Last Stop Encounter
Romance Story

Last Stop Encounter

by Gunhilltrain 11 min read 4.1 (7,300 views)
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C.U.N.Y. is the City University of New York, a group of public colleges. N.Y.U. is New York University, a private school in Greenwich Village. The Woody Allen movie mentioned here is

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.

*****

The northbound D train often got stuck in that right-hand curve into the 205th Street station. That was not unusual, because 205th was the terminal and trains had to clear the platforms before another train could enter.

Except on that night, it was the ungodly hour of nearly 3:00 AM when I was sitting there. That being May of 1977, public employees were completely demoralized and didn't give a damn about doing their jobs. Thus there were no announcements from either the train operator or the conductor.

I was a college senior at that point, nearing graduation, and I was returning from a party down in Manhattan. I had tried my first Thai stick, which was more potent than I had expected. Around the time I entered the subway, the drug had put me into a sort of a black-out. Now I was coming down from the high, but I found myself stuck in that empty car. The two adjacent cars, which were bending in the same curve, were empty too.

Probably had I been in a more normal state of mind and more careful, I would have been in the car that had the conductor's position. He, or occasionally she, had the duty of opening the doors at each station. Being visible to a crew member was alleged to give a modicum of safety during late night -- or in that case early morning -- transit riding. Yet I wondered if any muggers would bother stalking through there with virtually no victims in sight.

Then the storm door at the north end opened, and a young woman of about my age walked in. With her brown hair and steel-rimmed glasses, she looked like one of thousands of other New York girls. She had a short-sleeved blouse, a black skirt with white dots, and tennis shoes but no stockings.

I briefly wondered where she was going, but my New York attitude told me to just ignore her as she passed. I didn't want to be one of those jerks who started pointless conversions with women they didn't know. They obviously understood that they weren't going to pick up somebody with such crude tactics. The point of it was to be annoying and perhaps to discombobulate women, I supposed. That empty train was exactly the kind of place they might favor for such a boorish activity.

But she didn't walk past. Instead, she stopped right in front of me. After perusing with me for a moment, she said, "You're obviously high on something."

That was either a good guess, or some women just had a knack for noticing such details. It seemed worth being honest about it. "Yeah, I am. I had my first Thai sticks tonight, but I'm coming down off of it now." Maybe it was predictable that she would pick up on my state of mind.

I must look pretty wasted.

I added, "They are a lot stronger than I had expected."

"Well, I had some lines of coke tonight, my first ever, and I'm coming off of that now too." Her demeanor seemed bubbly and energetic, which was odd when talking to some unknown guy on the subway. She hastened to add, "I don't want you to think I'm some kind of coke fiend."

Why should I care about your drug habits?

Instead, just to say something, I commented, "Why are you walking through the train?"

"I was looking for the conductor's position."

"You were going the wrong way, you know."

"Oh, thanks for telling me! Then I should just sit here then and talk to you, okay?"

It was going to be a mandatory conversation because she didn't wait for my reply. She just sat down opposite me and crossed her legs. Then an uncomfortable idea struck me.

I must look completely harmless if she feels no anxiety about being alone with me down here.

Underneath that, my insecurities were bothering me.

Cold approaching women was one thing that I did not do well, although she had approached me. My next thought was ungrateful, I'd call it.

If she wasn't so high, she wouldn't have anything to do with me. Probably she is just looking for the protection that the conductor was supposed to provide.

Yet she looked friendly sitting over there and she smiled at me. "So, what is it that you'd like to know about me first?"

How solipsistic.

Also, I needed to somehow establish my "bad boy" credentials, even if those would be absurd in that situation. I had never had such credentials in the first place. I really wanted her to go away and stop bothering me, so I blurted the rudest statement I could think of. "Actually, I'm wondering if you are wearing any panties or not."

Her reaction surprised me. She laughed and said, "Well of course I am. What kind of girl do you think I am? Here, I'll show you." She stood up and lifted her skirt; then she turned around to model the rear view. Her legs were pale and slender. There were no tan lines, so I assumed she wasn't a beach-going kind of person.

"See, nice girl cotton drawers with blue stripes."

Did that mean that she was nice or was it her underwear? She sat down again on one of those weird aquamarine-colored plastic seats that the Transit Authority favored. She seemed highly amused by something, perhaps the little show she had just performed.

She wagged a finger at me. "I know that you think I've been very naughty just now."

"I never said that."

"But you're thinking it! And I bet you know just what to do with such naughty girls."

She seemed to be feeding lines to me. I made another attempt to shock her, which I probably did because she seemed to be trifling with me. "Sure, I know exactly what to do. I give them a good spanking." I just made that up and I had certainly never done such a thing.

Yet she laughed at that as well. "You mean a real panties down around the ankles kind of spanking? I bet that goes over well with the ladies." I wondered if she had intended some sarcasm with that, but I did feel embarrassed by my crude statements. She wagged a finger at me and said, "You know, you've been very naughty too, I mean asking about my underwear and such."

Our conversation had certainly gone beyond flirting, but I wasn't happy with its direction. In my interpretation, she was teasing me, and she knew she could get away with it and have some fun at my expense. That implied that I appeared totally ineffectual, someone who could be toyed with.

