794: So Close and Yet So Far
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Very, yes, you'll produce a here or show .

your your tone of .

voice betrays a lack of enthusiasm for the story are about to tell me. Yes.

I do not find this funny. I find this deeply encounter all very happiness .

is one of our Younger and newer producers. here. IT was other staff members are ready to come into the studio with me and tell me this story last year when we first ran today show, because they thought I was funny, even if value didn't.

okay. IT takes place a subway.

Okay.

okay. So I get on the subway and I see this person I know on the same subway train.

but that's a coincident IT doesn't happen very often.

No, i've never seen this person on the stop before. No, and I like I I should say something to this person, and i'm like thinking in my head and I say something, I should say something. And then he looks at me.

He makes like, direct eye contact. And I like, great, this is my chance. I'm going to say something right now.

And I like open my mouth and like and then he starts looking at his phone. I'm like, okay, he that actually wasn't direct die contact. That was like staring through you eye contact. How how are you for him?

Six feet.

Six year so close, right but so far she's by the subway doors. He's at the pole in the middle of ill.

So then anyways in my head and like, okay, he'll probably get off in the next up is not a big deal. He hasn't seen me. I'll just like pret. I don't see him but then a few stops later he has not gotten off and he comes to stand right next to me like shoulder to shoulder and i'm like, oh my god, like he's definitely notice me. He's going to say something I should say something back and i'm like looking and he's just like fluently cally spelling on his phone, reading something really important, listening to something I don't know and like, okay, okay I won't say anything again .

because you don't want .

interpret them yeah because I like if you wanted to talk to me he would say .

something SHE gives thinking you'll get off any minute after he went to stand by the door my pie but doesn't get off not the next station or the next or the next in someone when you realizes doesn't be a long right like this isn't one .

or two stops this is like a thirty five minutes I we ride where this person that I know very well is the next time i'm not seeing anything and our shoulder are like next to one and others and the subway like counting and I feel his shoulder are my shoulder and like he's going notice but it's truly to say anything at this point.

I just passing that because now the fact that you haven't said something makes IT more awkward if suddenly you go like.

oh, it's you exactly but then it's in my head. I'm like, it's even more awkward if he turns to me and his like, has he been here the whole time and hasn't said anything? So in my head, I think this is a good idea. And like, I take out a magazine and I flipped open like as if I am reading IT, but I go like this .

so you're holding the magazine .

up to your face so he won't see me.

So it's were describing her valley is holding the magazine to her face. So the top of the magazine is near her hairline. So she's like A A nearly blind monk trying to squint at words in a bible or like an extra in an old musical world, a sky masters and or any name or whoever was going to walk into a subway car and everybody in the car has a magazine told of his or her face so they can pull them down on q and start singing magazine is too coaster eyes to actually read IT.

No Normal human reads magazines in this way. And the whole time of thinking, he's gonna a notice that I didn't say anything and why? And I and I keep thinking, should I have just said something? I don't know.

Do you think is possible that he's having the same experience you are having?

Absolutely not. why. I just .

know that how?

Because this, I don't think people feel. I know, I know people feel this way to, people feel this way.

you a person and you feel this way.

But no, I don't think he notices me, or if he does that, this makes us so much choice.

Is there somebody who you scared of?

No.

it's not like you're scared of them.

No one not scared of them, but scared in a Normal scared kind .

of what you mean by.

That this guy is my boss .

was IT me. yes. Are you serious?

Yes, one hundred percent.

I absolutely did not see. You see.

I knew IT. But I, like, I was sweating underneath my winter jacket. IT was like one of the worst forty minutes of my life.

Yeah, I didn't see if I had seen you. I would have said hello.

okay. Can I tell you another detail that's important? You, this is so weird, you weren't wearing a suit and in my head, i'd never seen you without a suit. So I thought maybe he doesn't want to be perceived like I was just like maybe this is iras private time.

So IT was like seeing a teacher outside of the classroom when you're in elementary school. IT just seemed wrong that you were seeing me there without my uniform.

Yes, you were wearing sneakers. I'd never seen you were sneakers. And also like I I say anything now.

What was I doing .

frantically .

screwing on your phone? When you say frantically screwing to my phone.

I was .

frantic for, like a thirty minute subway, I think actually like reading something. I was fran, anyway, I had, I was like, he's frantically trying, avoided me so he's scrolling.

Do you think I would get mad at you?

No, but I thought you'd be like, IT was like, hey, I didn't say anything .

for a recent value.

Can I see your personal question?

yeah.

