When I Think About You

Dear Crazy Lady on the 4 Train,

You probably don't remember me, but I'm the guy in the light blue shirt sitting across from you on the train after work this afternoon. I couldn't help but notice - in fact, none of us could - your reading selection, Sex for One: The Art of Self Love, which you held so prominently displayed in front of your face from the time you boarded the train at Burnside Avenue til the time you got off, so to speak, at 86th Street.

I hope you didn't mind everyone staring at you; with the exception of our sixteen year old gentleman friend sitting next to you, most of us tried to be subtle about it. If you did happen to catch us, you probably assumed we were alarmed by the way your entire upper body twitched, as though on cue, every five seconds. That, or we were fascinated by your predilection for fingernail- and cuticle-biting, wondering what sort of delicious discovery we all had yet to make.

In fact, what most of us were doing - or at least myself, the sixteen year old, and the homeless man next to me, with whom I developed an unexpected, silent reparte - was, against our better judgment, imagining just what you must look like practicing your solitary art. I found myself awash in choices - showerhead vs. wilting produce vs. hairbrush; dirty, yellow-carpeted living room floor vs. card table in the kitchen under the glare of a single, bare lightbulb vs. utility pole on the 86th Street subway platform; surrounded by three cats vs. four vs. five; etc. etc. - yet unable to choose.

Somewhere between 149th St. and 125th, it struck me that perhaps you were Sent By a Higher Power. The truth of the matter is, I've been struggling to cut down on the countless, lost hours I spend honing my own art, with limited success. But now, having met mouse-haired, twitching, cuticle-free You, I find myself unable to consider the words masturbation, self, love, art or subway without feeling an accompanying sense of something somewhere between nausea and alarm.

So, thank you, Crazy Lady. Thank you for giving me and my co-commuters a fleeting sense of comradery and brotherhood before we went on with our respective Tuesday night schedules. Thank you for giving us something to smile and feel twelve years old about. But most of all, thank you for giving me back three hours of every day of the rest of my life, time that will hereforth be more productively spent cleaning my toilet, or completing my novellette, or staring panickedly at the ceiling as I try to Fight the Demons by conjuring up you and the hairbrush subway platform scenario again.

Sincerely,
Groomzilla