Member-only story
Complete Stranger Love + Eros and Me by Merve Tarhan
“With friends like these, who needs enemies?” How many times have you heard that old saw? In my life, it can apply as much to relatives. For this reason (and because strangers are sources of great story ideas — read about my novels to-be-published here), let’s lavish some love on complete strangers!
Sure, I’ve experienced stranger danger. Yet more often than not, meeting friends I don’t know has rewarded me with the complete opposite of harm. When my car has stalled, unknown helpers pushed it out of traffic. One handed me a bottle of water. Another let me use his phone to call home. Unfamiliar folk can usually be counted on for directions. Without me asking, they proffer coins when I’m short at the cash register. A couple of weeks ago when my shopping cart got stuck at one of those dang magnetic fences, the kind that wouldn’t let me exceed the parking lot even though it’s being paved meant I had to park a distance away, someone watched my buggy while I ran inside to ask an employee to unlock the wheels. As a child, nice strangers offered hope that life didn’t have to hurt. Nowadays, chatting with random people lets me step out of the bubble of like-minded and like-backgrounded people I usually interact with.
Who can be safer to broach touchy subjects with than someone who knows neither me nor anyone in my life? Without fear of…
