The woman next to me looks at me suspiciously. People always look suspiciously at me whenever I’m on the train without my head down. I suppose they might look at me the same way when my head’s down, nose in a book or some papers, but I don’t see it so it might as well not happen. I suppose. When I look at someone who’s reading on the train, usually I’m trying to figure out what they’re reading, or, in the event that I know what it is, how they came to be reading it. And if it’s a boy (boy being defined from here on out as age-appropriate datable male) and he’s reading something smart or something that looks smart then I’m forced to confront the option of talking to him, even though I know I won’t. Because who talks to strangers on the subway?

No one’s reading anything I recognize right now, and the woman stopped looking. Was she actually suspicious? Maybe it was that same curiosity, just mistaken for something more sinister. Probably. I could listen to music, which would make my staring about less conspicuous, but it might also distract me. I feel like I should be doing nothing purposeful. Like meditating with my eyes open. Or something. The train stops. She gets up, and then actually glances over her shoulder at me before leaving. What. The. Hell. I hate people. I’m such a New Yorker, jeez.

Now no one’s looking at me, and no one looks interesting, really. There’s some shuffling going on, so I move further down the car. There’s a straight couple there, being casually cuddly. Not in an obnoxious kind of way, but in a “we actually love each other” kind of way. I wonder how long they’ve been together. She seems noticeably more attractive than him, in the way that most people would find, but he’s kind of my type, so I appreciate that. I wonder if she thinks he’s cute in the same way that I do, or if there’s something else about him, that I’ll never know, that makes her love him. Or maybe she doesn’t, and they’re about to break up tonight on the street in a giant public explosion of emotion, just as loud and conspicuous as their affection is quiet and casual. These are the things I think about when I see couples on the train.

I get off at the next stop because it’s late, and I know I’m not supposed to have a destination or agenda, but I do have to get back to work at some point, damn it, and I can’t just ride the subway pointlessly all day, no matter how fun that might be. I’m a little bitter that I can’t, actually, but I know that I probably wouldn’t even if I could, and I wonder if it makes any difference in the end. The net effect is the same, but the intentionality is different. But then again I wonder who, exactly, would really ride the train aimlessly for an entire day and actually be good at it, and not think up little adventures and explorations for themselves. Or maybe that’s allowed. That might be okay, then. I could leapfrog from cute-boy-reading-the-good-book to cute-boy-reading-the-good-book until I found one who liked me. Which sounds like a Joey Comeau story. Except that I’d follow some guy home and he’d turn out to be the younger brother of some camp counselor I seduced a decade earlier, determined to be my undoing for stealing his brother’s love from him. And then he’d stab me. Or we’d have sex. Or something. I love Joey Comeau. Wandering always makes me think of his introspective-yet-insane stories. And vice versa. (What is that phrase? How did that come to mean that? What vice are we talking about, exactly? Where’s the internet when you need it?)

Well that was entertaining, and now the downtown train is here. Good thing, too, this station was empty and boring and smelled like burning cellophane. I have to sidestep to go to a different car than the one that stops in front of me, because there’s a crazy homeless guy in there. I can’t take the crazy. I’m just really bad at getting rid of the crazy, because I feel totally unsympathetic, and kinda guilty about it. Anyway, different car. There’s a cute punk boy, who looks kind of like Jacek from behind, but skinnier. He’s listening to an iPod, of course, because punk boys don’t read on the train. If I found a punk boy who read on the train I’d have to keep him, I think. I move around so I can see his face, and notice he has glasses, too, which is a bit selling point. He hasn’t seen me yet, and I decide to keep it that way, since we know I’m not going to talk to him, and I don’t feel like playing staring games right now. I do, however, sit with my back facing his, on the opposite side of those seats that stick out into the car. I know how to throw attention without drawing attention. I imagine the train stopping suddenly and our skulls cracking together, and then the story spinning out of control into some romantic tale of accidental brain damage, but I can’t quite get past the head knocking image. Joey Comeau would be disappointed in me.

My unfinished reverie is pushed to the back of the train by an onslaught of people. Once things are settled, I glance over my shoulder, but the punk boy is gone. Oh well. No skull-knocking. Now it’s crowded, and I get a scenic view of a bunch of crotches. Nothing too obnoxious, though. I look up. Armpits. Fun! Sigh. It is rather odd to be this close and this low to the bodies of so many strangers. I wonder if this is what it’s like being short. I think it’s kind of hard to imagine what the world is like for someone of noticeably different size than yourself. There’s an old woman nearby who’s just about a head taller than I am at the moment, and for a second I’m amazed at her compactness. Is this what it’s like to be her? Is this how she sees the world all the time? Does she ever wonder what things look like for me?

I feel like I’m losing focus, so I close my eyes for a second, and listen to the train moving. I start swaying a bit with the motion, but quickly get dizzy, so I have to stop. It’s pretty quiet, considering how many people are around me. I can hear a woman talking somewhere about 10 feet away from me, just enough so that I can hear certain words but have no idea what she’s saying. That’s annoying, but now I can’t stop listening. I thought I heard her say “parrot,” and I want to know more. I open my eyes, but I can’t see her, and when I crane my neck, I almost clobber a small child with my head.

Things begin to thin out after another couple of stops, and each time I try to find the parrot lady. But either she’s stopped talking or she’s gotten off the train, because I can’t find her. My punk boy, though, has not, in fact, left the train, but is standing at the end of the car, leaning against the wall. Did he think about our skulls knocking together and decide to avoid it? I wonder. Maybe he went to find the parrot lady, too. He glances at me, but I look away, instinctively, because that’s what I always do. When I look back, he looks away, and I guess I’m playing eye contact games even though I said I wasn’t going to.

I get so involved in the back and forth glancing that I almost miss my stop. Like a tourist, I have to jump up at the last minute and dash out the door, pretty much ruining both the fantasy and the reality of the punk boy. I stand on the platform and watch the train leave until I can’t see the lights anymore, because everyone around me already thinks I’m crazy, so I might as well live up to it for a second.

Fuck. I didn’t take any notes on the way back at all. What am I going to write about?