Train Car, No-love

The simple idea of the female species sent chills down his spine. For unknown reasons, girls always held a vague sense of unavailability. Seemingly, this derived from his inability to “obtain” a member of the female species as his mate, thereby being unable to deem any particular individual his “girlfriend”; but, and this was more plausible, his overall anguish whilst in the midst of one speaking of females derived from a simple yet strangely uncanny emotion, or in more technical terms, state of mind. He was shy, shy like diffident shy, shy like timid shy. This was also an example of one of those odd fragments of life that he could not grasp, that he could not comprehend, that he could not understand the positive sense of.

It was the way he was, that inner combination of proteins and chemicals that formed his life into the negative thing that it was. He was male, un-female, possessor of a large amount of the male hormone testosterone. Still, there was that inability to be a man, to assert, to show who has the pants on. He wanted to demonstrate his manliness, that dormant part of him, lax and inactive, flabby from under use. He needed to; wanted to; desperately desired to. He needed a “girlfriend”, although he did not agree how conventions of standard noun formation pertained to the combination of the two common words converged, creating the word “girlfriend.”

Despite his lack of “manliness,” he still found it quite apt to board a train, take a book from his bag, and proceed by reading it, perpetually taking brief glimpses of the passengers as the train ride progressed. Often, there would be a very attractive girl on the train, usually at the farthest point from him. This would be his focus point, the section of the train in relatively short distance from the female in question. He would look at the point, cleverly proceeding by scanning the area around it, which, of course, included the girl. Sneaking glances he would take, quick, deft, and sneaky. No eye-locking; it was not allowed. Eye-locking ruined the moment, destroyed its utter and sheer quality of forlornness, tarnished its degree of hindrance. If the girl locked eyes, she would know that he was looking at her; and if she smiled while looking at him, he would not look back at her, and, quite frequently, he would get off of the train, even if it was raining and he had no hat.

But as he continued to perpetuate his hopeless cycle, he realized that perhaps instead of getting off of the train, he should smile, and maybe, and this is a big maybe, he would close his book, making sure to catch his page, and squeeze and nudge to the girl, where he would exchange names, empty queries on the weather, and, hopefully, phone numbers. This was the apex of his goals; this was the final real obstacle. Once he got through this, the rest was just a smooth ride.


But, of course, the first step was the most difficult.
He had his day set up; all of his objectives were neatly categorized according to their importance. Always, always, on the top was this: Get a girlfriend. Always, it was not crossed out. But he knew he would eventually manage to truthfully and without a doubt cross it out; because really, in a cliché-like sense, nothing is impossible.

On one particular day, at, according to his watch, three’ o’clock, he found himself on a train, which, as a direct affect to the heat, was pungent with the foul stench of unwashed extremities. He entered this train and grimaced, absent-mindedly moving his hand towards his nose, where he would attempt to block out the stench by making a cup over his nostrils. But before he could do so, he saw an attractive young woman, feminine and dignified in her Catholic school uniform, reading a book a bit over 5 feet in front of him. Realizing that having a hand that close to his nose was not very likely to allot a strong degree of attraction on the female’s part, he flung his hand to his side, where it slowly fiddled with the zipper of his jacket, that gratuitous jacket that made him look stupider than he felt.

Sweaty, flustered, sweaty, and fatigued, he leaned against the train door, a door that was not there, exemplifying that he did not lean on the door in the literal sense, but in a more presumed perceived perception that, despite his plain exhaustless, did little to force him to take a preemptive cursory glance at the binary functional position of the doors at that particular time: open or closed.


As quick as lighting, impulses traveled throughout his body. His Cerebellum, personified, was in a state of dissonant disarray; his cerebrum, his voluntary source, in an overlooked way him, analyzed the unfortunate event; the medulla, controller of the involuntary, signaled his arms to fly up, extend, reach, grasp, clamp onto something, someone, some solid source of stability and unyielding permanence. His adrenal gland secreted adrenaline; it dilated his pupils, allowing him to realize in a better sense that he was about to hit the ground, the platform of the train station, strike, hurt, damage, fracture, embarrass himself, drop his book, lose his page, lower his self-esteem. His mind briefly shifted to the girl and the book she was reading, her hair, her uncompromising Catholic beauty, the proud and cynical tilt of her head, the unimposing location of her choice of seating, the way her hair was dressed, and he realized that he had hit the ground.

He felt no pain; all was numb. He shut his eyes tightly, somehow attempting to verify the true succession of events. Looking up, he saw the cloudy sky, the faint outline of sunlight. Through the sides of his eyes he saw people looking at him, not helping or providing any auxiliary assistance, just looking, utilizing their God-given right to do and not do whatever they wanted, even if it made them look more foolish than they were. He had fallen on his back and decided that he would eventually need to get up, so he did, turning to his front and lifting himself(with moderate effort) with his un-muscular arms. He stood up and reached for his book and bookmark; finding them in two separate places he sighed.


Attempting to regain his composure and his unambiguous state of unimposing-ness and indiscreetness, he sat down, his mind swirling his random paranoid thoughts, from the girl, who had closed her book and was now looking at the door he had fallen out of, to the active attempt at remembering what page he was on. But a greater fraction of his mind was on the girl and the feeling that she had seen the whole thing. Somehow, it made him feel worse. He looked around the train and noticed that everyone had stopped caring about him even more. Thankful, he opened his book and attempted to retrace his last reading. But in the back of his mind he had a nagging impetus to look up again, and never being one to deny his due to succumb to nagging feelings, he did. To his utter and ultimately horrifying shock, he saw the girl looking at him, her eyes steadily transfixed on his. Another impulse traveled and he immediately jerked his head down, feeling a radiant burning sensation deep in his stomach. She was looking at him, with, to him, curiosity.

