Diana Ross, as she would later identify herself, was no soul singer of MoTown fame. She was a slender twitchy blond whose continual stream of conspiratorial muttering drifted my attention away from my glittering glass of vinho blanco, bowl of ensalada bacalhau and the December sun beating warmly on my chest.
It was my second day in Lisbon, the fabled city on a hill, and I had wandered in the dreamlike stupor that accompanies new travel to a cafe, basking in the sun next to a 30 foot Christmas tree with Ella Fitzergald crooning somewhere in the background. Sit, order, observe. That is the prescription. Eventually close one’s eyes in half disbelief that I had managed to fight my way through months of self doubt, logistics, COVID fears and daunting bureaucratic hurdles to be sitting at this charming cafe, period. A glance I must have cast in her direction netted a rasping response that jarred me from my revelry, “Do I know you from somewhere, are you staring at me?” To which in return I spluttered, “Uh, no, I actually wasn’t looking at you at all.” Thus, unsolicited, commenced the telling of Diana Ross’s tragic tale.
A former journalist for the BBC and The Guardian, Diana Ross was a now traveler writer stranded on the shores of Lisbon, her life having been consumed by a hacker since October, or perhaps much longer, who by her account, had frozen her accounts, stolen her identity and caused her ability to work to come to a grinding halt. And here she was, sitting alone with a glass of red wine, one of many it would appear by the red stains on her teeth, grumbling menacingly into her computer screen.
My eye takes an involuntary scan of people who my brain categorizes as potentially falling in the ‘dodgy’ category. Diana definitely qualified. Clearly. But the visual cues - the laptop, the briefcase, her manner of dress, the writing pad filled with fluttering pages of careful notes - suggested perhaps there could be a sliver of truth to her wild tale. Diana believed the culprit knew her personally, was carefully dismantling her life byte by byte, scurrying around in her accounts and files like a rodent in the house walls. Perhaps it was a lover, perhaps it was someone somewhere in her vast travels that was blackmailing her for being witness to some nefarious deed. Her clients had all but abandoned her for her increasingly professional toxicity. She had been homeless recently, her income having dried to but a trickle. Her eyes were wild like a frightened animal, she talked in a singular unending stream about this campaign to end her life for as long as I would listen. She refused to let this unseen enemy win, after all, she said, she had a right to work and travel the world. Malware? casually I asked. No was the vigorous head-shaking reply, she needed proof for when she was eventually able to secure legal representation to finally get to the bottom of this. Riiight. I thought. If only, if only, she could just acquire this new laptop, she could get to work and put this Kafkaesque nightmare behind her for good.
A tiny pale thought bloomed in the darkness of my mind, an impulse really. How much do you need, I blurted out? She pursed her lips quizzically at me, perhaps having heard or seen me for the first time through the fury of her one sided barrage. 200 euro? She asked. Omg, I will just give you the money, if literally all you need is just 200 euro, I will give the money right now so you can be done with all of this. No, her answer was quick and firm. I can’t accept that. Ok, your choice, I shrugged. Diana was all too willing to accept glasses of red wine though, eagerly acquiescing with a grateful flash of her stained teeth. Buy her another, I told the waiter before I walked home, but not before telling Diana I would see her the next day.
I don’t know what it is about Weird that I find all but irresistible. I cannot avoid quickly enough strained family gatherings, talk of careers or children, but show me the human embodiment of the bizarre, the absurd and my beeline could not be more direct. Diana Ross was odd, no doubt. She was also most likely unhinged and probably selling me a steaming pile of horseshit. But she was a compelling mystery I felt inspired to wrestle with, or at least prod at for a while longer. Like a washed up jellyfish upon the gravely Jersey shore. What’s more, her vulnerability, the unspoken bond between sisters of the traveling pants, invoked some vague desire to protect her, or at least aid her if possible, despite and perhaps as a result of her questioning relationship with reality. Or maybe helping people just makes me feel better about myself, nothing truly wrong with altruistically induced self-satisfaction, just ask Ayn Rand.
So yes, to reiterate the obvious, I returned to Diana the next day. She was, on cue, stationed at the same table I had left her, nearly empty wine glass in front, feverishly talking into her cell phone. A beaming smile of her oddly charming muddied teeth in my direction only temporarily interrupted her loud confessional. Perhaps she just knew a few more glasses of wine would be headed her way in short order. Which of course they were. I am, if nothing else, a generous person. I was also, in that moment, a relieved person, to let Diana prattle on and on to some invisible sympathetic ear, keenly aware that her volume was attracting some raised eyebrows from the waitstaff and the elegant Portuguese couple sitting nearby and mild alarm that I might soon be considered her associate.
Diana, if nothing else, was consistent, the Comms Director in me appreciating her firm message discipline, adhering to the same talking points she had bombarded me with the previous day. There were only two disruptions in her passionate speech, the first when she lunged toward the open pack of cigarettes that appeared in the elegant Portuguese man’s hand. She even took a momentary pause from her original call to quickly recap her tale of woe to the couple, hilariously putting the unseen caller on hold. The Portuguese people, if nothing else, also seemed generally kind, and Diana got her cigarette. The second, more embarrassing, break in her call was when the server warily approached Diana to tell her “she needs to make sure she has enough money to pay for those drinks,” - apparently Diana’s message was penetrating those around her by default. “I mean I’m not totally broke,” she said exasperated, “I’m getting by,”.... Call resumed.