Were you raised by people who didn't provide you a lot of reassurance that they liked you?

Yeah, i'm like a soviet emigrant, though.

This kind of hard to get my head around IT that he and I stood next to each other on a train for half an hour, and our shoulder were knocking against each other, and I didn't notice her, and he said nothing and had a magazine to her face, like a force field protecting yourself and keeping a .

separate eh, can I ask this last question? Why don't you see me?

Oh, I can totally tell you why I can see you. okay. I just really can shut out the world really, really well and just decide to focus on something and then in a like a work context really handy like I can can write anywhere but um in personal situations all the time, I can I can be in the same room as somebody and be thinking about something, focus on something.

I totally shut them out like says something to me and I don't even hear IT, which is bad. And the people of my life don't love this. And this thing of the train is an example of IT.

Yeah, yeah. It's something I feel the exact opposite in a bad way.

You just always aware of others around you hyper ware.

to the point where I make up things maybe, or I misperceived yeah.

That seems hard.

yeah.

Day on our show, we have other story of people who are so close, but so far that one is about two people of the closest relations is possible. They engaged to be married, but they have this distance between them. They cannot make sense of that two media ti g natural as a story of somebody as close as her actual bedside. And also in another way, and possibly far away, will be easy. Chicago, this american life, amErica glass, stay with us.

That one love and other exports, how much can you trust whether somebody who think is caused you really is close to you? Saito jan Thomas junior was thinking about that question after visiting with some of his childhood friends. So IT was born in c.

Early on, but moved to the stage when he was a little. The story starts in free town during recent trip home heads up. Story acknowledges the existence of sex.

When I left early on at eight years old, I left behind a small group of friends I did everything with as kids we would run around the city place, soccer at the beach. That's how we bonded. Now they were grown. When I go back, we go to the gym is how we pick up where we left off. My friends have this one, particularly in they, like it's called sonics, one.

two, three and four, five more, six more, seven.

Sonics sits at the end of a dirt road in free town, a small space in a quint Greening yellow building. IT has no air conditioning in relentless heat, so the guys are usually drenched in sweat like oil dob, extras and nineties RMB videos. I come here almost every time, I mean, alone.

But then the last time we went, I discovered that for many of the guys here, all their crunches and squats had a much deeper purpose than looking good. The gym, my friends told me, but this is a special luck for Young, sy, old Young men who wanna move to amErica or europe. They believe that if you use the weight here to scope your body, make IT beautiful enough, you will find a wife overseas.

And that sonics has a track record to prove IT, a member named savage, told me about how full proof this method has been for previous members. He's speaking in create out pair phrase, after we now ever gets my situation where we get member, we meet with j and they not may come up together. We've never had a sonics member who date someone visiting from overseas who doesn't end up marrying them. They make up of discover you have a high .

successful y yes, yes, we have biotic of them by age of them.

Another member of sonics, this guy with perfectly scope that arms called soltan, jumped in to name their legends. The guys they've heard found wives, overseas success stories to get passed around at the gym. Bis .

sallam bdk.

There was a driver .

who showed .

erred a black american woman around free time while he was visiting, always making sure to look presentable, doing IT. He made a good impression. They got married, and he just went to america.

A few month ago, sciences alpha, there was the handsome photographer who got a random phone call from A C. O. Union woman living in london.

IT was a wrong number, but he charmed his way into a conversation, sent her some photos of his bics. And they ve got married last year. He's now living with her in london.

Next sets. Next sets.

I respected the hustle, but their planes somehow didn't sit right with me. The idea of guys, I grew up with men in my country using their bodies to get overseas IT may be uncomfortable, but then I SAT down with a few of the guys, and we started to talk. And I realized beneath the surface, beyond all the muscles, confidence in bravado, all of these men were Carrying ing around a broken heart, which brings me to the guy I wanted to talk to the most, my friend, mark MC. Mark mario, mark mario.

how do .

I believe?

How do I be?

Mark, I grew up in the same neighborhood, but we didn't really get to know each other until we were grown. He's a good looking guy who's easy to talk to, not the greatest singer. But we were hanging out one day, and he decided to send me .

his favorite love song here. I say you to see life for me. They want to.

Marius, how do I breathe? One of my favorite songs is a song about a guy trying to piece together his emotional life after losing the woman he loves. It's basically mark story is why he's the one of my friends who believes most frequently that finding love overseas is the way to the girl he's thinking about is someone he grew up with.

