I am riding the subway and this girl gets on, and she is like shake-the-binoculars cute, with a big plume of brown hair and the cutest little doll face in the middle, with like impossibly unblemished and smooth cheeks and these big brown doe eyes and this scarf that is like a bunch of album covers stapled together and dropped in a bucket of paint. And these girls are always wearing scarves, with like the prettiest colors and designs, and only sometimes are they about Palestinian freedom fighters (although aesthetically those scarves are immaculate). But this little girl’s scarf is like Jospeh’s Many-Colored Dreamcoat. Like she yanked that off his back and high fived Jesus and wrapped it around her throat for a trip to the farmer’s market.
I am looking at her with the holy-shit-are-you-cute, dumbstruck kind of glance. She looks back in an open way that tells me that she is not often the recipient of this kind of fawning look. Those who are frequently adored give a quick, cold smile. They look at you while they are doing this but they are not really seeing you at all as being distinct from anything else around you, and that includes the subway chairs that are made out of mystery fabric. For these models, these looks are as routine as a credit card swipe, and they plow forth into the rest of the compartment and the world at large.
But this girl, right now, totally doesn’t know that she is as bogglingly cute as she is, and she is like actually nice and maybe even pleased to receive the dumbstruck attention that unfortunately can only be delivered with about zero elegance or charisma. And she is actually reciprocating a look of at least passing interest in the shape of my face, and I am heroically resisting the urge to look behind me in the shameful way that a shy person does because they expect some attractive totem or like George Clooney dwarf to have situated themselves directly behind them, standing on the top of their backpack, generating this unquestionably-at-least-friendly-look from this girl of seismic cuteness.
And I am of course already thinking about how I would describe her in a paragraph, at this point, and am additionally happy that she does not know that I am thinking this, because it is admittedly a totally weird thing to be thinking, and literally something that could never be spoken without annihilating whatever it is that is happening right now.
As we pass the next few stations and enter Brooklyn, people enter and exit and this songbird and I continue to shoot mischievous glances at each other at sort of regular intervals. Of course the most exciting of these are after people have been standing in between us for several minutes, because once they depart, and both of us immediately search for each other again, it is almost impossible that we will not look at each other and at least know some of the contents of the other person’s brain.
I should make it clear at this point that we will almost certainly not speak to each other. That is an absolute given and is sort of a sacred part of this human agreement, and even the idea of this boundary being ignored seems uncouth and like a violation to the whole strange gambit. I am sure that if we had a nationwide vote on this, that we would all agree on this judgment.
The time draws near when one of us is going to logically have to depart the train and reengage with the structures that we have chosen for the day. This could be work of grocery shopping or something that has by definition no boundaries, like lolling around a neighborhood. The metro doesn’t discriminate activities, only travel, and a difference in these things in no way affects this totally strange and elegant transaction that this songbird and I have been orchestrating for the past eleven and a half minutes.
A point of interest to me at this juncture, and really the only thing I wonder about the whole situation, is whether or not the songbird also has a sense of melancholy at the departure that is about to happen.
My partner and I have not spoken any words to one another, so we could be classified as strangers still, and legally and logically this is correct, but we have also danced this totally complicated and elegant little dance with our eyes and our glances and the shifts of our bangs and whatever paperback we are holding in our hands but in no way intending to read, and that feels like a pretty intimate engagement.
That is something. Right?
Right?
And a synonym for the word “something” is “connection.” But now let’s think about accuracy, like envision what it means to be accurate. I am thinking about the cartoon version of Robin Hood casually hitting the bullseye of a target that is swinging from a chain that is connected high in the air to a huge boat that is both on fire and exploding at the same time.
Now think about the opposite of that. I am thinking about a totally sober and non-drugged out person missing their mouth with a spoonful of food.
So now think back to this eye dance that the songbird and I have just completed on the metro. Which of those two would you classify our dance with, if you had to choose one?
Totally obvious, right?
Any reasonable person knows that this kind of interaction, (by the way on the metro, let’s not forget the setting, which is like the mating savannah of the city, by the way, by the way.) But Ok, so this totally organic and blooming thing that has happened without any preparation. Everybody has to agree that the fact of this happening without mistakes and weirdness and god forbid actually conversations or even worse pickup lines, god forbid – we can all conclude and agree that this is totally difficult and in no way, shape, or form – missed.
It is completely accurate and would be totally impossible and insane to suggest as a way to behave if it wasn’t already literally bursting at the seams of every L train all around the world.
I look up and she is gathering her things to leave. The final glance always hangs a bit longer, always, always, always, and it is pregnant and full of liquid and movement and the millions of minutes we could spend together and that you really could spend with anybody if you tried.
Then she is gone and we do not ever see each other again. And it may be sad, but it is also happy and definitely, definitely, not missed.
This is a thing people accomplish, I remind myself, on cloudy days when I have looked at a bunch of photos about the atrocities of slums around the world. We are not just chopping up rain forests and hunting for money and sex and being big selfish creeps all over the place.
We do some genuinely innocent stuff too.
