Newkirk Ave. Station, 2/5 line Brooklyn.
Best pickup ever…
It was another ordinary day heading off to work at Chase. The year was 1999 and I was a bit early heading into the midtown office. Since I live in Brooklyn in the East Flatbush neighborhood I had to take the local B8 bus to the Newirk Ave. station of the 2/5 line of the NYC subway. This was a routine transit path for me going back to high school and this morning would have gone down as one of many unremarkable ones if not for “her”.
See, as I stood on the platform toward the center of the station waiting for the incoming 2 train I had no intentions. I was always mindful of my own thoughts when traveling to and from work, always wary of touching people by accident, or making uncomfortable eye contact. I would stand most times and when I did sit I would prefer to not have any one sitting next to me. That’s still pretty much the heuristic I follow today because well in NYC it’s less likely to be involved in any type of incident that way. As a single 28 year old I was some what observant of the periodic very attractive woman waiting on platforms or sitting or standing on trains, also on their way to wherever they were bound, at the time I was in a bit of a funk with regard to dating…correction, I didn't date. I basically interacted with some people online via AOL chat and went on periodic blind dates but that was the extent of my socializing.
Just the thought of real time interaction with women was a reason to induce terror that was Seismic in scale, produce copious amounts of perspiration and should I be tasked to actually speak ensured my voice quivered as if it were strum by an impossible giant vocal chord bow. Yet here I was waiting for the train to settle down and the doors to open to one of the greatest challenges I would face interacting with a woman on the subway.
The train doors opened and as is my pattern I selected the doors near the end of the train car to enter, these are optimal to me because the ends tend to be free of crowding in a way that the middle doors are not and the sooner I can get to a place where I don’t have to touch any one else the better and the corners did that well. Also the doors were close to twin seats placed on opposite sides of the train conductor box which when empty would be an ideal seat to pick (since you could only have at most one person actually next to you).
So it turns out that as the doors opened I noticed the opposing twin seats next to the conductor box were empty and made my way to them as soon as the doors opened.
As I turned to sit down that is when I saw “her”, she was sitting in the somewhat diagonally opposed twin seat near the door that connected two subway cars and the car doors I just entered through. It was difficult to ignore the fact that she was absolutely beautiful, skin the complexion of a golden honey and a jawline and lip composure that I couldn’t get more symmetrical if I drew it…and I do draw. In this moment of mind gawking (I glanced as I sat down but did not fix gaze) I caught myself and reshifted my focus forward as the doors closed and the train car began to move forward.
As the train lurched forward at a pace that seemed slower than usual I periodically couldn't help glance in her direction, she was also gazing mostly straight ahead but I couldn't quite tell where she was actually looking. See, she was wearing rather dark designer shades and being able to suss out the true vector her eyes were taking multiplied my nervousness to no end. Why? I don’t know…for some reason I felt she was maybe staring at me through those shades…having alredy noticed my fraction of a second lingering upon getting on the train.
I assuaged my paranoia in the moment by rejecting the possibility that she even noticed my coming on the train let alone that she saw me look in her direction. The nervousness was all of my own making, again I sat forward as the train moved to the next station.
Yet there I was still thinking again about her story, did she live far or near to Newkirk Ave. ?as she was already on the train she must have boarded at the last/first stop at Flatbush Ave. — Brooklyn College. Called simply by us natives , “The Junction”. It was early morning and she was dressed for business, elegantly attired in a black skirt and heels and a grey over coat, the shades were tinted black as well. Her Hair was up in a bun with streamers of her wavy black hair bounding down around her forehead.
I had to catch myself again! Why was I thinking so much about this woman? Sure she was attractive, extremely attractive…but I often saw extremely attractive woman on the train…but this one had me rapt. Periodically I’d steal a glance back to her, the train moved forward through stops in Brooklyn headed passed Church Ave. and Winthrop St. and on to Franklin Ave and beyond and I kept finding myself stealing glances until some where around Nevins St. something terrible happened.
She shifted her position in her seat.
I was immediately mortified, I felt that she noticed my constant (it seemed to me) glances and was uncomfortable. I felt like a gawking fool and the nervousness I’d felt just from being in her presence became an unbareable heat that induced more persperation under my winter trench coat. Ashamed I resolved to put my head down and look at the floor and concentrate on not looking in her direction again. At this point she’d slightly shifted toward the door that separates cars next to the conductor box, I still couldn’t tell where she was looking behind those shades but she could have easily been looking at me and I wouldn’t have known it.
As the train continued on into Manhattan it seemed it slowed to an absolute snails pace. I just wanted to be off the train, I was embarrased by what I felt was stalkerish behavior on my part and just wanted to shrivle up into a ball to escape the heat! The train moved on beyond Wall St. beyond Fulton and just about at Chambers street, she made motions to get up from her seat!
I was happy she would be getting off soon, thus sparing me the further heat of embarrassment but as she walked over to my side of the train to stand at the exit door, so close that I almost felt her heat radiating like plasma of the sun; I felt like I was going to faint. I waited away the time as I imagined that she would be getting off at the next stop and then suddenly:
“I think you’re cute.”
Resonated in it’s subtle delivery as if it had the power of a gong behind it in my left ear. I was so shocked by the sudden voice at my ear that I jumped forward out of my seat before realizing that the voice was “hers” and the intentions were amorous.
With one phrase, all my mental masturbating about gawking and making her uncomfortable revealed themselves to be the absolute nonsense that they were…my own mind running away with ideas as it often did.
As I recomposed myself and stammered out “th thank you!” I received a sudden jolt of confidence. I sat back in the seat with a smirk for a few seconds before utilizing the energy of that jolt to begin a conversation with her. It turns out she noticed me as well from the moment I entered the train and was quite intrigued, so much so that she didn’t feel she should miss the opportunity to tell me so before leaving the train.
I was flabbergasted but played it cool as we chatted about her work. In those days cell phones were not widely owned most people had pagers (coloquially called “beepers”) and before she got off the train she made sure to ask me to take her number (I was too timid to ask) and call her so that we could hang out some time. I couldn’t believe it was happening to me in the first place, in the second place I couldn’t believe how wrong I was about what the situation actually was. There I was thinking the complete opposite of what the reality was, rather than disgust she was experiencing a similar shade of lust to the one I felt when I saw her….she shifted her position in her seat not out of discomfort but so she could get a better look at me! We laughed about that before she stepped off at 34th st. Penn station.
As she got off and we said our goodbyes I sat back with a grin on my face so big the Cheshire cat would be envious.
As the doors closed suddenly another voice to my left exclaimed loudly:
“Damn! Why doesn’t that ever happen to me!!”
An older gentleman who was sitting toward the center of the train car and opposite to me had observed the entire interaction. To his eyes a gorgeous woman picked up a Man, maybe he saw that I was cool as a cucumber…but we know the reality of that don’t we?
I looked at him and shrugged my shoulders as I continued to grin with delight at what just transpired. Why indeed. ;)