Mark says he was the smartest kid in their fifth grade class, but he was always approached, and he like that. He liked that they could joke together. After lessons, they would go to the beach and talk for hours, getting to know each other. He says he was the first person who taught him how to love like this. One day, he walked home from prayers, and as soon as he opened the door, he saw her standing there with all his best friends from school, his family, everyone singing.

everybody to let me go. It's like, uh, I, I, I, I point this a laboratory prise .

party for his fourteen birthday, complete with all his favorite food and all the people he loved. And on top of all that, he gave me a kiss. Don't you chick on your mouth, lips, lips .

in of everybody in. They kiss me so special to me, and all kiss when you ever kiss me.

So that was the most special kids you've ever had. That was like the best, the best kids you've ever had ever.

Neither of them came from money, far from IT. But mark was drawing up with a single parent when his mother couldn't afford to care for him. He lived with his grandpa, but then his grandpa died.

Then his mother died. And mark, I became an orin. He says his relationship with this woman was one of the few things in his life that felt stable with her.

He could dream, he could escape into one of their long talks about how sweet their lives would be in the future. I restarted to her to get her side with this, but shouldn't want to be involved with my story. And SHE wouldn't confirm anything, mark said. The way mark tells IT, though they had decided SHE would work in the energy industry, he would become a lawyer. They want to three to four kids a house, since alone maybe they travel sometimes I love the way he describes the love he had for her.

So good to me in no .

one SHE was so real to me.

If I get or no get in, no one knew I. I look like love with me.

Shouldn't care if I had money or didn't have money. Shouldn't care how I looked. I love you.

had for me to love for you at.

And you thought to yourself like, this is, this is going to be my wife.

yeah. Going to be any future. Since then.

after they graduated high school, SHE got a scholarship to attend university abroad. Mark says he tried to put in a good word for him to get the same scholarship, but I didn't work out still. He encouraged her to go, and for three years they continue their relationship via what's up in facebook.

He told him he was one of the top students in her class back home. Mark was struggling. He had no money, no parents, no connections in a country with no reliable jobs for Young people. His dreams of becoming a lawyer were fading. But what if his girlfriend d's success was starting to get around the wider CEO Young? An community guys were sliding into her dms on social, and whatever that happened, he would tell mark and then blocked them immediately until someone new approach her.

When I 你 当 是 错了 没 that I have this guy。

The guy was a ceylon doctor. He had seen one picture of marx's girlfriend and decided that he would be his wife. Mark says he tried to ignore him, but the man contacted her family and formally asked for her hand. SHE told mark they were pressuring her to accept, telling her that a marriage with this man could not only change her future, but her entire families too.

He watched as the nine years of their relationship unraveled over a short series of tearful WhatsApp calls nothing market say nothing he could do, nothing he could offer her or her family was enough to convince them to choose him over a doctor. A few months later, he says he received the ring via D. H, and was married to this stranger.

I don't who don't know. Where are you from? 我是 农。

After all the plans of all the promises, disappointments. So this changes everything because of you meet someone in our doctor government who hurts me the most time life.

The visionary feminine writer bell hooks says, love is made up of seven parts wherever someone is practicing care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, trust and open, honest communication, there is love even in economically poor environment, like alone. But talk on a mark. I found myself thinking more about what love needs to survive.

What conditions can make the act of loving easier or more difficult to sustain? Mark felt like he couldn't compete because of money, and he was right. Not everyone has equal access to love.

I feel like kind, what the simple, kind free you .

feel like cry, but you are shape to .

cry in front to be.

In the years since I left alone, I had fantasize about the lives of people back home. Our country had been ravaged by years of war that left a lot of hard ache, suffering in poverty in a way. But I believe that through all of that, people had each other, that they had this unbreakable, able bond that was vital to our survival. But mark was telling me that was wrong.

I don't think the love is not here. If IT is another ten percent or five percent.

if IT is only ten percent or five percent, have true love. IT wasn't just mark. Almost every guy I talked to win free town told me the same thing.

I felt like there was a lovelessness among the men in alone. Every time I raised the question and I talk to around eighteen or nineteen people, they launched into their own stories of heartbreak. I heard IT from the taxi drivers, coconut salesmen, hotel bell hops, random guys on the street, women too.

The guys on exim said they're all gone through IT and independently landed on the same math, asked them what percent of people without money and alone find true love? Cent of to love without morning in america. The same question about finding love without money, they say sixty to eighty percent.

If love was like everything else these gas could afford in balloon, if IT really was a luxury, IT made sense to me that they thought the best course of action was to look forward abroad. IT was a way to solve two problems that once they can move to a country where poverty was less rampant and true love was more accessible.