I find people with lack of self consciousness fascinating. She did not know, or more impressively, did not care, about the general stir she was making, after all, she had rights, as all relatively affluent white people love to remind the world. Or perhaps, before my eyes, I was watching a descent into madness, a sure and steady unraveling of British gentility into something rawer and more real. Was Diana Ross a cautionary tale to all single female travelers? Did her experience suggest that our belief that we could be free, independent, untethered to men, open to our own bidding, was at best a quaint fantasy, at worst, a dangerous fallacy that could send us swiftly careening over the edge. All it took was one forgotten VPN activation. Was life so perilous for women like us? The blond, twitchy ones I mean.
Over the course of her 45 minute diatribe, Diana’s eyes grew misty, she became emotional. Clearly the disembodied voice on the other end was invoking her feelings of victimization, of her vulnerability. Watching Diana was like watching a woman not unlike myself come undone, one emptied glass of cabernet at a time. Whether she was a complete conwoman was almost inconsequential at this point, Diana Ross was completely committed to her story, regardless of whether it was truth or a fabrication that had utterly consumed her existence. To which I had to commend her dedication. And perhaps even admire it.
Diana finished her conversation and quickly vaulted herself to a seat opposite from me and my grilled goat cheese and Italian eggplant pesto sandwich. To her credit, she had little time for niceties (in general a quality I appreciate)... “I think I am going to take you up on your offer,” she said before immediately launching back into her full-throated depiction of a hijacked life. Tonight, though, I leaned into it. Let the glasses of cabernet flow. I had a puzzle to solve.
At first I tried distracting her, asking her about her life’s work, what she wrote about, I even attempted to offer her details about myself, which shockingly did not seem to elicit any interest. I learned that she had traveled to ‘The Stans,’ of course in response I fired questions in rapid succession, momentarily steering her off course and revealing through puzzled flashes in her frenetic exterior, a calmer, more rational person residing below. It was probably after I ordered the slender glasses of port that shit got real.
It was at this point that Diana leaned in with lowered voice and told me a facet of her tale apparently unshared with any other person up until this point. Obviously it was in response to my soothing, trustworthy demeanor and years of comms training. Her real theory was that the culprit was also involved in the mysterious and untimely death of her father, the circumstances of which had never been explained. Did this person believe Diana somehow knew of his or her existence and was engaged in an aggressive, pre-emptive long game attack designed to rattle her to the core of questioning her own sanity and siphon off the energy required to unearth his identity?
Gaslighting. Was this whole campaign just another, more elaborate example of this age old technique men employ to neutralize the strength of women they deem too powerful and therefore a threat? I shared my observation with her and encouraged her to watch “Invisible Man,” which was a clever parody of the dangerous environment we women must live in nowadays engaging with certain men whose fragile egos are more prone to strain and cracks than ever. Diana liked this idea. We bonded in that instant over the shitty men we had the misfortune of meeting and their increasingly tenuous hold over fierce, independent women like us. We toasted to female empowerment and cackled late in the night, long after Diana snatched the sandwich from my plate and eagerly wolfed it down with no apparent chagrin. Once again, that’a girl. Take away the pride and you have a scrappy survivor who is willing to do just about anything to scrabble back on top.
At some point our rollingly lubricated conversation slushed back to the notion of giving and unconditional giving at that. But we discussed that controlling expectations is one of the most challenging exercises in life, even for such a seasoned Buddhist novice as myself. I told her about a family member who had loaned a friend $2,000 in a supposed emergency only to find out later about all the extravagent trips this person had taken in the interim. The gall of some people, truly. But in the end, money is only money and kindness is everything.
It was around this time I lifted myself from the chair, headed to an ATM and in short order plunked down 200 euro in front of her, saying, take, use, buy yourself a laptop, woman. How warmly Diana’s eyes could shine. Yes, laptops were important, they were integral to this rescue mission, but cigarettes mattered even more in this moment. Whatever it takes, Diana, whatever it takes. We talked about a repayment plan, me only half-heartedly of course, believing or more importantly, not really caring that Diana would most likely not pay me back. There was a good chance in fact I would never hear from her again after this night. Them’s the breaks here, folks. She did dutifully take down my contact information because, well, that is just what you do in these circumstances.
When Diana told me her full name that night, I scoffed, assuming it was a ham-handed pseudonym at best, and confirmed the worst about my new friend - she had cashed in her one way ticket to the land of loonies. I did my best to keep my face composed in the wake of such information. Ah, Diana Ross, ok, nice to meet you properly (by the way, I loved you in The Wiz). I left her that night, still sipping her wine, smoking her victory pack of cigarettes and mumbling a bit more cheerfully this time to herself.
I did not see Diana again after that. It was as if the ground had opened up and swallowed her whole, or she sidestepped back into whatever wormhole she had emerged from days ago, just to make my introduction to Lisbon that much more memorable. Also, shocking to none, I did not hear from her either, no efforts to repay me nor long, rambling, conspiratorial updates on the latest with her hacker. She simply vanished in the ether, which was frankly good enough for me. I had simply and wholly assumed she was a woman in trouble, hustling for her own daily bread, willing to snag and suck dry any and all unsuspecting flies in her spidery web.
I did, however, attempt to identify her online, and much to my amazement, her story checked out, at least so far as she had more than one online bio that reinforced the exact details of her story. Travel writer, check, wrote for the BBC and Guardian, check, same twitchy smile, check. Many months later, I did another search, and saw that Diana had actually published a new story. Isn’t that something, I thought. You go, Diana. Perhaps I felt a small bloom of pride that I had helped stabilize this wayward soul ever so slightly with the acquisition of a new laptop and a lot of cigarettes to help get her through the day. Or maybe Diana just figured out a way to get the best of her hacker, to vanquish her opponent and emerge victorious to write once again about the best two for one salted cod tours in Portugal. Whatever it was, Diana was out there, alive and once again working, which made me smile whenever I thought of our ever so brief encounter on that unseasonably balmy December night.
* Names have been changed to respect the central characters