Alphabet City, Alphabet Soup
15 years ago when I first came to New York...
My sneakers peep and grind as I almost-run down to the bottom of the smallest steps in the world at the 2nd Ave. F. The August febrile air clouts me straight on the nose, next it’s given me a proverbial black eye, and then the rest of my body feels the buffet. I have made a conscious effort to always stay stationary near train tracks, “Mr. Clumsy, a real southpaw”, I say to myself; with my apparently signature eyebrow tilt. I halt myself, backpacked and endowed with headphones, and find a pillar to lean on. On the pillar a heart with two sets of initials are wounded through the paint; the one set matches my own.
It’s Radiohead. It always is – I mean the music in my mind and inevitably on my ears. He is definitely staring. No doubt that’s a stare. But at me? Really. Just me, silly rough and tumble me. He is jabbing my eyes with his darker than Heath Ledger Joker peepers as he leans too deeply back against the wall across the 8 p.m. platform. Moisture runs down my cheek as I fight the perspiration and New York miasma below the East Village. But I don’t stop rubbernecking the well-over 6ft blonde. I think out loud, “you have to be a Dutch athlete with a body like that”. I think he hears me as he smiles that Euro-trash peek-a-boo at me. He throws himself across the subway station and all over me just with his goggle. It jars me, as I feel like I’m falling through the floor.
Trains bring release from the heat, and the stare, as simultaneous machines near head butt across the platforms. I mount the machine, as my mirror does too from the other side, regaining the stare. Doors slide, lives change. Our faces are now a few feet apart but double glass prevents me from speaking, or breathing for that matter. He kisses me through the glass. A sucker punch.
My fingers look for a writing instrument, a way of giving him my number, my name, my heart but he beats me to it. He starts to write the letter J, the letter T…and the train rattles and without warning disappears in its usual way. The initials on the pillar I call to mind; the other set matches his.