But I wondered about IT, where would IT lead them for? Mark IT LED him to the place most of us turn to for finding love these days, the internet. Let me see the first message you sent this person.

This one is .

really long.

Mark got on facebook and he started sliding into as many dms as possible. He didn't care about age or race or religion, just anyone who was over eighteen and overseas who might be interested in a relationship. Okay, so so just tell me what you're saying in these messages.

Just read them. Hello, what's the show? 那 还有 阿姨 在在 说， 还是 在 有 一句 在那， 然后 再 连续 来信。

So you're writing a lot.

You're writing a lot.

You're writing a lot. She's only responding with like one word, two word answers in his search for a new relationship. Mark messages over one hundred .

and fifty random people on facebook.

的 微信 实现 了 卖家 amErica .

america。 Laz.

there was a single mom in brazil who liked his muscles, the serial only on student in sydney who talked to him because he reminded her of home. The nurse in london who thought he was good banter whenever he came across married woman, he would keep a pushing, but he was hoping to connect with almost .

anyone overseas. IT makes you feel good, like something to someone that that is far if what is in america, because we feel like I just close my, I like come. I feel like mean, a listening .

to mark IT was like I was watching an episode of ninety days, Fiona, but seeing the side of the story, I always wanted to see the version where the hopes and dreams of the foreign spouse were finally sent of stage. My friend mark was eagerly searching for a love that could transform his life. He made a few connections, but most women, we're interested in a long business relationship with the guy all the way in west africa. So mark struck out again and .

again one significant day. I, he found A B is .

my friend.

She's my gl friend because we don't get magazines at because of the distance she's in america, in in africa.

Lottie rebeca, busily, was a black woman. Mark met through facebook, and he just loved how legal her name sounded. Laddie, rebeca abbey sly, you gotta a say, all three. SHE had kind eyes, a warm smile, and he lived in the state and market.

never heard of a in the morning. There he is, midnight. One, two, two clock A M in. The more in the morning, I really, really, we will, just until five o'clock or six o'clock. A M only morning hours.

but the nine hour time difference wasn't the only obstacle. There was another distance.

too. He was born on nine and forty nine SHE, just on seven years of age this past september. And did you .

know that before you click on her profile?

No, a seventy year old .

woman wasn't what mark expected. Most of the guys of the gym who'd been successful had ended up with wives closer to their own age. But while mark had been casting a wide net in search of a relationship that could change his life, he was also open to meeting a new friend.

So he didn't always think the age thing was flooded. And he was come about IT, too. In her very first message, SHE roasted him about how Young he was.

This is, hey, who are you by? What are you look by? What do you want? As as I am a little boy, i'm in mind.

How old are you when you met her?

You one, twenty two, twenty, twenty two.

Mark was Young, but he's a good listener. Before long, laudi was telling him all about her life. SHE had gone through a lot of heartbreak, too.

Sh'd been married three times, had five children, and after one of her husband's had become abusive, SHE needed is to get away. That's how he ended up in alaska. A SHE had made the best of IT, started her own business, caring for the elderly, and was moving on with her life. He wanted to know about mark too.

What about my life? How I lost my father? I lost my, my, my, my mother said, and often cds. And like was having this sympathy for me was he was feeling sorry for me.

For mark. This thing that began as a friendship was starting to grow. He saw a potential for romantic relationship, but lady struggle to see IT even though he felt like he wanted to.

The age difference was too much, mark says. Most people feel that way. So when you, whenever you tell people .

about relationship, it's no matter get on talk together, on thinking and life, people most anything you doing his life. So if you live to, if you stop by to listen to everyone, everyone that towards you achieve to give them .

mart first told me about lady. I had questions too, like I wondered, was my friend now a Bonnie ed rollman camma or something? Because IT is true that the way that he was looking for love gave him the solo wet of a roman scammer.

Scammers asked people questions about their personal life tweet messages. They try to earn trust before stealing your money and disappearing. But what mark was telling me about his relationship maybe believe that this wasn't that mark never asked for money, and he was putting in a lot of time with fladda warm.

You are close to my heart. I am happy for you that night.

I do. Do I have work up from sleep? I help now.

Months passed, and mark addy kept talking, developing a love ethics, where they both showed up for each other at one point.

Shock, we said, did you? Did you? Is breakfast this morning?

Did you breakfast? This .

morning is breakfast .

and I said, what is breakfast?

