.

What my eyes found was a short, young but trying to look older, woman wearing a white peasant shirt over long plaid shorts. Attached to her hand, was a slightly taller man wearing jeans and a green tee shirt. From where I was, I could make out no other details. When they walked, she swung their clasped hands and they spoke, now even if I could hear this conversation I do not understand Japanese so the words are insignificant. The way they looked at each other gave it all away. Something was happening; these two were going places when they stood still.

All of a sudden she found something that caught her attention on the other side of the street, and proceeded to attempt a diagonal line across a busy three way intersection. He did not let her go or yank her back; he was ready to follow if unable to persuade her back on the curb. Her face widened with a grin, she stepped back and followed him to the cross walk ten feet in front of them.

I doubt anything else on the side of the road could match this romance. She was far too distracted by the me-and-you-and-here-and-now-and-I-like-you-like-you-like-me-and-this-is-good-and-and-and-run-on-sentence of it all to pick up on her surroundings, and he too was absorbed in it all, but it led him to play the hero and save his damsel.

It all made me realize, that I have never felt such devotion that I would walk aimlessly into on-coming traffic just for the sake of it, but that may just mean I have commonsense.

It may all sound like the story of two idiot tourists who do not know how to read the traffic signals, and for all I know by now they have broken up, and it is unlikely that either of them will ever be able to recall this memory which is now etched in me, but I also believe that it is these little insignificant moments that we so easily forget that build up to it. Whatever it is, whatever we are searching for, whatever makes life feel real.

To all the little girls who dream of Barbie weddings and roses with baby’s breath: that is complete bullshit. It all goes back to “I want to hold your hand.” And that is all.

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