Lovely.

He looked up again, the focus of his gaze being the old woman two seats down from the girl, and slowly moved his head in a linear fashion towards the girl. Again, he met eyes with her. He couldn’t take it. He placed the bookmark in the book and got up, but realizing that the train was moving, he abruptly sat down. In his mind he cursed and knew that he had to do something for his sanity’s sake. Suitably, the sleeping man to the left of the girl got up when the train stopped.


It comes a time where one must assert oneself, totally forget that for every action there is an equal but opposite reaction, and realize that, in a trite almost too logical sense, there is a one-hundred percent chance of missing shots one doesn’t take, and also realize that not living right in the present causes a person to want to live more and more in the past. He knew that this was his time, that he must show to himself that there is nothing wrong with his genetic makeup.
“Rise, lord of own destiny,” he thought to himself; “rise and show thy worth.”
He walked to her, her in the blue skirt, her with the hazel eyes, her with a hopefully-wonderful smile, and sat next to her, her with the lovely scent of loveliness. She shifted slightly in her seat, for reasons that he hoped did not pertain to him. Nervous and tense and worried and anxious and stressed, he opened his mouth and said the first words that came to his mind:

“See my fall?”

The girl turned to him, making him feel inadequate and worm-like in her questioning and deeply moving gaze.

“Some of it,” she said, her voice showing no pretense of affection or the curiosity he thought it might hold.

“Which part?” he said. He really did not like the way this was going.

“The dramatic arm-flailing and missing of something to hold onto part.”

“Oh.” His voice was quivering slightly. “Did you see the rest?”

“No.”

“Why not?”
“I knew what was going to happen.”

“Which was?”

“You were going to fall and get up quickly. There was no point in looking at the rest.”

“Well, yeah, but maybe…” He trailed off, searching in this jittery brain for another topic to talk about. It came to him, and he smiled slightly.

“Boy, does it smell in this place,” he said.

“Yes, it does.” She was looking at him in the way that a person looks at a person when they are unfathomably bored. “I think it is coming from that man in the corner.” She pointed to an obese man with a large sweat stain on his shirt that said, “You only hate me because I’m beautiful” in four different languages.

“Most probably,” he said. This seemed like another dead topic. Another idea came to him, one that had been place in the good pick up line and/or phrase section of his brain. Through an originally unsuccessful observation he had come to the conclusion that starting an argument with someone was the best way to get to know them. Inhaling then exhaling, he said:

“What are you reading?”

The girl sighed and said, “A book.”

“Which book? Exact title.”

“If I recorded this conversation and wrote it down, there would be many question marks next to the quotation marks next to the reflexive pronoun ‘he’. This leads me to believe that you are asking way too many irrelevant questions and that you are hoping to ask only one but are too afraid to do so.”


The thing about girls is that they always seem to have an uncanny perception, which, for the most part, summarizes exactly what you are trying to do, among other things. In this case, this girl knew that he wanted her name and number (or e-mail address). Strange.

“Well, I uh, maybe—so what?” he said and stood up. Establish dominance among the prey; yielding is more likely to occur when you are in dominance. “What makes you think you know everything?”

Smooth, cold, and detached, she said, “I don’t think you know how stupid you look right now: falling then getting up then evading my gaze then summing up all of your pride then coming to sit next to me then using unorthodox pick-up lines that, despite your supposed intelligence, did little to coerce me into liking you. It seems so tired. Nice try, though.”


In his mind, he thought of a million responses, all either too harsh or weak-willed. He realized that all the time he thought girls were unattainable, he was right; all was justified.
“I am not going to justify those accusations,” he said, nearing the breaking point.
“Good,” she said. “There is no need for you to do so.”

Why was she so cold, so perplexingly unattainable, so wonderfully dour and mocking? He loved her, nonetheless, and wanted her number, her name, her blood type, her fingerprints. He wanted to know if they were genetically compatible with each other. Gimme your genes, baby.

He noticed something oh so unnoticeable. He had picked up somewhere that the best way to know if a girl really likes you is by looking into her eyes. He supposed that that was one of the reasons why eyes were so important in movies and such (look into my eyes, my love). The trick was to look at the size of their pupils; if they were dilated, then she was undergoing stress, and it could be assumed that you were the cause. It is a handy trick that can save a lot of time when you are in doubt.

Her, her with the pretty lips, pupils were dilated.

Lovely.

Feeling his fleeting courage return, he said, “I’m sorry.” Apologies are another useful tool, best served warm. “I may have knocked my head a bit when I fell.”

As he had hoped it would, his apology caught her off-guard. She recoiled slightly and, without her pervious sturdiness, said, “If you say so.”
Oh, oh, oh so lovely, my love.

Dilate me, baby.


If you watch the Discovery Channel, you often see a predator, slyly lurking a fairly close distance from the prey. When the prey is alerted of the predator’s presence, the more devious of the predators begin to play around with the prey. Eventually, after the prey is tired out, the predator strikes. It is most fun when the predator goes for the throat. It was his turn to go for the throat.

“So, can I get you number, or e-mail, or both?”
As if anticipating the question and already having a prepared answer, she said, “No.”

(Not Quite Done)