It was dark outside the window. Underground. I was on a train home to New York from the Hamptons, where I’d spent two days with a client and her family, part work and part play. My reflection in the window was a shade tanner, but otherwise unchanged. I’d become obsessed with my reflection in these places. Not out of vanity, mind you, but rather a fascination with the way I fit in with the new surroundings. That’s what I look like on a train, I would think as I studied the way I slouched in the red and tan leather seat. That’s how I look on the subway, while I sat closely between two strangers. That’s what I look like with a backdrop of New York City buildings, walking down the sidewalk just like everyone else, I would think as I glimpsed my reflection in a Manhattan shop window. I was astonished at how well I blended in. I was an outsider, transplanted to the city just three months ago from Tennessee. Or was it four months, now? The only thing that gave me away was the slight twang in my speech. Otherwise, I couldn’t find a trace of outsider that showed.
A few rows in front of me, two high school girls were talking loudly, sweatshirt hoods covering their shiny hair except where it spilled over their shoulders. Theirs were the only audible voices on the crowded train, the girls not quite old enough to be aware of when other people could hear them. Or maybe just not old enough to care. Had I been that way, or had I always been my quiet self, wanting so badly to be noticed and called out of my own cave, and yet going to great lengths to avoid that very thing? Had I also gossiped about such trivial topics? I couldn’t remember. I assumed I had, as most girls do, but the image of myself as a chatty, carefree teenager just didn’t fit.
The train pulled into Penn Station so smoothly I couldn’t determine a moment when the train had actually stopped. People spilled out on to the track, eager to get to work, for it was early morning, or the tourists to see as much of the city as they could see in a day. In New York, that isn’t much. Penn Station is like a strip mall, low ceiling and neon lights. I much prefer Grand Central, with its sweeping staircases and high, ancient arcs. I made my way to the subway and toward the track for the downtown 2 and 3 trains, which would then take me to the L, and then to my new apartment, where all boxes had been unpacked and discarded but nothing had been there long enough to need dusted yet.
Two women and three young girls, each with a backpack or small suitcase, got on the almost empty L train with me. Empty, I knew, because no one is headed to Brooklyn at the start of the workday. One of the women, the smaller blonde one, was telling the people across from her a wild story about how they’d stepped onto the wrong train and figured it out just in time to get off again. The listeners, a couple in their early twenties, responded politely, knowing all the while the story was not so wild. I picked up from the woman’s abundance of details that the tourists were headed for my stop in Williamsburg. The stop can be kind of confusing, the subway reaching the street by two staircases at opposite ends of the platform, on two different streets. I thought about asking the women where in the neighborhood they were headed, so I could offer some direction on which exit to use and where to turn from there, but the loud way the blonde woman was chatting away made me embarrassed for her rather than eager to help. Sure, New Yorkers are loud, but New Yorkers are loud only when they have to be: in an altercation, cheering at a Yankees game, a cab driver yelling at traffic not because it helps but because that’s what they do. But otherwise New Yorkers are silent. We don’t talk to each other on the subway or on the street. I’ve purchased groceries before without the checkout girl or I saying a single word to each other.
So when we reached Bedford, after a haul under the East River during which my ears always pop, I gathered my bag and hurried off the train, eager to get on with my normal, New York day.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the window of the corner store where I run out sometimes to grab a Diet Coke for one dollar exactly, and thought, that’s what I look like walking home.
I hope you’re all enjoying your summer! June 1st I launched a new site called Sunshine + Skyscrapers with partner (and my bicoastal bestie) Heather Anderson. We’ll be sharing all kinds of goodies on wellness: fitness, food and my personal favorite, self-development. If you’ve been enjoying my self-exploratory style posts here on The Ooh La La Life, watch for more of those coming from me on S+S!
The Ooh La La Life 