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girl looking for a guy |
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6/24, 2:30 pm at Flushing: you, frantic in black raybans, I, avoiding eyecontact in saddleshoes.
Wednesday June 25, 2008 at 10:53 amLongwinded I made the second traincar of the J at Flushing, Manhattan bound, Tuesday the 25th at approximately 2:30 pm. I stood pressed against the wall. Opened a book, avoiding eyecontact after you took off your black raybans. The seat next to you emptied so I took it.
For only one brief second did we come into physical contact, as you bent forward to reach frantically into your bag or could have been a jolt from the traincar. Just my right wrist gripping tightly a pen, as it grazed your left shoulder, blue polo shirted. You fumbled for your book. Heavy with blue stickers marking important pages, you scratched something hastily into a tiny red notebook. A blue pen. I couldn't make out what you had written. You were crouched away from my wandering eyes protectively; eyes left then to graze across a corduroy worn knee. We sat closely. In the warmth I was painfully aware of my hand touching your back if only it would be.
Scrawled in your margin was "Baudrillard would have agreed" in charming boywriting. I may have muttered under my breath an appreciatory phrase or uttered an eyeroll and a silent laugh. Somehow I was thrilled.
I couldn't pick up a scent. I took off a shirt to stir the air, but all I could smell was mine.
You turned to me suddenly and asked if you could catch the A or the C from Canal or Fulton. I opportuned to see your eyes, you must have seen me searching and startled, straining through those opaque black lenses (you replaced your shades when I sat next to you); failing, I struggled to compose. I didn't know, sorry, and you got up to view a map and I oriented myself with each detail: your darkhaired arm and complexion different from mine, my own eagerness and your franticness, the black converse you wore and my finding them bored, how a faded green corduroy forever unnoticable on a knee could rend me delirious, a black stubbled face and a wish to see eyes, your writing in the margins and my usual refusal to... though while I sat with you I did write something within my book, all of this to compose to you this letter because even if not for finding you I'll surely be let satisfied.
I wanted to point to you something I read while you sat near me:
"...doors of syntax, windows of nuance, a long, carpeted hallway..."
I wonder what you would have thought
For only one brief second did we come into physical contact, as you bent forward to reach frantically into your bag or could have been a jolt from the traincar. Just my right wrist gripping tightly a pen, as it grazed your left shoulder, blue polo shirted. You fumbled for your book. Heavy with blue stickers marking important pages, you scratched something hastily into a tiny red notebook. A blue pen. I couldn't make out what you had written. You were crouched away from my wandering eyes protectively; eyes left then to graze across a corduroy worn knee. We sat closely. In the warmth I was painfully aware of my hand touching your back if only it would be.
Scrawled in your margin was "Baudrillard would have agreed" in charming boywriting. I may have muttered under my breath an appreciatory phrase or uttered an eyeroll and a silent laugh. Somehow I was thrilled.
I couldn't pick up a scent. I took off a shirt to stir the air, but all I could smell was mine.
You turned to me suddenly and asked if you could catch the A or the C from Canal or Fulton. I opportuned to see your eyes, you must have seen me searching and startled, straining through those opaque black lenses (you replaced your shades when I sat next to you); failing, I struggled to compose. I didn't know, sorry, and you got up to view a map and I oriented myself with each detail: your darkhaired arm and complexion different from mine, my own eagerness and your franticness, the black converse you wore and my finding them bored, how a faded green corduroy forever unnoticable on a knee could rend me delirious, a black stubbled face and a wish to see eyes, your writing in the margins and my usual refusal to... though while I sat with you I did write something within my book, all of this to compose to you this letter because even if not for finding you I'll surely be let satisfied.
I wanted to point to you something I read while you sat near me:
"...doors of syntax, windows of nuance, a long, carpeted hallway..."
I wonder what you would have thought
