There is no other way to live, but in the city. It's the one and only fast-paced, quick-witted, not-taking-shit way of life, and I love it. There is nothing you could offer me that would be better than living in the city. Well, almost nothing.
There are so many people here, such beauty in the simplest thing or person. When you love people like I do... when you allow them to fill your being, you can't help but be drawn to areas where there are more people than you'll ever meet in your lifetime. The overabundance of individuals makes it both easy and frighteningly fun to lose yourself. You are who you want to be in a place like that. You never need to be a person more than once.
I love the city. I love people.
ىىىى
What is most intriguing about people is that there is certainly something about each person you meet that is strikingly different than the last person or the next person you have or will meet. Something uniquely distinct that if given the time and consideration will imprint upon you as surely as a birthmark you've had all your life. We meet people in our lives that are destined to add unto ourselves the marks and pieces we are missing, even if those missing pieces disturb and scare us to the marrow of our bones.
And this, my friend, is what drives me to fall in love so easily and so ceaselessly. The people around me are so full of things, that I myself, have both no concept of, and perhaps no language to understand or explain. Their experiences and lives are full of mystery and excitement, and in them is the pearl of their existence... the singularity that I strive so desperately to find, and in such a search I fall hopelessly in love with the most despicable and loveable characters.
ىىىى
So, for the aforementioned reasons, I find myself so often assessing the individuals around me. A people watching game to discover what their individuality is. What their special-ness is that sets them apart from the rest of the mundane, however lovely, existence that is city life and it's population.
This often happens on public transit.
For whatever reason, since I was a child, the pt system has always been a source of observation and awe. Human interaction at it's finest and most grievous. Women and men pushing and shoving poor saps just like themselves to be the first on the metro home, men yelling at women, women yelling at children, and kids looking enviously at the children with the more expensive toy. It's not all sadness and disagreement. There are the sneaked looks between the wife of one man and another woman's husband, two men cautiously holding hands, a girl kissing a boy for the first time the furtive moan that escapes a bathroom stall that has one too many pairs of feet inside. Pt is a petri dish of the experiment that is human life at it's most base form.
It's thrilling.
And I, at it's epicenter, a train car, a bus seat, the last row on the trolley, am witness to it all. Most days. The days when I can stop myself from getting involved.
Today was certainly not one of those days.
ىىىى
Blue line, ten stops from home and the air conditioning is out. I can already sense that I am going to be getting nauseous soon. Fifteen years in the city and the motion sickness, normally held at bay, comes back with ferocity because of the uncirculated, humid, and dank city air trapped inside the same car as myself. "Damn city," I say as I wipe my brow. The doors chime and open to let more passengers on a train already slightly cramped from rush hour traffic.
I watch the passengers as the enter to try and distract myself, but as it's a familiar game to guess the aspects of their life that make them different, I find my mind is not quite off my queasiness. Sighing I set my mind to developing more deeply what I imagine their lives to be like.
"She must be in love with the man sitting in front of her." I think to myself. "They walked on separately, but she has been behind him the whole way. She must believe that he cannot possibly know that she exists." The young girl shifts in her seat and eyes the back of the man's head. "He must be... almost ten years her senior. Perhaps he's married, with children and can't express his love back."
I turn my head and note another couple to my right. I chuckle. "Newly found relationship. She must be the master and he follows along." The woman has an air of authority about her, and the man is sitting meekly beside her. His outward appearance is that of a high powered business man with a taste for expensive uptown suits, while her's is of a seductress, black material in the shape of a dress clinging desperately to her body's curves. "Funny how things like that work," I think, keeping my head down so I can watch nonchalantly.
The train lurches to a stop at the next station. More chimes, more people. Tall, fat, beautiful, freckled, tan... all types and styles filling the train as we pass through the bulk of the city. The heat in the car only increases as more people press together making their way back to their homes, their lover's homes, or to nowhere in particular.