Breakfast say, okay, I, I, I please. I just here and I think I have breakfast is the politicians and politicians first lady, I said, I pm, sometimes evening in the evening.

lady asked about where mark stayed, and he told her he shared one room with three other people, and most night he would have to stand outside the house to talk to her so he wouldn't disturb his roommates. This is common. Most people in alone live on roughly two dollars a day market, making a little money playing soccer in some local leagues.

But IT wasn't enough to get by hearing about how mark was struggling, made lady upset, so he decided to start sending him money. Two hundred dollars covered for the entire year at a place all his own. He also paid for his grandma funeral. IT wasn't a huge amount, just what you could spare here .

and there, but I made her feel happy to help them. So yes, IT is fast. I just like. When I was when I closed my, I just think like she's in front of me.

What do you think you are providing her? What do you think you are giving her? How are you like contributing to the relationship? Because she's contributing money and she's contributing .

like financially.

So what do you think you were contributing to the relationship?

Love.

love and get or her.

I could see that a lot of relationships .

involve some kind of transaction. Each person brings what they can offer to the mix with laddy into money, at least partly, and with mark is his time and care more. Want to think about the controls of their relationship, the fact that they've never met in person and leave thousands of miles apart, not to mention the difference in age and experience IT makes me a little uneasy. So did you guys talk about sex? Like, did you talk about sex ever?

Everything about sex, everything.

So how did that? How is that if you don't mind me asking? So how how do you or .

make sex on the phone?

Your heads?

You guys had phone sex. Phone sex like talk when then down cry on the matches. okay?

Are you there? Can I? Can I put something there? Okay.

let me ask you this question. Actually, are you attracted to her?

yeah.

So what about, what about her you attracted to? Like what turns you on about her?

Even even SHE said to two years, or SHE still love back. But he said, just like.

Okay, so so you think when you and heard meat in person, you have no issue having sex .

with have no issue.

If i'm being real, my worry for mark isn't just about whether or not he's attracted to laddy. This is a darker place. My mind wonders off too.

It's hard not to see their relationship in the context of the explosion that happening in west africa right now. Sexual terrorism has been a growing problem in the gambier. For example, older women have been descending on the country in spending their money on sex with Young african men.

The phenomenon is so rampant that the gambian government stepped in demanding foreign visitor start this practice. But IT still continues. I don't think that's what's happening with mark and laddy, but there are enough similarities here to make me question.

In the half of me worried that my friend was being taken advantage of, the other half worried for lady, because mark talks so openly about what he hopes to get out of their relationship. What did you like about her? Like what? What did you feel .

that actually earlier that I want to accomplish my game, like I want to go to this or? Eb.

that's not, that's not feelings you have for her, that feelings you have for your dream. Those are two different things.

Yeah, if if she's going, if she's the one who is going to take me from here, then then.

then the feelings .

when your dreams become .

your feelings for her life. I'll be together. So god sends one home.

So you told her, you told her, if you take me out of here, I love you forever, basically. So, so SHE SHE knows that you there's something that you want. SHE SHE knows that there's something that .

you want beyond beyond her. yes. so.

I've been reaching out to laudi for weeks with no look to get her side of all of this. Then finally, early one morning, around three years.

hello, hello, hello.

SHE called me back and we talked for a while. I didn't know what to expect, but lotty was very open about her life. SHE told me more about her work, caring for the elderly, the grandson who put him up in her own apartment when he got older. And then, of course, we talked about her feelings from mark.

I know I can and see how very love with more, because I never double. No Young mean, I was just talking them as a friend.

Laudi can be a little hard to understand. Sometimes it's because of a botched innovation he went through years ago. But have to say, despite that, SHE doesn't come off as a kind of person who doesn't have agency over her life at seventy three, he can clearly hold .

their own and don't let you feel. Yeah, yeah. See that two years. My mother definitely .

taught me Better than to comment on a woman's age. But I will say in laddie's profile picture, SHE has a very youthful energy about her. In our conversation, SHE confirmed to all of what mark said about their relationship and how intensity connection was from the start.

I never anything like this. 阿弥陀佛 的。 When you are, mark met at that first year or so, what was going on in your life?

I was like that, you know, I wasn't happy. I was wronged. 哼， this are a high good to him.

We talk about lightning ther. I have doing some time, a little more more common in the house one day. 嗯， how happy I was. So you, you feel like he loves you for who you are? yeah.

Laddy said that he had been a while since men her age gave her a chance. IT had been more than ten years since her previous relationship, and with mark, he felt like he'd found something real. But some of the things he told me about her life were head spinning.

