| [ |
mood |
| |
 groggy |
] |
A few weeks back at about 5 am, waiting for the NR to show, an attractive, slick looking bald-headed gentleman slides out to stand in front of me from behind a subway pillar. He has a sunflower in his hands that is almost comically enormous, which he extends to me.
"For you," he says.
"That's sweet," I say, "but I couldn't."
He studies me. On his face are traces of intoxicated joy but now there seems just a curiosity and amusement.
"What are you listening to?" He asks me.
At this particular moment, it's the Ravonettes, but I don't like their new album very much, and I do not recognize the track that is playing. "I dunno." I say, "The Ravonettes."
"What?" He says, seeming almost disgusted. "Like, rock and roll?"
"Yeah."
He twists up his face: "but black people don't listen to rock and roll."
Here we go, I think, and my features darken, and probably add to his confusion on the matter. "I do."
"Like, the Beatles!?" He exclaims. I nod. "Like," he says, "with guitars?"
"Yes," I insist. "And even sometimes distortion."
"Black people," he continues, "listen to hip hop, or rap... White people listen to rock..." He thinks. "And... Asian people listen to... some crazy music! Like, techno!" He shakes his head. "I dunno."
"Why generalize like that?"
"It's what I do, I guess."
"Well," I say, "It's not always true. In fact, it's mostly untrue."
He sighs. "Weird." Then to me: "where are you coming from?"
I tell him that I just came from a friend's housewarming, and that I hadn't necessarily planned on being out this late. "And you?"
"Oh. Hmm." It's his turn for hesitance. "Well, that's another story. I could tell you the truth, or I could tell you a lie." He waits for my preference. I tell him that it doesn't really matter, because it's none of my business what he's doing, so he can tell me a lie if he so wishes. But I remind him that the truth would be true.
"Well," he starts, and his sunflower droops like a clown's at his side. "I was coming from a party... With women there... Who were:" he nods his head and holds up an OK sign. "Yes. Yes. Good to me."
"Okay," I say evenly, "Where are you going?"
"To my girlfriend's house..." He sighs. "Those are the true parts..."
He suddenly takes on the form of an unloved hound, his sunflower tail wagging between his legs. "And how old are you?" I tell him. He reels. "Twenty-two!? Oh, I always said that if I hit on someone younger than my little sister, I'd kill myself."
"Well don't do that," I say, "it's hardly worth it. But," I say, "why do you hit on other women?"
"It's probably just a holdover from college..."
I don't know what that means and I don't follow up on it. "Don't you love your girlfriend?"
"I do," he says with wool, "but I just want to be... with everyone."
"You can do that without breaking your girlfriend's heart," I say. He stares at his feet and nods and is silent. A moment later the train begins to rumble into the station.
"Do you have to go?" He asks me. I say yes. "But we could talk for another hour..."
"No," I say, "because you have a girlfriend to get home and be good to and it is 6 in the morning and it's time for me to be in bed."
"Please..."
"Don't," I say, getting on the train, "don't break her heart."
Finally, this slick bald sunflowered man who is all parts gentleman save when he opens his mouth, lets out a sigh and a nod, and when the doors close he blows me a kiss. I wave.
Last night coming home, with dead sound and bland reading, I bury my mind in the Onion's Green issue that was given to me that day as I killed time on the upper east side. On the subway, man in a Timberwolves jersey steps past me and pretends to trip over my food, executing a long, slow-motion lunge against the door at the end of the car. I pay it little mind and focus on my paper to try and keep my mind off of the terrible vagina smell coming from the sleeping (male) passenger beside me.
Eventually, Timberwolves speaks. He pulls one earphone from his ear and stares at me (a little more) before opening his mouth, revealing a cluster of crooked teeth. "You have great legs," he slithers.
"Thanks," I mutter, and part of me wants to move my newspaper aside and look down at my legs, and see what they are doing at 2.30 am that makes them so all of a sudden great and worth commenting on, but I consider how vain that would be, and then realize that the only thing that's happened between now and forever was probably Timberwolves' drinking that night. So I stay put. And read about Thom Yorke and Ed O'Brien and sing their songs in my head as they talk about their albums new and old.
And then: "We should really go out sometime."
I look up, and it's Timberwolves again, still leering at me as I sit crammed between Vagina-Breath and another girl whose iPod is working and she doesn't have to hear the sounds coming from this man's gnarly mouth. "Um." I say. "Er... I don't think my boyfriend would be too happy."
"Your parents, you say?" He starts to move his headphones; I think, if you're going to try and have a conversation with me, take your headphones off first. "Your parents wouldn't approve?..." He's got the smirk of someone who took no greater joy than shocking the masses all through his life. He gestures at his skin then nods at mine, I guess he thinks it's an issue of race? "Oh, it could be kinda fun..."
"No," I say, "I didn't say that. I said my boyfriend wouldn't approve."
"Well neither would my girlfriend," he grins, "But I don't give a fuck."
"Oh," and I shake my head abruptly, and wish the passengers around me were awake or understood the conversation happening. I imagined what I'd do if I were watching. Probably jeer. Probably tell him to leave me alone and to go home and make things right with his girl. Probably a similar response as I had to Sunflower Man. But there is no one here to do that. Again: just Vagina-Breath, and he's asleep.
"Yeah, get it on," Timberwolves sneers at me. "Yeah, I can tell, a part of you wants to."
"Oh you can tell?" I retreat behind my paper and, realizing that I've come to the end, decide to reread some of the earlier satires--I may have, after all, missed some of the Onion's charming nuance and subtleties on first read. "Yeah, no thanks." I read, but this guy's eyes rest heavy on me all throughout the train ride.
Eventually he moves down the car (and trips on my leg once again), and has sat down long enough to heckle a police officer: "hey, is your uniform out of regulation? Why're your sleeves rolled up? You don't look like a real cop." I can't explain it, but I am so embarrassed for him. Don't be, I tell myself, It's his stupid actions and his stupid way of dealing with the public--he's doing this to himself.
We get to 90th street and I am about to prep to stand and leave, when Timberwolves does before me. He pauses by my seat and looks me up and down hard one more time before sucking his teeth. "Girl, I'm gonna think about you while I'm fucking my girlfriend tonight," he says, and I nearly vomit. "How you like that? You like that?"
"You need to get it together," I tell him, softly, because he is standing closer to me than I'd like. "That's not a good thing."
He studies me for a moment. "Yeah, I can tell you don't approve."
"No," I shake my head. "And I feel very sorry for your girlfriend."
He looks me back in the eye and his face loses the perverted youth it's had 'til now: it's become dark, serious, the face of someone who's failed at something he'd actually only wanted all his iife: "Yeah."
He gets off and I wait til he is several paces ahead of me before I exit (and get myself caught in the subway doors in the meantime). I fall back before heading home, and I am happy to see the streets empty when make the turn onto 88th. I text Jon and tell him that I was going to be the subject of an in-sex fantasy: he apologizes to me for mankind. I imagine him at the pier waiting for waterfalls and I think about Independence Day and I wonder just what it all means.
|
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jaclyn_sparrow's Friends Page
off.
enthralled
hopeful
calm
sad