Not in her usual spot. Not that we’ve crossed paths enough for me to be certain of anything, but any time until today she’d been seated just north of the 2nd door on the east side of the subway car. Today she was seated just south of the 3rd door on the west side. Door numbers are tallied from the north, since the north end of the train is the rear. One of the robo-voices on the subways has a funny way of saying “REAR” but that’s for another audio-accompanied discussion.
Yes. There she was again. She looks different in some small way every time I see her. She always seems alive inside. Alert, awake, paying attention to something. I compared that quality to others around her on today’s subway. Anyone else was locked in stare. Looking at the ceiling, a dead gaze. Some of the ballers who’d been out all night looked like the dead walking on stable shoes of gelatin, but I saw Twiggy (my ephemeral nickname for a toothpick-thin woman I’ll never see again) kissing her man on the Flushing-bound platform as the train exited the station.
But the woman. I don’t have a name for her yet. Slowly she becomes more beautiful to me, her casual sultriness increases as my furtive imagination makes believe this is some kind of slow, awkward courtship. Am I a pig or a creeper for thinking this way? In some corner of wokeness I most certainly am. But if I had not sensed some level of recognition from her I would move on. Now that she is possibly to be seated south of the REAR of the car I will have to change my entrance from door #2 to door #4. This way I can canvas the entirety of the subway car and target my own seat accordingly.
She may have had a ring today. On the wedding/engagement finger. Unclear, though. Distance ate details and also if it was a ring it didn’t look like a rock but rather a tchotchke. Yeah, I’m on fire. She wore jeans and a loose-fitting shirt.
I’ve put myself through this grinder countless times. One particular experience is well-documented in an encrypted, never-to-be-opened document of my personal, private lore. A difference with that encounter is that we had a long-established connection before I made my so-called moves. At times it felt like I was staking her out but the pursuit was not unwelcome or repelled. In the end we had a so-called relationship for about 6 months. It was stormy and tempestuous, as it would be with any woman who drank the way she did. I knew what I was getting into with her. Briefly, ever-so briefly I felt rewarded by the social points that came with dating a woman who was universally seen as beautiful. Everywhere I went with her people would whisper “Dude, you scored.” The beauty quickly turned to porchfloor. But we kept at it, for some reason, possibly because when she was sober we were pretty good together, and at those times we were both pretty decent, kind people. But when she crossed a certain point with the alcohol I swear I could see blood pouring out of her eyes.
Nothing can predict if this preoccupation with a beautiful woman on the early Sunday-morning subway will go anywhere, be it north south east or everywhere.