Serendipity - A coincidence directed by some sort of fate or divine act. It's also finding something unexpected while searching for something else entirely.
July 2006.
I was looking for a new job having quiting my last job because of my final exams.
I wanted to be a waitress, since one can earn lots of money in this job, and I went through every coffee shop in my neighborhood, I had job interviews but nothing caught me.
Finally, by accident, I ended up in a new Asian restaurant that just opened and was looking for manpower. I had a short interview and I got the job, and I was very satisfied since the salary was good.
The first training was good, I was a bit green but after a while all was ok.
On the second shippment, something I wasn't expecting hit me.
July 2002.
I was busy dancing when I noticed him through the corner of my eye.
He was sun-tanned and dressed all in black. His hair was long and smooth - my biggest weakness - and his arms were folded on his chest. He had a teasing look in his eyes, and the smile of a spoiled cat.
I could no longer concentrate on the dancing, and soon I ceased.
"I'm Stav", "I'm T."
I don't remember how, but we started talking. It was good conversation, the feeling was comfortable, I felt so good.
I found something unexpected while searching for something else entirely.
He was handsom, and oh-so-nice, and he had that extra spice that no one can define, but it's the exact spice that makes us fall, and fall hard, losing our rationalism in a heart beat over something that's too strong to resist.
Some people call it Chemistry, but I believe it's too small a word to define the spraks that filled the air.
I was thrown.
As we talked, he gave me his birth date. 12.9.
This date is associated with two things in my mind.
The first is the song "Frank Mills" from the musical "Hair":
"I met a boy called Frank Mills
On September 12th right here..."
It's a song about a girl who falls in love with a stranger, and she's losing him in the crowd.
The second assiciation is much simpler - it's a boy I met when I was 11, and was my first and strongest love (you know - I loved like only the innocent and unexperienced can love). He was born on the same date - 12.9.
A coincidence directed by some sort of fate or divine act?
I didn't know.
At the end, nothing happened.
He was a foreigner, from the US, and a few weeks later he returned to his home land. Just like the girl from the song, I've found a stranger but lost him in the crowd.
Nothing happened between us. The air was buzzing from the energy that oozed from us, but nothing happened or could have happened. He had a girlfriend, he loved her a lot, and that was the end of it.
He left, and I was left very unsatisfied, with a desire for more.
July 2006.
It's been four years since that day.
We still keep in contact through e-mails, but we haven't seen each other since.
He's still with the same girl, it's already been five years, they'll probably marry.
We've found more and more things in common through the years.
But none of it matters.
I came in for my second training.
I said hi to everyone - waitresses, cooks, the shippment's manager.
And there he was, just there.
It was T., but with shorter hair and a cook's uniform.
But it was him, every inch, the skin color, the hair color, that look, those cheek bones. That smile. My God, that smile.
For a second there I couldn't breathe. I knew it wasn't really him, it was someone who just looked like him, but it was too much anyway.
During the training it was very hard for me to concentrate.
I kept glimpsing at him with love-sick-puppy eyes, waiting for something to happen, I don't even know what.
I was looking for a job, and I found a heartache.
I found something unexpected while searching for something else entirely.
On that same shippment, something very funny happened.
All the cooks hit on me, one by one, without knowing the other cooks did it just a minute ago.
It was funny, and flattering.
All the cooks... But him.
I was longing for him to try his luck too, not because I'd fall into his arms - I have a boyfriend whom I love, cheating or leaving him is not even an option - but just because I thought it might be a sort of a closure for one of the biggest "what if"s of my life.
But he didn't.
And I left the restaurant without saying a word to him.
August 2006.
The trainings are over, I am now a full-time-job waitress.
I see him every now and then, but that faint pain haven't stopped.
Last night, August 2006.
another shippment, he was there, but he left with all the other cooks.
The other waitresses, the shippment's manager and I were left to clean and close the place.
It's always in those late hours of the night that we girls start chating and gossiping nonesensly - about today's costumers, about the crew, about small insignificant things.
You know, girls' talks. Scrubbing the floors and gossiping.
I don't even know what made me ask this, but something drove me to get those words out of my mouth:
"What's the name of the cook with the small beard and the tattoed arms?"
The shippment's manager looked at me with wonder.
"Why?"
In a gush of unexplained sincerity I replied:
"Well... He looks exectly like a guy once..."
I couldn't find the word. "loved" wouldn't be accurate, I was never in love with him. "liked"? Not enough. "Had a crush on"? Not merely enough, nor accurate.
I knew the right term would be "touched my soul", but it's a term too abstract to use with a work colleague.
I'll just have to settle.
"He looks exectly like a guy I once liked."
She smiled.
"His name is T."
and again, for a moment I couldn't breathe.
"Excuse me?"
- "T."
- "And... how old is he?"
- "20."
Oh my God. His name is T., and he's 20 years old.
T. was 20 years old when we met.
Serendipity has caught you once again, dearie.
The room spinned around me, my eyes began to tear.
the wind, almost physically, was knocked out of me.
"Could I be excused?", I asked, and as I was excused I ran out for a cigarette and for a good, old fashioned, girly cry.
It was just too much.
As I sucked the hell out of my cigarette, notes flowed out of the restaurant's open door. They were familiar, but for a second there I didn't recognize.
I was staring blindly at the reataurant's red, dim light as recognition came.
"I met a boy called Frank Mills
On September 12th right here
In front of the Waverly
But unfortunately
I lost his address"
The sweet voice of that teeange girl filled my head with music, and pain, and I realized that a door I thought I had long since closed was actually wide open.
All the feelings I hid and ignored were pounding on the threshold, emerging from that secret room where I pushed them into.
Without a closure - none of this could really end.
And I had no closure. T. left Israel, and me, with nothing more with some dry bitterness.
Lily La Tigeresse \ Alona Kimchi:
"Life is stronger than anything", said Mom. I looked at her small, delicate-fingered hand, whose skin began to wrinkle, caressing my pyjama sleeve. "It'll pass", she said, "everything passes."
What did she know. What could she know, living in that tiny, see-through bubble of her life's wisdom, seeing the world outside her circle of wills an alienated, undeciphered entity. How could she know what I already know today, and I have no doubt that the knowledge would grow and deepen with the years. The knowledge that nothing ever, ever passes. The details freeze, hide behind shadows of new realities, and then float again with vivid colors, with full sensation, when the right switches are turned on. A drop of blood from a needle's sting, a figure you've noticed for a moment in a crowded street, a marginal insult, a minor loss, a bad afternoon nap - And here they are again, the humans, the feelings, the events - bright, rememberable to death, filled with present as though they accured just now. You may never know what will light up the chain of molecules that'll lead you cruely to the original, ancient event. That event will rise up like a toxic atom bomb, it will go wild with a black wind in the dephs of your consciousness.
No, Mom.
Nothing ever, ever passes.
Wicked Little Town.
Sadness
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