on
12/1/2001
Writer's Note: The following is transcribed from a tape recorded Friday evening.
There's a girl at my ten o'clock, sitting alone at another table in the crowded rail terminal. She's small, but not young. In her lap is a knitted piece of fabric. It appears to be almost large enough for her to make a sweater out of. She pays attention only to her knitting, and listens to her headphones. She has on a black velvet shirt, sleeves pushed up almost to the elbow, and gray corduroys. A blue and black backpack sits beside her chair, with an almost-matching blue-topped Nalgene Bottle. Her hair is shoulder-length, and of an orangey-blond that could be dyed, but doesn't look like it.
She glances my way. Her eyes look extremely tired.
Is she waiting for someone? Is a train coming for her, or has she already finished her journey, and is sitting here, like me, taking a few minutes alone in a crowded room?
I too have on a black shirt--two actually, a dress shirt and a tee shirt. My pants are charcoal. Her legs are crossed, feminine-style; mine are crossed masculine-style. She doesn't want to be accosted, or bothered. She's "an island unto herself." There's little difference between us. I'm talking to my miniature electronics; she's listening to hers.
I'm still searching her for clues, but I don't know what to. She's perfectly detached, but she looks up at sounds, scratches her neck, changes legs. That's all she's done. That's my complete vocabulary of her.
Why am I fascinated by this woman? People would tell me to just go talk to her, but she doesn't want to be spoken to. How similar are we right now? Is this purely sexual? I am attracted to her, I think--at least her rear profile.
So I sip my tea, and talk into my tape recorder. She knits her scarf, and listens to her headphones.
Now I'm being observed, but not by her. It's another girl, at my nine o'clock. And somewhere at her eight o'clock, is there a boy looking at her? And at his seven o'clock, a woman looking at him? Of course not. (She's gone anyway.)
I am my fictional Galilleo, probing this girl on her stool through my intuition, and drawing nothing from it. Galilleo represents all men, in my story. I don't know how it ends. It's only half written. I tried to step back into it last night, but I barely got a line written. What I wrote before is too good for me to tamper with. I don't know how to get back into it, because I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote it--or rather, I don't know how I was thinking.
She's stopped knitting. She's looking off at something, with her hands crossed in front of her, resting her fists against her mouth. She must be waiting for someone. Is she? Whose coming from the subway direction; that's the way she's facing. No, she's not waiting; she's just tired of knitting.
For the record, her name was “Jess”--I heard her friend say that as she met her at the pay phone, as I was just getting up.
Touch the Toast