SHE told me about a violent fight with one of her adult kids in how, in a separate incident in two thousand and two, SHE was convicted of child abuse and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. IT made me worried for mark a little bit like, does he really know this person? When I told him about what laddy had said, he told me he wasn't aware of any of that stuff, but he didn't find the alarming. He said, after all the good she's done for him, he's not going to turn his back on her now.

After six months of a long business relationship and countless marathon phone sessions, marga what he was looking for, lady agreed to marry him. The initial plan was for her to go to alone, but her doctors told her the travel would be bad for her health. So instead they decided to bring mark to the states.

Here's mark, everything in my food, everything for the wedding SHE even choose the my best man, just to choose the in them for the church. yes. And everyone, everyone was within for for them to witness this mild.

Mark won ahead and applied for a visitors VISA to the U. S. And lady wrote an official letter to the U.

S. Embassy in salon, inviting him to come. Next step was an interview with a woman at the american embassy. SHE said.

on what is your name? I show her my name and who is this to you and she's my lover.

Then if you were asked a lot of questions, carefully grilling him about every detail of his plan, mark was nervous, but he was prepared. He knew laddie's addressed by heart. He feel like he had answered every question right until the end when .

the interviewer looked up, Better luck next time.

Yes, Better .

next time.

How did you? What did you say back?

I was .

like as.

I wasn't surprised that mark didn't get IT. It's always hard for someone like mark, someone without a job or house, to tie them to their home country to get a visitors VISA to america. Officials are afraid that people like that, basically poor people, won't have a reason to return.

It's messed up. And I feel for mark, in an instant, all the physical and emotional labor he'd invested to get to this point was White the way, aced by a stranger behind a desk. I've known a lot of folks since alone who've been denied a VISA, and mark responded to his rejection the way they all eventually do with optimism. Because what other choice is there in a situation like this?

That is the ABS moment for me.

Official thing .

was very official for an in, well, even when they don't issue VISA, i'm thought about that i'm not happy IT hurts me. What at the same time, i'm happy because I want there for an email.

You got to touch a piece of .

amErica and it's really, really a blessing to me.

After the failed interview at the embassy, marcelli tried to regroup and come up with a different plan, but her health worsened. Then one day last year, lady didn't answer the phone. When mark called for weeks, he couldn't reach her until finally SHE message him on facebook.

SHE told him he'd been in the hospital. At one point, her hearts stop. IT took them eight minutes to revive her when he got out of the hospital. Mark says SHE was more isolated than before, and her life felt more difficult.

Things that are easily hard for her, like she's all the in in a house people don't come to help sometimes shed for her IT is really I five times and every day I 在 里面 看 杯子。

Talk in a mark, I can tell that he's genuinely troubled by what that is been going through. Also true that since the downturn in her health, his circumstances have gotten worse. He says without the money he was sending, he got evicted. He doesn't always have money for food, but he insists, even though lady has stopped supporting him, he still feels responsible .

for her when he was supported in, when he was like he was okay, he was not sick. Now if he is like in this difficult time, he is not even working, 但是 没有 读出来， 就是 就 look， nothing does not, the love does not stop, because I love her, because I like to have, I love her, I relationship. So I love the way mark .

is talking about laddy here. IT reminds me of a business person talking about sunk cost, someone who's reluctant to give up on something they've invested in for a long time. IT brings me right back to my initial worry.

What does mark actually feel and what does he convincing himself he feels there's a party me that believes you, but then there's a party me that still like that makes IT doesn't look IT doesn't IT look right IT doesn't feel right like a literally IT look IT looks like, yeah IT looks like you're using her and she's using you IT looks like he is lonely and he wants to need to talk to so she's using you for that and you don't have money and you need somebody to fund you and take you out of this place so you're using her for that is IT looks like you guys are using each other and yeah, you guys love each other. You could very much love each other through that. But like, IT still looks very obvious to me what's happening here. IT looks very, look very clear to me that you to use them, they set back to use you. And I I just want, no, I just wanted know what what you think about that, or what you think about .

me saying that body. Not in anyone, really, really. I want people at .

the a billions.

in the a billions of people. One of one sees me here. Old woman, see me. It's really a blessing for me. Soon.

the U. S. Population is actually in the millions. But you get the point when I talk to light, SHE also seemed to question how to think about the relationship.

You know him very well, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do I think he loves you? Yes.

I got the sense that a lot of people in her life have asked her the same thing for you. And honestly, IT was a hard question .

to answer. I think, I think mark loves you the way you love him, if that make sense.

IT didn't make sense. So later he asked me again.

do you think rock really love me?

