And the bright lights turn to night
It was a completely subconscious thing, my conscious mind being entirely focused on keeping tabs on the man twitching his way in circles around where I stood on the platform.
As he tottered off out of sight against the far wall of the cement elevator encasement, I paid him less mind and noticed more around me. The lights reflecting over the river from the opposite waterfront were gorgeous. A girl who looked suspiciously like she'd crawled out of an 80's exercise video stood by the boat house and moved oddly, as if she was practicing for a role as an undead steps class instructor. The young hipster who'd been near me, leaning against the railing after my ticket purchase, had gone to the median on the river side and was pacing while speaking on the phone. More and more fashionable folk, and strangely people with children as well, showed up for this late train back down to the city, back home. I noticed their fancy clothes and made up faces and the comfortable clothes and worn out faces of the others.
I was on edge and there was an inexplicable tightness in my chest that I'd been attributing to the sketchy, twitching man who had been circling me and was clearly strung out when I'd first chosen my perch. I always sit in the first car on the train. First on, first off, always rushing to get wherever it is I'm going once we arrive back at Grand Central. I always sit there and so I always wait at the end of the track, leaning against the stairway railing. The young hipster on the phone flailed a bit, drawing my eye for a moment before I went back to scanning the ever growing crowd on the platform and checking the time. My damn app always has the wrong train times.
I started thinking, entirely unintentionally, about you in high school. You in you band shirts and jeans. You in a hoodie. My memories from then are such a fog and I mostly remember you in that one blue button up you used to wear on special occasions but at that moment I thought of you, much later on in highschool and just chilling at your house with Sarah. I caught myself then, thinking about how more recently I was so used to you being dressed up all the time and how I always did prefer you in your comfy band garb. Why was I suddenly thinking about preferring you in jeans and a hoodie? I've had a full year now of almost never thinking of you.
My breath caught. Down by the hipster boy on the phone, walking slowly was another person that I hadn't noticed in any of my previous assessments of the crowd and random people who were milling about. This person was as tall as you and looked like you, as far as my bad eyes could tell from a distance, and the bag he carried reminded me so much of yours that I just couldn't tell. I haven't seen you in a year. I thought you might be at Sarah's wedding last weekend and my chest was tight then too, tighter still as I walked down 47th on my own and it stayed tight all throughout my class, all through the walk back from NYU, until I was home. In a city of so many people, I still think I'm going to bump into you on the subway. I'm not going to Flatbush but I skip a beat when the subway voice says, "To Flatbush Avenue."
I couldn't tell if it was you. If it was, I know you don't want to see me. I moved. I went to the polar opposite of the platform and for once I did not sit in the first car of the train. I moved in some sort of imaginary courtesy to a person who was probably not you. I got stuck in a car full of drunk fucks hollering about circle jerks and Obamacare, bitching about liberals, and harassing people who were trying to get to the lavatory. We sat in a 3 seater and the same random drunk kept seating himself next to me periodically to wait for his turn in the loo and commenting on the book I was reading. Even drunk, he saw the irony in the current chapter focusing on moral conduct and ethics while the college kids stood next to us being complete asshats. I held my tongue instead of correcting the blatant falsehoods they spewed. I stayed tucked in my seat in my dress which was polka dotted in batik peace signs which surely would've started an altercation in and of itself because I'm clearly a, "lazy, liberal fuck." I sat through that and waited to get off the train and did not walk the most expedient path to my destination and did not go get on the subway, just in case it was you. I don't want to see you either.
I've spent more time in midtown in the past month than I have in a year and it's been fine. Even if it was you, I would not engage in chit chat, I doubt you would either. I've been told it would be assault to spit at you, so I won't do that either. I will stay out of your way if you keep staying out of mine and all will be well in the world. If that was you, thank you for not approaching me. It's been a year since I've seen you and I'm finally able to go back to Brooklyn without freaking out. It's been a year since I've seen you and I've got other problems now to deal with. I'm still learning and growing and fixing myself, but, "I'm still here" as Arthur Darvill sang so beautifully the other night up town. How he plays and the ferocity with which he just feels that music he is belting out, strumming out, stomping out, etc. is the same ferocity with which I've reclaimed myself.
