See, the thing is I'm a sucker for a good happy hour. If you have colorful drinks with too many ingredients, served in frosted martini glasses, and then you make them half price, I will find a way to get there.
Even if it's in Queens.
I don't normally leave Manhattan unless it's a dire emergency, but my girl insisted I had to see this bar in Astoria, "sexy," she said, "velvet couches, classy artwork, yummy cocktails, dark. You'll love it." And she was right, except not-sexy in that we both left alone.
So now I'm on my way home from Queens at midnight on a Monday, waiting on the platform of the N train. My nipples have been hard all night and it's a long way to Brooklyn and I want someone to play my game. People who stay to play, people who lock my gaze and don't back down to my little power trip, my favorite way to start or end the day, those people are real city people. They earn my respect. They get me wet.
I spy you right away, leaning up against a lamp post near the end of the platform, reading... the Village Voice? Oh, ha, the Onion. This is fun already.
I start the game here, on the platform, though it's not fair since you don't know you're playing. You don't have music in your ears and you're not wearing a hat, your collar isn't popped up so you didn't just come from the Beer Garden, messenger bag but it doesn't seem to be concealing a laptop. The way you stand makes your hips jut out. Leading with your pelvis. Nice. Relaxed, but your own style. You would never shop at American Apparel and you never have never worn a trucker hat. Your shoes look European.
The train whooshes and grinds into the station. I let you get on first, you nab a seat at the end of a bench and I cozy up across from you, not that you notice. At the other end of the car sits a sad looking old lady with five woven plastic tote bags bursting at the seams, and a little kid who is way too young to be out this late. Two cars from the front, no conductor to bug us. Stand clear of the closing doors, please.
I can't help it, I jump in right away. Your hair is falling across your field of vision like it has nothing better to do and you're reading a fake newspaper like it's King Lear, but there are no fake military patches on your faded green jacket, you don't have a wallet chain, there's nothing about you that I can make fun of to a girlfriend later. The lines of your face are striking, your eyelashes are long enough to bother your bangs when you blink, and you are grinding your teeth just a little which makes your jaw quiver. I quiver too.
You're so stubborn! I toss my hair, I squirm, I cross and uncross my legs, which only makes me hotter. My nipples are so hard they hurt. Look up. Look up. Look!