I've asked him the same question, modi. I've asked him the same question up last down right in center and he says, and i'm going be, am not going like lady you I didn't believe him either because of the age difference, because of the cultural difference, because of the distance so I I don't believe him, but he he keeps saying yes.

He keeps saying he swears up and down that he loves you so I kind of have no choice but to believe and do you think he loves you? I feel he love me in my heart. I feel he loved me.

Ultimately, I don't think it's my place to aside where there are not two people love each other. That's a call only they get to make the way everyone else gets too. But I do know both mark and lighty have been through plenty of heart break, and I know heart break is just love without a place to call home.

The fact that two black people were struggling to find at home on damn near opposite ends of the earth, both from two vastly different cultures and generations, says a lot about how hard I can be for black folks to love and be loved in this world. For us, there's a whole host of historical, political and economic forces. They can send our search for partnership on wayward ves.

And after years of wandering, mark and lady felt like the'd finally landed on something. But what I want for them is, what I want for a lot of us, is mark deserves to be in a relationship that's free from people's judgment. Maybe that IT comes with a partner closer to his age in alone or in america.

And laddy deserves a relationship where SHE doesn't have to worry about whether someone's using her and whether she's loved. What they have now is not simple. It's not easy. But then again, one has love ever been that.

So eto jan Thomas junior, used to be the host of the podcast resistance these days. He's getting a mfa and acting from new york university. History was produced by at least speed by the year we first air this story, lady's knees texted mark, and audio died. Marc rod say he's still sad about that and still looking for love over the internet, but not much work. Most people, he says, think he's trying to scare them.

It's stock to me and you.

Coming out, take taro. I love that they are not speak its name. It's a minute of radio when our program continues. This american life, mara glass, today's program, so closing so far, stories of people who feel so near to each other and yet are kept apart. And before we moved to act to, we heard about one incense of this kind of thing and destroyed jake ahn, heart star on the website, gathered st. And basically what happened is, a few days before we finish the episode, the new york city fire department received this emergency call.

What are 就是 山东？ We don't know. We don't know. Ah you just stuck where in the school in .

the sures, five kids start nine on in Normal tuesday night.

How did you guys go india? The, they went through the tunnel.

The dispatcher, hands over the called or another dispatch more on taxi. L U.

yes, did you guys gone from broadway or margin? The main it's like close where in the park in the okay, I know this matter across three. Ah yeah. So we just step back and admire .

this dispatcher. You seems to know every seward entrance on state island.

Okay, but what you what do you you mean by sor is IT like a great it's where like .

a tunnel where all the .

pipes are looking to. Me, I listen to me. I know there is very well.

I'm trying to ask you, how did you get to the sore you walked with the cemetery, right? Did you go right? Or less than than the cemetery? I need you to guide me. So we went back down, well, down, okay.

very quickly. They figure out .

where the kids are now OK.

IT sound like, what? No, no, we're going to get to use. Yeah, now you could stream as well as you can.

They want you to scream. And yeah, they can hear you. So screen these kids .

as like they went through a trapped door from regular new york to underground new york was going on all the time, of course, under the city sewers and tunnels and water manes. What are we just shouting distance away? Shouting is all the little take now for them to tap the ruby slippers three times and get home.

Great call for help guys that they hear you call for help.

If IT is very costly, that sounds like one of the kids actually laugh a little on that last cream, like IT is so weird and adult is asking them to do this. The kids were rescued pretty quickly. No.

no more heard. Keep playing in, guys, keep playing ing. I want you guys.

Which brings us to act to, but we have another kind of rescue, another fire department act to fire sale. So comedian technica has been on to show many, many times talking about her random encounters with pop star tower dan, or memorably, h. SHE was diagnosed with stage to cancer and went up on stage that night and did a stand up set about IT that we played here on the show.

And sometimes when he goes on stage, SHE talks a lot about her wife, Stephanie, and their two kids, then in max and their homework together. IT is this story of being so close to somebody, and yet so far from them, that you recorded at the comedy couple, argo Angels, this, that moon night. And SHE indefinitely went to a film .

and got home. wait. SHE fell asleep immediately. And um I was up I was having some pain in my summer and I because he fell a sleep right away, I thought i'm not going to wake her up so I was lying there thinking, i'm sure this is nothing you know all my medical issues usually aren't anything.

So this is probably another one of those situations. And three hours past, and i'm worse and worse and I finally tapped and I said, I am in so much pain right now and he said, like, completely groggy. Just do you think it's all the popcorn? And they denied. And I said, I don't I don't been eating popcorn for almost fifty years now, now consistently, but this is not popcorn pain. And uh he said, well, we should probably be safe and just go to the emergency room and I like, oh my god, it's so dramatic and um and he said, well, you know I just we shouldn't any chance.

