the solipsist in love

On loving strangers

I say to myself sometimes that I am in love with faces. In the right mood, I can study one for hours, the curves and shadows, and feel nothing but warm fascination, a desire to reach out with my entire being to caress this emblem of human fragility and courage. But this is not to say that I am a kind or friendly person. And it’s not that I fall in love with every face I see. Tonight in class I sat next to a man who enjoyed making gratuitous inane remarks when we got into our small discussion groups. And I was forced by politeness to listen and respond, which meant making eye contact. His face drooped asymmetrically around the eyes; folds of thick flesh sagged from his cheeks. But worst of all was his mouth: it was as though some tiny fanged rodent had gnawed away a hole between his two front teeth, from which a grey rot spread outward. I was ashamed of my revulsion but I’m sure I couldn’t hide it. He smelled bad, too.

From an artist’s perspective I might have drawn him, felt some compassion for the character that lay upon the hills and valleys of aging skin that decorated his skull. But I was not an artist at that moment, as I am often not, especially in public. I was merely a petty, selfish brute, drawn in upon myself and carefully masking a blind snarl.

I believe I could fall in love with anyone, but it’s a self-deception. In a figure-drawing class in college I came within minutes to love each model, and I believed this was a pure aesthetic love for the human form. In retrospect it could have been their confidence I loved, their self-love radiating toward me unencumbered by clothing; or perhaps they had been hired because of the beauty of their bodies, however unconventional. I draw friends, lovers, family, and I love them more for having carefully recorded the slopes of their noses, the way their eyelids sweep and fold. But this does not make me a better person. It doesn’t even make me a better friend, lover, or relative. The love I’m talking about is completely unconnected to a relational emotion or skill.

Increasingly I am startled by my own coldness. I spend days or weeks isolated from all but the most minute human contact. When I ventured to the grocery store today to refill a prescription, I automatically held the elevator door for a young sweatsuited woman trotting toward me. She said thank you in a small, kind voice, and it shocked me. My response was a mute nod, maybe ten percent of a smile, which I imagine must have looked more like a twitching lip. When I said “thank you very much” to the pharmacist – the unconscious calculations of her helpfulness and efficiency had warranted this particular canned response – she surprised me by smiling and saying “you’re welcome” in a friendly voice. Somehow those two tiny interactions left me feeling more human than I had ten minutes earlier. Did I have actual interactions with these strangers? Why should a rote politeness make me feel anything at all? If their words were false or hollow, is my being moved by them a symptom of my own naivete? What is it to be human with someone, after all? Did I owe something more to these women who expressed a simple momentary warmth? Where do you draw a line in connecting with strangers? Do you miss your stop on the bus ride to hear the rest of the story of their awful week, year, life? About their sister’s wedding, about a child’s broken arm? How do you end something you just started? How do you say, “it was nice to meet you, and I have no interest in ever seeing you again”? Does that hurt for everyone else to hear as much as it does for me? What is the point of becoming attached when the one assured outcome is heartbreak?

I have the capacity to fall in love with a face, the same way I fall in love with bodies when I practice massage therapy. I love them for all the humanity they contain. To access that humanity in this way – detached but attentive, even fond – is to make myself feel more human for a few moments, without the risk that comes with revealing myself in turn.

It’s nice to know one’s capacity for making beautiful things out of ugliness – one’s own especially.