People on the Subway

Just riding the subway home, you know, long day, it's cold out, don't feel like reading so I just watch. People on and off. This woman comes in, brown, young, older than me though, not a student I don't think, red toque and red gloves and black coat she sits down in the middle of three seats. Poor subway etiquette. A man sits down next to her, pure business, nice suit and nice shoes and nice jacket, nice haircut, nice jawline, where's the car today buddy? The woman doesn't move over even though she has an empty seat to her right. She must be new at this big city thing. Nobody has told her that the idea is to stay as far away from strangers as possible. They leave eventually and all I have is my reflection looking back at me now; he's slightly sinister there, stony faced and impassive, I keep waiting for him to wink at me, scratch his nose in defiance of my own limp arms.

A girl gets on, a tall, dark skinned teen-aged girl, slightly awkward in that way that growing kids are, in that way that makes you want to say hey, no, it gets better eventually, but there she is blocking me from that doppledanger, so I have to find somewhere else to look. The floor is dirty, melted snow and salt stains and the occasional newspaper. Are subways ever cleaned? Do they just accumulate dirt from the day they go into service to the day they retire, the grime and wear piling up for twenty years? Somebody must clean them.

At Pape a Greek girl gets on, and I know she's Greek because she has that look that Greek chicks get, the sense of power and confidence, the loud voice, she's probably named Toula, Vasoula, Maroula, and that hair: an explosion of blonde curls, more than can be reasonably explained, hair just splashing everywhere around her, how much does that cost to colour? I feel like I know her already. She's into clubbing, smoking, yelling, she has a condo probably, her parents bought it for her, subsidised it at least, after running that bakery for thirty-five years they have some money to spend. She speaks perfect Greek. She works as a secretary somewhere, somewhere nice; if the makeup is any indication she knows how to take of herself.

Right, anyway. I get off eventually too, me in the skinny jeans and the leather bomber jacket and the thinning blonde hair and the designer glasses with the scratched lenses. Is that what other people see? What pigeonhole do I get stuffed into? Assuming they even look. Everybody worrying about their own problems, everybody with their eyes down and the headphones on.