Are You a Couple?

I had dinner in a city restaurant recently with my very dear friend Chris. We eat there fairly regularly and have unfailingly amusing and animated conversations. Then we wander around the city for an hour or two, digesting and discussing. This is Chris dressed for work as Christo the Clown.

This time, as we left the restaurant, something very unusual happened. A smiling stranger walked up to us and said "Excuse me, are you a couple?"

He was a big guy and his breath smelled faintly, but not unpleasantly, of mingled legal and illegal drugs. Chris was a little wary, but the guy seemed harmless enough to me. "Pardon?" Chris said.
The guy smiled again. "I saw you guys eating and you just seemed really happy. I wondered if I could ask you a couple of questions."

Chris and I are not a couple, nor have we ever been a couple. However, we must have been feeling quite coupley in that surreal moment because, by unspoken agreement, we decided to play along. "Sure" I said. "What do you want to know?"

The guy introduced himself, and we introduced ourselves. Then he asked me what had first attracted me to Chris. I thought about it for a moment and answered truthfully that when I first met Chris I had been in a relationship with someone else, but that I had been attracted to his confidence and directness. I remembered a comment Chris made at our first meeting, that the meaning of our personal stories is all in how we spin them. So I was attracted to his insight, and his buff street performer's body.

Then the guy turned to Chris and asked him the same question. He paused, then said that when we first met he was struck by how present I was in the moment, and the quality of my attention. He explained that it wasn't until years later during a long meditation that he realised how significant those first moments were, and what a powerful impact I have had on his life.

The guy said his goodbyes and shook our hands. He wandered off into the night, presumably to seek out other couples. Chris and I continued our walk in silence for a moment. "That was really lovely," I said. He agreed.

It really was. Chris is one of my very best friends, but in all the years we've been meeting for dinner and wandering around the city for half the night, we've never talked about what it was that first brought us together and holds us together still. It took a stranger (and they don't come much stranger than this guy) to bring us to that moment of sharing.

So I don't feel remotely guilty for misleading the guy just a little bit. We're not a couple, but we do love each other.