I wasn't going to challenge her on that, and the next thing she said was, "So, do you have a girlfriend somewhere out there somewhere?"

My last girlfriend had dumped me about six months earlier, around the Holidays, but no guy with any sense is going to admit that his love life is going poorly. "There are a couple of girls I'm dating right now."

"Really, what are their names?"

What business of yours is that?

I picked two at random, "They're Martha and Karen since you asked." I threw her question back at her. "So what's going on with you?"

"With me? I guess I'm doing about as well as you are." She had implied that she knew I was lying and I thought,

you really are quite a sassy chick.

A prickly kind of male pride got to me.

She went on as if she had known me for years. We found out, for example, that I went to City College while she went to Lehman here in The Bronx. I think she was being tongue-in-cheek when she said, "Thus we're both C.U.N.Y. people, not like some snooty but overrated place like N.Y.U."

I felt I had nothing to lose by saying, "Woody Allen did a pretty good send-up of N.Y.U. once."

It had been a throwaway line about the supposed promiscuity of that school's female students. That had been in a movie from five years earlier, but she remembered it. "That was in the ending bit, 'What Happens During Ejaculation?' "

I had backed myself into a corner by making that sexual reference. "That was pretty funny."

"It was also the best part of the movie. As I think Tony Randall says, 'We're going to make it.' "

She was right in that the rest of the film had been mildly amusing at best. Yet her mirth was not making me feel better. The long dry spell I had been in made me lonely and desperate. Having that girl right across from me was like a taunt. It would be nice to ejaculate with somebody besides myself. I had been a virgin when that film had been released and now I felt like one again.

She was talking about something else in the movie which I wasn't following but which she found very interesting. It was about the the first segment that involved a chastity belt..

Meanwhile, I couldn't stop what was in my mind. I was suddenly having a vivid fantasy of spanking her, then banging her as she spread her legs on that blue-green seat. Her cotton panties would be discarded on the floor, not around her ankles. I'd have to wait until I got home to enjoy that scenario in my own imagination and in my own bed.

Yet my reverie wasn't helping either.

Let's face it, honey, you don't see anything in me. You're just glad you don't have to be alone on this train. Tomorrow afternoon, when you're not high any longer, you'll barely remember the guy you met earlier that morning.

Yet I looked more closely at her face because I wanted to remember her. She wasn't wearing any make-up that I could detect. "Do me a favor. Take off your glasses; I want to see what you look like."

"That's no problem, sure I will." She pushed them up to the top of her head.

I felt that I had made a mistake. Commenting on a woman's appearance was usually a losing proposition. If I praised her, she might take that as a sign of my weakness. If I tried for gruff indifference, that might come off as arrogant. There didn't seem to be a workable middle ground.

Fortunately, she didn't ask for my opinion; she merely smiled and shrugged. That was even worse in a way. I had never been very assertive in dealing with women, and it seemed that whatever techniques I had developed had atrophied over the previous six months.

Yet I did like her face anyway. And that point I wanted her to like me, but I couldn't let her know that. It was all very frustrating, because I couldn't figure out how to handle the situation.

It occurred to me that I was the one acting badly, not her. She had actually been good-natured from the beginning and she had tolerated my grumpiness. I also felt guilty about having an explicit fantasy about her when she was sitting right there and trying to talk to me.

Just as she got her glasses back into place, the train started to slowly move forward. For the first time, she seemed a bit anxious. "I guess this is all about to end in a moment."

What was going to end, our conversation?

I tried a move. Since 205th Street was the last stop, I said, "You must live someone near here."

"Oh yeah, right on Hull Avenue."

Might as well be a gentleman about it.

"I'll walk you home then."

"Thanks, I appreciate that." So I did have one more small part to play in her life.

When we were on the platform, a handful of other people went towards the escalator. For some reason, I hesitated there. I looked back at the car in which we had been sitting. It was number 3376, contract number R-32, from the Budd Corporation of Philadelphia around 1964.

She'd really think I was a nerd if I told her any of that.

I went for broke. "I'd like to have your phone number."

"I can do that." She took out a pen and a receipt and wrote it for me. As I got her paper, she said, "So you'd like to go on a date with me?"

That was another question that required some difficult middle ground. "We'll have to see how things go."

"Where do you live anyway?"

"Over on Willett." I added a completely useless coda. "The buses aren't running right now, so I've got some walking to do."

"You see, we're practically neighbors. Let's do this then. Tomorrow -- or really today -- come over here in the evening and we'll go to one of those pubs on Bainbridge and 204th Street."

Will she even care or remember tomorrow?

I supposed it was worth a try. Perhaps she sensed my doubt because she took my hand and squeezed it. "Please, call me, any time. I don't want you to just disappear."

Her hand felt warm and she kept holding me, gently guiding me towards the escalator. I considered the idea that she might be lonely too. Once on the way up, she faced me and smiled again.

"So, you haven't told me your name yet."

"Oh, I'm Hank."

"Pleased to meet you. I'm Celeste."

"I've never known a Celeste before."

"Well, you do know one now."

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