that really, there’s something erotic about the way a boy, a boy you don’t know, a boy with tired, red eyes, and mile-long lashes, and pink pillowy lips, tugs to rearrange the crotch of his pants on the metro seat across from you. that it should be something vulgar, but now something raw and unselfconcious.
that from the back, you thought he was from the banlieue, one of the boys leaning against some beautiful wall, shouting ‘bon soir’ and smiling suggestively as you make your way home, late into the night. a boy with hair spiked to a point in a 45 degree angle, favoring one side or the other according to mood.
but he sits across from you, and his face is so soft it makes you ache. and he’s so so sleepy and you wish you could reassure him that tomorrow, tomorrow when he wakes up, the film of visual debris and harshness of the lights caused by overfatigue will lift and the world will make a lot more sense.
but he’s too tired now, so it’s my turn; and he’ll think fate some other day.
Once, when she was fifteen or sixteen, a boy had told her that she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She had pinched her chubby cheeks then and smiled politely. She thinks about that moment now, in line at the grocery store, her sweat soaked t-shirt from her bike ride still clinging to her in several places, making her uncomfortable in the too cold air. The man in front of her looks out of place. He’s carrying a toddler on one arm and a Gucci wallet in the other as the scanner beeps its approval. She wonders to herself whether that toddler will someday be one of those grownups who proudly proclaims, “My friends are sooo important to me. They’re my family.” It seems like a common phenomenon nowadays. She takes part in it. But it’s hard to imagine those roots already being planted in a child so small. The toddler fusses and the man fails to notice. Instead, he continues making jokes, trying to tease the cashier girl into laughter.
Yea, he’s one of those, she thinks to herself. She has friends like him, who, even though they’re handsome, rich, married and just all-around privileged, never lose the desire to make the waitress or the maid giggle. She calls it the ‘George Clooney syndrome’: lethal if executed with grace and nonchalance; pathetic if even a little flawed. He cracks a joke about a nun and a cat. She doesn’t see the relevance, as it’s currently a bag of cabbage getting the scan treatment. She glances down and sees that his Le Tigre polo is tucked into a pair of pale khakis with a Dockers label attached. She cannot suppress a snicker. He turns to her, surprised and pleased that she is laughing at his joke, and flashes his million dollar, million teeth smile. She smiles back.