The doors chime to close and a woman rushes on in a flurry of baggy pants and purse just as the doors slam shut. She breaths a sigh of relief that she's made it in time and slumps into the closest seat that is open, rare as that is at this time of day. My breath is held and I release it. She is the most plain, ordinary looking woman I have seen since the train picked me up over fifteen minutes ago. She is plain and yet she is amazing.
She is sitting across from me, but up two rows. Just far enough that I can look at her unabashedly, but still see a beautiful profile view. She is wearing brown pants that hang loosely from her hips down, no indication of the shape of her body. Her shirt is a bit more revealing, but not by much. She is shapely with average breasts, but no more can be garnered from her outfit. She is pale with brown hair, dark and long, but pinned and twisted up in what should be a sophisticated bun, but just looks run down from her rush to catch the metro at the last minute. She is still flushed from her dash, and I wonder if she would look as flushed underneath me.
I stop staring for a minute. My mind is racing, who is she...? She is so easy to miss in a crowd, so easy to pass by... such a picture of ordinary woman that she becomes extraordinary. The car has heated up just from her presence I think, not the other thirty people that piled on the car at the stop we just were at. My nausea forgotten, I begin to fret. We're racing through each of the stops before mine, surely we were never going this fast before? I rip a piece of paper from a letter in my purse and write my information and a short note on it.
I can't help but look at her and wonder when and where she'll get off. Her legs are long and crossed at the ankle. She seems to have calmed a bit now that she's been sitting for a bit. I can tell the air in here is bothering her as well, and the sweat from the run and the temperature has caused her once modest shirt to cling to the body I realize I ache to see. She wipes at her forehead and the back of her neck. She seems tense and ready to pounce, as if work is an animal that could be sneaking back to steal her away now that she's finally gotten away for the day.
She looks back. I look away. I'm not sure why, but I know that despite my best efforts she has seen me. When I return my gaze she is still looking, but simply smiles. I had expected a startling brilliance that would throw me off balance. However, what I got was a simple raising of her cheeks and a few teeth. Did she not know how to loosen up?
Two stops later she gathered her things, and I found myself pushing through the aisle to come stand one or two people behind her. The metro lurched forward to reach the end of the platform, and everyone went off balance flying forward and then back. During those few precious moments I slipped the half sheet of paper into her bag. She turned again as the doors chimed open, and I smiled at her. She didn't smile this time, but rather looked quizzically at me as the people around us started to yell and push at us to move.
I dropped my eyes to her purse and back up to her. She looked more confused yet, and I simply said, "I will talk to you later perhaps," and I walked back to my seat. She stood transfixed, unsure of what to make of it all for a moment or two. The doors chimed again alerting passengers to please stand back, and she then left as she came, as a rush of oversized tan pants and a purse that slid out just as the doors smacked into place.
I sat back and leaned my head against the cool window, with five more stops to go I thought to myself, "damn city."
ىىىى
I ride the blue line every day of the week, and despite looking for her everyday after that I did not see her. It was over a week before I heard from her, and I had almost lost hope. I had left my phone number and email address on the piece of paper and an explanation that I thought she was beautiful and I would like to get to know her.
What I received from her was less than encouraging, but better than nothing I figured.
"I'm not a lesbian, but that was some stunt you pulled. I wouldn't mind getting to know you. Should we meet somewhere? I've never done this before."
I was thrilled. Who cared if she wasn't a lesbian... that meant nothing in this day and age. Hell, I didn't classify myself as such, so really what difference did it make that she seemed completely and hell bent to make it clear that she sure, most positively did not want to be with me. I laughed out loud when I reread the email. The guilty cry innocence the loudest... couldn't that relate to desire too?
I sent a quick email back stating that I didn't consider myself a lesbian either, but that rather I simply had thought that she was startlingly beautiful and hoped that her personality reflected the same beauty. I told her that she shouldn't worry too much about this being her first time to agree to meet a stranger who had passed her a note, much like a middle school-er, on the metro as I was sure it did not happen all the time. I asked her if she drank and if so, we should meet tomorrow night at a nice restaurant in a rather artsy part of town where they played live music. I told her that there would be a lot of people around, and that since I knew her as well as she knew me that I would personally be letting others know where I was going to be that night.