As he tottered off out of sight against the far wall of the cement elevator encasement, I paid him less mind and noticed more around me. The lights reflecting over the river from the opposite waterfront were gorgeous. A girl who looked suspiciously like she'd crawled out of an 80's exercise video stood by the boat house and moved oddly, as if she was practicing for a role as an undead steps class instructor. The young hipster who'd been near me, leaning against the railing after my ticket purchase, had gone to the median on the river side and was pacing while speaking on the phone. More and more fashionable folk, and strangely people with children as well, showed up for this late train back down to the city, back home. I noticed their fancy clothes and made up faces and the comfortable clothes and worn out faces of the others.
I was on edge and there was an inexplicable tightness in my chest that I'd been attributing to the sketchy, twitching man who had been circling me and was clearly strung out when I'd first chosen my perch. I always sit in the first car on the train. First on, first off, always rushing to get wherever it is I'm going once we arrive back at Grand Central. I always sit there and so I always wait at the end of the track, leaning against the stairway railing. The young hipster on the phone flailed a bit, drawing my eye for a moment before I went back to scanning the ever growing crowd on the platform and checking the time. My damn app always has the wrong train times.
I started thinking, entirely unintentionally, about you in high school. You in you band shirts and jeans. You in a hoodie. My memories from then are such a fog and I mostly remember you in that one blue button up you used to wear on special occasions but at that moment I thought of you, much later on in highschool and just chilling at your house with Sarah. I caught myself then, thinking about how more recently I was so used to you being dressed up all the time and how I always did prefer you in your comfy band garb. Why was I suddenly thinking about preferring you in jeans and a hoodie? I've had a full year now of almost never thinking of you.
My breath caught. Down by the hipster boy on the phone, walking slowly was another person that I hadn't noticed in any of my previous assessments of the crowd and random people who were milling about. This person was as tall as you and looked like you, as far as my bad eyes could tell from a distance, and the bag he carried reminded me so much of yours that I just couldn't tell. I haven't seen you in a year. I thought you might be at Sarah's wedding last weekend and my chest was tight then too, tighter still as I walked down 47th on my own and it stayed tight all throughout my class, all through the walk back from NYU, until I was home. In a city of so many people, I still think I'm going to bump into you on the subway. I'm not going to Flatbush but I skip a beat when the subway voice says, "To Flatbush Avenue."
I couldn't tell if it was you. If it was, I know you don't want to see me. I moved. I went to the polar opposite of the platform and for once I did not sit in the first car of the train. I moved in some sort of imaginary courtesy to a person who was probably not you. I got stuck in a car full of drunk fucks hollering about circle jerks and Obamacare, bitching about liberals, and harassing people who were trying to get to the lavatory. We sat in a 3 seater and the same random drunk kept seating himself next to me periodically to wait for his turn in the loo and commenting on the book I was reading. Even drunk, he saw the irony in the current chapter focusing on moral conduct and ethics while the college kids stood next to us being complete asshats. I held my tongue instead of correcting the blatant falsehoods they spewed. I stayed tucked in my seat in my dress which was polka dotted in batik peace signs which surely would've started an altercation in and of itself because I'm clearly a, "lazy, liberal fuck." I sat through that and waited to get off the train and did not walk the most expedient path to my destination and did not go get on the subway, just in case it was you. I don't want to see you either.
I've spent more time in midtown in the past month than I have in a year and it's been fine. Even if it was you, I would not engage in chit chat, I doubt you would either. I've been told it would be assault to spit at you, so I won't do that either. I will stay out of your way if you keep staying out of mine and all will be well in the world. If that was you, thank you for not approaching me. It's been a year since I've seen you and I'm finally able to go back to Brooklyn without freaking out. It's been a year since I've seen you and I've got other problems now to deal with. I'm still learning and growing and fixing myself, but, "I'm still here" as Arthur Darvill sang so beautifully the other night up town. How he plays and the ferocity with which he just feels that music he is belting out, strumming out, stomping out, etc. is the same ferocity with which I've reclaimed myself.