I won’t get offended if people who are against lesbians and gays will savagely start criticizing me for what I am about to tell. Psychologists say that all relationships between people are based on sexual attraction, so that is why a friendship between a man and a woman doesn’t exist. There are millions of examples when naive and trusting women think that they can have an easy friendship with men, even share their cute girls’ secrets with them, while men are suffering from a tormenting lust. There is nothing shameful or unusual in it – that is how it is created by nature . It is sometimes hilarious how some women bitterly complain that their male friends would withdraw from friendships, but had it ever occur to them for how long can those poor guys keep their fantasies going on, while looking at their female friends like cats at the sour cream?!
This is a delicate topic, but I got carried a little bit away because the topic of my short narration will be bisexualism. It is not a secret for anybody that there are male and female hormones in all of us: estrogen and testosterone, and that is why, depending from their quantities, we are divided on men and women. And this is also a reason on which our relationships with same sex friends are based. It is a sexual sympathy in a first place, either we want to admit it or not. Not a lot of women would honestly tell themselves that they are dressing up not only for catching handsome male’s attention, but mostly in order to overdo their potential female rivals and to look attractive to them. Not a lot of us would sincerely admit that a body of a slim and well trained woman in the gym is our secret envy and that we desperately want to look like her. So, to put things the way they are, all of this is going on at our subconscious level, and we never pay attention to it. The same is cooking in the male’s head but the law of outside jungle world doesn’t allow him to realize it.
***
Ellen had appeared in my life absolutely unexpectedly . One of my colleagues at work brought her to our office at the end of a business day and presented her as a friend from the college days. I don’t know why but she introduced us with the words: “I can’t exactly explain it but for some reason you, guys, are practically the same. Well, you will figure it out for yourself later!”
We looked at each other with an open interest, trying to find something in common between us, but there was nothing in our looks: she was a tall, slim and beautiful young lady with oval hazel eyes, while I was a woman of an average height, blond and good eighteen years older than her. I even could have been at the age of her mother, but a very strange thing had happened once we both opened our mouths and began talking. The words were clinging to each other, and it seemed that we were afraid to lose our chance to express ourselves, even though she came to work with us and we had plenty of time for it in the future. She went to informal style right from the beginning as if we knew each other all our lives. It had not distracted me in the least; it seemed that I was looking at the younger version of myself, and we did not need to explain to each other what we intended to say or meant. Sometimes it was not even necessary to end the sentence as we knew what one of us wanted to say.
I think that people who fell in love from the first sight will understand me perfectly: it happens when you see your own reflection in the person, and the feeling that you had known him since you were born doesn’t leave you. And who do we know so well all of our lives? Of course, ourselves!
Everything in our world is subjective, meaning that we estimate any event from the point how we fit in it or near the people, participating in that event. The love to another person begins because he touches something sensitive in us, which fills us with enormous pleasure. More than anything in life we love ourselves, and when someone carries our reflection in him, we fall in love. I don’t see any difference in either it happens between a man and a woman or the people of the same sex. Of course, I am talking about platonic love. I have never understood homosexuals and hope that my view on it won’t offend any of them: in my opinion, the result of their love can never be absolutely divine, when one is always working and another – receiving. Nothing can replace a normal act of love the way it had been designed by nature; another word – what is better: a fresh orange or its sweet version in a can with preservatives?
Let me return to my platonic love and one very interesting event, which can be explained only by unity of two souls, which are connected by some unknown and invisible ties.
***
Right from Ellen’s first day at our company we became close. We communicated with each other whole working day, called one another at home after work and spent our weekends together. Everything in our lives was very much alike: we liked the same people, lived by the same principals, even our goals were identical. We constantly exchanged with something new and useful and instantly felt even slightest changes in each other’s health or mood.
One Saturday morning I was riding in a very crowded bus to give an English lesson to one of my students. Suddenly my phone started ringing. It was Ellen, she asked about my plans for the weekend and, at the end of conversation said:”…keep your eye on the phone, you never know!” I laughed and asked why would she bring my innocent phone up? She also laughed with me, saying:” …no reason” and hung up.
All that day went by very fast, and I was coming home in the similar overcrowded bus. The way back took very long, besides there was no seat and I had to stand for whole hour among the crowd of mostly young people. There were college students, coming in and out of the bus.
