Girl on the Subway

It is early January of 2001 and I am sitting on a train heading for Boston's South Station. I am tired and I look sort of like hell, and I am dressed down. I have forgotten my sketchbook and anything to read or write. Consequently I am very bored. The train stops, it goes. It picks people up, it drops people off. I still have a lot more stops. I have always been fascinated by the subway for some reason. At few other times do I wonder about the people around me, what their stories are, who they are, where they're going. I am staring out the window. The train stops. I still have a long way to go.

A woman steps onto the train, bundled against the bitter New England cold. She is maybe my age, maybe slightly older. She is the sort of woman often described as mousy - she is wearing glasses and her hair is done up and back in a fairly prim and tight manner, held there with what appears to be a gold-colored hair clip - one of those that works along the same principle as a barrette but is significantly more ornate and is usually worn at the rear center of the head. The glasses are wire frame. She is wearing fuzzy gloves, a fairly warm-looking black jacket, and a scarf. Her body language speaks volumes; she is pulled-in, she is withdrawn. She radiates shyness and nervousness, and looks to be protecting herself from not only the cold, but something else as well, something far less tangible but more threatening, to her, anyway. She is now sitting directly across from me.

I don't know why she is fascinating me so, but either I am being furtive enough or she just doesn't notice that I trying to look at her without being exceptionally obvious. It's warm enough on the train but still she is withdrawn, as if shielding herself from human contact. She is very plain, and looks for all the world like a librarian or similar. Then, apparently assured that no one will bother her, she begins the process of grooming in some minor way.

This is when I begin to notice. She starts by undoing her coat and removing her scarf, then her gloves, then the coat. She is wearing a red sweater and black pants. After this, she removes her glasses and sets them down on her lap. Finally, she takes the clip out of her hair.

Suddenly, she is breathtakingly gorgeous.

I know no other way to describe it. With her glasses off and hair down, she is another person entirely. Her blonde hair is down about to her shoulders, and it's healthy and lovely. It frames the sort of face people start fights over; her eyes are heavy-lidded but sparkling, and her lips are in a permanent pout. She looks detached in a wonderfully alluring way. I am trying not to stare. The glamorous creature sitting across from me is thrown into sharper focus by the plain, nervous woman she was thirty seconds ago. She looks confident now, almost bored. Calmly, she begins brushing her hair. Even strokes, practiced and methodical. It's fascinating to watch her. Brush...brush...brush...I realize I am staring. She is too busy brushing to notice.

She is finished brushing. She puts the brush back in her bag, and then does something that proves more fascinating than anything she has done all night: She puts her hair back up, making sure that no more hairs are out of place than are absolutely necessary, and once more dons her glasses. As she does, her entire demeanor changes again. She is once more withdrawn. Her face has altered in no subtle way. She is plain again. She is a nobody. I don't know why but this floors me. At the time this seems like a twist ending of sorts; she went from unspectacular to stunning and then back again. I almost want to ask her why she doesn't get contacts. I just sit quietly. She looks as introverted and worried as she had when she got on the train.

It is my stop. I stand up and get off the train, and make a mental note to write about this later. The doors close behind me, and the train rumbles off into the night.