The best kebabs

Coincidence level: 7/10 Category: Is it destiny?

There is one person in my life with whom I only crossed paths briefly, but shall always remember. If our lives paths were like strings that just touched and then parted ways, never to touch again, I will always imagine the strings as having wrapped around each other tightly a couple times at the inflection point before parting.

I met a beautiful Brazilian woman with the most haunting green eyes on the Dom Luís bridge in Porto. Those eyes looked like they came right out of National Geographic. And she was the one person I shall always remember meeting in space.

She had moved to Porto for school and then ended up working there for a few years after school. She played tour guide for me, showing me various beautiful spots, including  Jardim Do Morro on Gaia side of the bridge (where we shared a bottle of wine as we watched the slow sun set), the world’s most beautiful McDonald’s (a bunch of stained glass and chandeliers inside), and, of course, the streets with all of those clubs, Plano B notwithstanding. It was still somewhat of a college town, and she told me the parties usually didn’t get going until 2am or so.

We spent a couple days hanging out as kids do, mostly drinking beers outside — on the grass at Base underneath Clerigos tower, and then in a park sitting at the edge of a pond with our feet dangling in, where she told me she felt that she lived life too quickly, and I told her I wanted to live it more slowly together.

She told me, as we sat in the grass, that she’d never been in love before — well, maybe once, she said, but that she tended to leave places quickly and recycle friends every 6 months. She said when she left her boyfriend in Brazil, he was still not over her after 9 months or so, and she said she’d cried for just one day and then was over it. It made me feel like she couldn’t feel feelings. It was so bizarre to me, as I explained to her that I couldn’t help but fall in love, that I was a love addict of sorts, that I’d been in love with multiple people at once, and vice versa. I told her I might’ve been always in love, that half of my 16 tattoos were for 8 different lovers (and those were just the memorable ones), and she remarked that her tattoos were only for her.

“I wonder how I can be a little bit more like you?” she said.

“Yes, I wonder how you could have some more of me in you,” I said teasingly, and even though her English wasn’t that great, she got the joke.

She kissed me so fervently at a late night kebab place that my heart almost thumped right out of my chest. And then casually held my hand walking down the street, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. She’d go on to kiss me many more times in public as if defiantly — ducked in a doorway on a side street where people were raving just a street down, and in the backseat of a car as we sped through a dark tunnel.

And after a day of surfing formidable waves in Aveiro, I met her for a meal of Francesinha, a decadent grilled cheese type situation, if only a croque madame was filled with even more layers of meat and then drenched in tomato sauce (the best part was to ask for extra sauce and to dip fries in, she told me).

She talked of Ayahuasca and love of wine and we did have a lot of fun together.

She told me her favorite band was Queen and that she’d never been with another woman, even though she’d felt the attraction before.

Afterward, I left town to Lisbon, and sent her some writing I’d written for her, right in the main square in Lisbon, sitting outside enjoying the sun by the sea.

I never heard from her again. She’d invited me to go to Berlin with her and some friends, but, well, we never made it that far.

The strange part of the story? Well, we hadn’t kept in contact, but when I was in Budapest, I randomly looked at her social media. For whatever reason, I thought of her, and I looked.

Turns out, she was in Budapest at the exact same time with her new writer boyfriend (she must’ve met him right after she met me). And clearly in love. This person who told me she couldn’t love. Who wanted to be a bit more like me. Now she was fully in love, and with another writer! And somehow in the same city I was in at the same time. I was a bit jealous.

I didn’t see her in Budapest, of course. Actually I never saw her again.

The last part of the story? Well, I returned to Porto a year later. She happened to be out of town that weekend, getting married to that writer guy.

So maybe she had retained in her some part of me after all, and for that I could only be glad.

. . .