So what if you get up and get dressed and we will go and I said, well, the thing is is I don't I don't have I can even walk up in so much pain and SHE said, oh my god, you can't walk well, then i'm calling nine one. One was like, oh my god, that's so dramatic. It's going to be wide and sirs flying down our street.

What if this is nothing? SHE calls nine one one. And this gigg antic fireman appears at our bedroom door.

I mean, he's huge, and he has rubber boots to hear his fireman pants on, muscles out to hear suspenders, no shirt. And i'm lying there in bed. So I felt so vulnerable because I was in so much pain.

And I mean, my night down and. Of course that I wear a night out. You know me Better than that.

You think I wear a night out? They could feel the tension in the room. You like SHE was in my down this no, I don't wear a night out. I think the last time I wore nike gown was probably nineteen seventy seven, probably had a little too bear on the front scoop and honey out of a clay pot anyway, as lying in bed, totally feeling vulnerable and a and he got down next to me.

He said, listen, understand, you're a lot of pain and I just want you to know that there's an ambuLance outside, if you, if you need and I said, I appreciate. I just really don't want to waste body's time if this is nothing. And he said, um it's up to you.

It's it's there and I said, I don't know if I can walk and he said, that is not a problem. And he swooped me up in his arms, and i've telling you, in that moment I was just like, H, I could get used to this. But a big but a book.

I mean, truly, I was like, oh, I get IT now.

If you think you're surprised, think how I felt in that moment. I have never been more confused. I was like he was holding me, and I was just dangling .

ling in his arms .

with my nights slowing.

But let me tell you what really surprised me when I found out this is my type. Here's what I didn't know is until .

he had a mustache.

I was like, yes, please. That'll do just fine. That is my tight. I didn't know. Here's the thing is you can fall for and be attracted to anybody. IT can happen at any time.

And I always thought, okay, if i'm ever into a guy, here's what I thought my type would be as like it's probably gna be a singer song rider. Probably going na be a poet, probably gonna be a painter, have a slight build, will share a wardrobe. I did not think that this gigging tic fireman was gonna be what I was all about for me. So he's Carrying me in his arms. We're going down the hall and I said, listen, when we pass the door, if you could just be extra quiet because if my kids wake up, come out and see this, this is going to be confusing on so many different levels.

And he was .

great about IT. You know how he is? He's just, he's the best .

classic ham.

You know, he's just to toying, pass their bedroom, we go down the stairs and seventy father lives with us and we he cares me past my father in law and Stephanie opens the door and we want past her and I just turned him as .

like godby's life.

We get out to the ambuLance, he gently places me on the journey, misses me on the forehead and. Then pushes me into the back there and then shut the .

doors and then .

ouldn't you know IT like apparently my roommate. Is worried about me and wants to join us.

Thanks a lot. Step hony. Total buz kill. But as I suspected, IT ended up not being anything too serious.

I was just bleeding internally. But the couple of weeks later I was at a party, was talking to zen people about the fireman. Tals, like this guy was so incredibly hot passion.

And how was going on and on stephane walks up and over. Here's this. And SHE has this look of discussed on her face and just like, i'm sorry, but you thought that fireman was hot like, yeah, this is not up for discussion.

This is not a matter of opinion, this is a matter of fact. And I don't know if any of you have experiences or not, but there is nothing more awkward than finding out in a social situation that you and your wife have completely different. teammate.

Guo, she's a cold of the podcast, handsome when you stand up special. Hello again, it's out on prime video.

Every time. You are near.

Was produced really some of the people who put together today show and put on the Bakers chase on call Michael comedy of a very, very kens with sleeping x three condor's france weng, Christopher ratti and july wig or managed in our senior editor, obama executive editor is a manual berry help on today's rerun from Henry larson, special thanks, dead odd Young barrio, mona vici rao, Sherry wicks and and dian m.

Step the other black women, black love, america's war on african american marriage, our website, this american lift out org, we can stream our archive over eight hundred episodes for absolutely free. Also, there is lots of other stuff there. Videos, list of favorite shows.

Again, this american life, that org, this american life, is do with the public radio stations. By P. R. X. The public radio exchange takes is always a programs cofounder. Mi mila, you know, he has a new pick up line, use that every time is in a bar. Now.

the visionary feminist writer bell hooks says, love is made up of seven parts america.

Glass bag next week, the more stories the american live.