It was rush hour when I went out, and that’s always an adventure.
Nothing much happened on the way there. On the T I sat next to a blonde who was reading The Secret Life of Bees. Do bees have such fascinating, secret lives? I mean, once I saw a documentary that showed how the chosen drone is ripped apart after inseminating the queen. In order to photograph it they had to rig up this doohickey about two meters off the ground, because that’s where the bees do it (My roommate Chuck and I saw two birds doing it on the roof across the street earlier in the summer, but I don’t know where educated flees do it). They somehow fastened the queen to this thing attached at a 90˚ angle to this two-meter pole that spun around and around, because apparently they have to be going a certain speed. There was a camera attached to capture the whole thing. It was pretty gruesome.
On the way back I was next to a guy reading The Color of Water. A whole book about the color of a colorless liquid? This is the kind of crap people are reading nowadays. There was a skinny punky-looking guy across from me reading White Noise by Don Delillo, too. He was this antisocial type.
There were a couple of gay guys in the middle of the car. They hadn’t seen each other for three years, the one was saying, because remember it was at the B52s concert in 2000? That’s how I knew they were gay. I mean, the B52s. I would have been pretty sure, but that’s what clinched it. They were talking pretty loud. There was a big black kid with a strange face who kept staring at me. I was in my favorite gray tee, the kinda tight one, and I think he was looking at my big biceps.
Then, the funniest thing happened. These three freaky sisters got on at Roxbury Crossing. Three weird-looking black women in funky clothes, and they were talking about revenging themselves on someone, a man. They came busting into the car, and the wiry one in the ratty red sweater pointed in my direction and said, “there’s some seats.” So one fat sister plopped down on my left and the other on my right, and they continued to spin out the fate of this man who had wronged one or the other (or all) of them. The one in the red sweater sat across from me, next to the black kid who was staring at them now, though none had big biceps that I could see.
Normally I suppose I would have been slightly mortified, but they were so funny and so full of life. The one in the red sweater caught my eye a couple times, and we shared one of those strange, kind, intimate moments. Then, just before my stop she asked, “do I have beady eyes?” In a very sweet, funny, earnest way. And, of course her sisters thought she was asking them, and they hastened to assure her that she not only didn’t have beady eyes but really they were bug-eyes. The truth is, she was asking me. And I looked at her and shook my head slowly but resolutely and smiled a smile only she saw, and she smiled a smile back that only I saw, and said “thank you,” in a voice nobody else heard.
When I got off I ended up racing one of the boys from upstairs home. I didn’t know it until we both ended up on the porch (I won), but it was the one whose underwear I am wearing at the moment. We share laundry facilities in the basement, see. [Note 12/22/05: I have, since this was written, been almost fully rehabilitated, and mostly wear only my own or close friends’ and colleagues’ underwear, except in extraordinary circumstances.]
He introduced himself. I think his name is Sam. He was very polite and deferential. He asked me if I liked living here. I said, it’s OK. Close to the T, I mumbled. He said, yeah, he’s only been here about a month, but he guessed he liked it so far. I wanted to ask him if I was supposed to like it, or what? I mean, it’s just a house. It’s nice to have shelter. Someplace to go at night, and when it rains.
When we parted at the head of the stairs, he said, “it was a pleasure to meet you.” That took me aback, as you can imagine. “Erm, you too, mate.” No one’s said anything like that to me in ages. Maybe never. I’ve read about such things happening, but I never thought…to me? He’s definitely a very kind of exotic-looking chap. Very round face, curly, sort of nappy hair, almond-shaped positively asiatic eyes, but blue as a Bombay Sapphire bottle, and skin as white as alabaster.
Then I met him again on the T this morning on my way back from the gym. His name is actually Tim. I got on at Back Bay, because I was all pumped up after my workout and wanted to walk down Tremont, showing off. [Note 12/22/05: I have since been almost fully rehabilitated in this department, too. I rarely wear that old gray tee (I have a blue one now), but I hardly ever stride up and down Tremont showing off my biceps, although they are even bigger now than they were two years ago.] I even thought maybe I’d drop into that Starbuck’s L– hangs out in, but when I passed it and looked in there was no one really in there worthy of my rippling musculature, and the help there is always so haughty, so in the end I didn’t.
It was a real coincidence, though, meeting Tim like that. I mean I stepped on the next to last car and sat down and there he was across from me, though I don’t think he recognized me. Wanting to avoid an awkward moment of recognition (we aren’t friends, or even acquaintances, after all, just neighbors who’ve only met just once on the front porch), I took my Globe out and pretended there was something interesting in it to read. Meanwhile he had taken out his Zippo lighter and was flipping it open in a most irritating manner. Zippos are great lighters, and you look really cool if you can take it right out of your pocket and flip it open and produce a flame in one fluid motion, and that’s what he was practicing. I thought, egad, what an obnoxious young person!
As we approached Stony Brook, I started thinking, of course I’ll have to greet him. And then we’ll have to talk all the way home, because otherwise it would be really awkward, since we were going the same place. Couldn’t be helped. He seemed surprised when I said hello as we left the car together, but was pleasant and chatty. So it was relatively painless.