I have a very careless habit. My bags and backpacks are always half open, and there is not too difficult to catch me off-guard. Once I was so much consumed by some work, translating a contract in a public internet club with extreme crowd of youngsters, that I absolutely lost touch with an outside world. After taking out some document from my bag, I pushed it behind my back and completely forgot about it. I had a very convenient wallet with all my necessary valuables in it, including three hundred dollars for that month’s rent, which was left in my half-opened bag right on a top of everything. Only a very lazy and decent person wouldn’t be tempted to take it and run away. Of course, my smart neighbor had turned out to be fast and furious, only in five minutes after I did that movement with the bag he used a moment and disappeared without a trace. I had discovered my loss in another five minutes after that, when I had to pay for the printed contract. There was no use to blame anyone in my stupid carelessness. The club management tried to help me later, let me view some footage of the surveillance cameras, but they were set up only at the mall entrances, not in the club itself. And there was nobody to search for as I didn’t even bother to look at that guy’s face.
***
That evening in overcrowded bus the thought about moving my backpack from the back to my chest actually had flashed in my head, so the youngsters wouldn’t be tempted to borrow something from it and run away, but I did absolutely nothing. A second thought, which made me smile, was about Ellen’s remark about the phone. I remembered that my phone was in one of the pockets of the backpack and that it had the network of all contacts, which actually was the major tool of my survival. Partially from being tired, partially from laziness I had not bothered to even move my finger to prevent a possible theft, instead I decided to watch the crowd and be ready for anything that might happen. It seemed to me that I was able to catch them red-handed at the spot.
A few stops before mine a very handsome, well-dressed guy hoped on the bus and assumed a position right behind me. The bus continued rolling, while I kept thinking about Ellen’s warning. Right before my stop that young hunk started to push his way around me, even though he could easily exit right after me. At that moment I finally did what I had to do for some time ago: I moved the backpack and started to search for the phone. Some doomed thought that I knew all along that it would have happened instantly crossed my mind, I instinctively knew that Ellen’s warning wasn’t for nothing and that people meet each other for some reason: my phone actually was stolen!
The thoughts like that were chaotically jumping in my head, while at the same time I was making decisions in the situation. The young cutie actually made his way ahead of me and landed outside of the bus first. I followed him and, for some unknown reason, went step in step after him, although my house was in the opposite direction. He speeded up his pace, but I caught up with him in a few fast lapses and stood face to face with him. He kept his hands in the pockets of his coat and eyes down. I took a deep breath and blurted out: “I know you have stolen my phone, please give it back to me!” He lifted his eyes, pulled out his hand and gave me my precious phone with the words: “This one?”
***
P.S. That was the end of the first version of my short story. All my friends, probably, shrugged their shoulders after reading it and even called me “coo-coo” for my literature splash. They might have thought that I should consider myself lucky to have them, so someone actually reads all this and smiles. And I too had added a little note about the story – that I had no idea what exactly meant by it, it just happened…
Of course, Ellen was the first one to receive it because it was written about her and dedicated to her as well. It has been a year since we have been living by the two opposite sides of the ocean, but our connection is still intact. We still feel each other’s changes of mood and keep in touch all the time. What happened in between my sending her this story and something that actually happened to her has left us in absolute awe…
It has been a few days since I sent this story out. Today I am receiving a very emotional letter from Ellen. Her message has two attachments, but none of them wants to open. It makes me more anxious, I want to know what is there and demand some help from her, though it is a middle of the night there. It seems that my vibes reach her, and she sends me a different version of those letters in fifteen minutes. Something tells me that there is something unusual in them.
Her first letter describes how her phone was stolen just a day ago. She tells how she hurriedly finished talking on a phone, dropped it in the bag and went into the bus. Of course, being my clone, she has the same careless habit and leaves the bag half-opened. Two men were going into the same bus and in the moment when she was about to step in they pushed her from both sides. She even told them to be careful and more decent with women. Shortly after the bus started moving she felt that something was not right. She fished the bag for her phone, but it was gone. Her first reaction was to turn to one of those guys and confront him, she did so, but he said that he had nothing to do with it and that he was going to see his wife in the hospital. He also said that she just gave birth and he even carried her coat, which was actually hanging from his folded arm. At that moment she couldn’t think clearly, and it didn’t occur to her that the rout of that bus has never passed any hospitals. She got off at the next stop and called police. Investigation took some time that day but she was lucky, the phone was traced down and found in the pocket of that same “new daddy”. Her Agatha Christy ‘ s instincts have done her good !
That was a very strange likeness of my recollection of a similar event and hers, but the most interesting staff was in her next letter.
When she came home that day she continued reading my story because she didn’t have time to finish it before leaving that morning. All she read then was my strange brooding about platonic connections, but when she had finished reading it in the evening, she was speechless: some time ago something had forced her to warn me; while I was trying to remind her about it right before it happened to her. The cards were not laid in her favor then; my warning was left unheard between the lines, but nevertheless, I was trying to reach for her somehow!
Well, all this left us thinking – on which level our souls are connected and how to explain it?!