I hugged a stranger on the street last week. A few days later, a stranger hugged me.
Grasping for an explanation, I ask myself, "Self, what's going on?" As I struggle to answer that question, the world spins around me. I can't clear my mind, for it is a raging cauldron bubbling over with hug-related emotions.
It felt nice, for starters. That first hug I gave to that stranger down on the Common near the Park Street T stop was weird but nice. I mean, for hugging a stranger the experience was surprisingly nice. If you had asked me beforehand what it would be like to hug a stranger on the street, I would probably have offered you an alphabetical array of adjectives from "awkward" and "bizarre" to "yucky" and "zany." But instead, I find myself settling in there with a pleasant, comfortable, middle of the road n-word: nice. It certainly was.
That lone hug never really struck me as grand or significant, however, until a few days later when, on a very different street in a very different town, a stranger approached me and with very little warning gave me a big hug. Was this karma? My hug to a stranger had come back to me in the form of a hug from a stranger. The planets were aligned, or at least they had come together in some sort of celestial embrace, spreading major hug-vibes across the galaxy. Of course, that moment, that second hug, was not particularly nice at all. But it was something - it gave me some perspective, it gave me reason to pause, and it gave me a serious case of the willies.
Here's what happened. Travelling downtown on a fine Wednesday afternoon, I exited the Park Street T stop, where I found, to my confusion and curiosity, a twenty-something young man neatly dressed, holding a large sign affixed to a long stick. Big letters, scrawled across the sign with magic markers, spelled out two deceptively simple words, "Free Hugs."
I stood back at first - until the guy embraced one young woman and then turned directly to me, nodding his head. The man's voice floated through the unseasonably warm fall air: "And you?" He said it as simply as if he had been asking his best friend to go for a jog or offering his mother a glass of water at the dinner table. But no. The implication of these two words was undeniable. I answered, for reasons still unclear to me today, without even parting my lips; I moved in his direction slowly. He came to me swiftly and wrapped me in his arms. It lasted but a second, maybe two. My mind was clear. I felt at peace. At that moment I asked myself, "A free hug?" Today, I ask myself, "What was I thinking?"
Basking in our comfortable post hug glow, he looked at me and said, "The answer is kindness." We each went our own ways: I back to work; he off into the Common to deliver more hugs. "The answer is kindness?" The answer to what?
Quick, skip ahead... my experience on the Common had become a distant memory, a foggy tall tale. Returning home from Tisch a few nights later, I pass by a group of young people - local high schoolers, I imagine. They are hanging out, skateboarding, basically just chilling. They're the kind of young gentlemen I generally lump under the category "punks" (a lucky few might in fact warrant the title "lazy ass punk"). Suddenly, one of these fellows breaks from his posse and approaches me. He gazes from under his hooded sweatshirt and says with quiet force, "HUG." Punk puts his arms around me and I stand still, frozen, I do not return the hug. We stand there for some time, maybe five or six seconds, an eternity.
Finally, I gather up some semblance of noise, some faint groaning attempt at speech emanating from deep within my gut: "Alright, dude, that's been nice. Enough." I wriggle my way out from under him. He goes his way, I go mine. Turning in his direction, I see him raise his hand at me as he shouts simply, "HUG." Once more I cannot say a thing. I let the confusion pass through me. I am an empty slate, all hugged-out, Zen bliss.
So what's all this hug business about? After my first encounter I couldn't stop from wondering. The placement of the word "Free" in front of "Hugs" prompted me to consider the possibility of what it meant for a hug not to be free.
Can a hug be purchased? With what? Money? Do hug prostitutes exist? Hug whores? Are there hug brothels and hug pimps for all those huggers of ill-repute? Can you look up a hug escort in the yellow pages and find a young lady named Traci with long blond hair and - of course - strong arms who will join you for dinner and, later that night, when you return home, wrap her arms around you, her palms meeting your back as she gives you an amazing hug that only a woman of her experience and talent is equipped to provide?
But we do pay in some way, whenever it is we do a little hugging. Perhaps with those we know, it is something less tangible. Emotional commitment? A willingness to make oneself vulnerable or uncomfortable? The risk of a mis-hug is always there, and no one wants that. Hugs are weird. They may appear innocuous, but they are anything but.
I consider myself a typical hugger, reserving the action for family, dear friends, and occasionally mere acquaintances if I've been drinking a bit at a party and Bon Jovi is pumping from the speakers. And yet, suddenly I don't know what to think. I am confused and unsure. I might have to reconsider my entire philosophy on hugs and surely the only way to fully understand that confusion is to seek it out once more.
I imagine roaming the Tufts campus and beyond, offering a person or two a hug as they cross my path. So be wary. The day might come, maybe sooner, maybe later, when you are wandering to class, eating at Dewick, or doing your laundry, and we will meet. I will ask you, dear stranger, if you would like a free hug. Please oblige. I promise it will be nice.
