I haven’t set foot on campus in months, but I can still picture the scene so clearly. It took place perhaps five times a day.
Whether trotting to class or strolling to the Bryan Center, if you are in the heart of the Gothic Wonderland, it is bound to happen. Across the quad, you spot the person you sat next to in Writing 20 or your roommate’s ex—someone you know just well enough that it would be rude not to acknowledge them, but not well enough to actually carry on a conversation—heading straight in your direction. Duke is small enough that you are acquainted with almost everyone this way.
He is far enough away that it is possible, though not probable, that he has not seen you. So you pretend to be transfixed by your phone or intrigued by your shoelaces and continue your approach with carefully concealed unease. Moments before you pass each other you glance up as if by chance, albeit with a flip of your hair that probably gives you away. This allows for just enough time for a one-word greeting and nothing more.
It is more than coincidental that your phone is your savior and eye contact feels like an imposition if held for more than a moment. With much of our communication having nothing to do with the words that pass our lips, our eyes may say much more than we mean to.
Eye contact is a portal to emotion. More than a glimpse can give you away. If asked “what’s up,” we chirp “nothing.” But anyone who looks at us straight on can discern, on some level, it is rarely the case.
From what I’ve read, it seems each part of the world seems to have developed its own strategy for dealing with this involuntary confession. In the Middle East, men and women often avoid looking each other in the eye for fear of letting sexual tension come to the surface. In some parts of Africa, an unbroken gaze can be seen as a challenge to authority. I’m convinced that the optical illusion commonplace on the Main Quad constitutes its own bizarre cultural phenomenon.
Yet Spaniards, for their part, are not afraid of eye contact. In fact, they dare to do more than look—they stare.
The spectator Olympics is at its best on the metro. Rather than staring off into space when a pitch-black tunnel is all the scenery there is to be taken in, Spaniards fix their gazes on each other. At first, the attention made me feel like a tourist attraction myself. I shifted in my seat, but I could still feel the weight of the eyes. I tried staring straight ahead, but I could see the same pairs of eyes, fixed on me, reflected in the spotless window of the metro car.
The stares are probably more persistent because I am so clearly not Spanish. My interactions in this foreign space are at times so awkward that it must be hard to look away. Like spotting what remains after a train wreck, you have to crane your neck to see more. From the first glimpse, Spaniards can tell I am American. People stop to offer me directions even when I know perfectly well where I am going. Before I can open my mouth to let my accent give me away, they ask what state I am from. Even when I took to reading a book with a splashy English title to quell all suspicion, the inquisitive looks persisted.
But now, a month into my stay, the stares have started to feel less like an imposition than an opportunity. In a Spanish speaking-country, where my vocabulary is elementary and my accent unintelligible, I figure my eyes say things I probably can’t.
So I hold the gaze, though—ever the American—I cannot help but grin back sheepishly. Sometimes all it takes is a smile to make me melt.
Julia Love is a Trinity junior. Her column runs every other Wednesday.
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