Rush hour on public transportation is sort of a democratization of human closeness. A stranger does not have to know me to sit so near that our thighs have practically melded together. This isn't a story about the posters that read: "A Crowded Subway is No Excuse for an Inappropriate Touch." Rather, this post is a simple observation of two gentlemen who stood back to back for 50 blocks.
They were so close that they we touching, but they never made eye contact. I was close enough that I was basically breathing down both of their necks, and could closely observe them both.
They seemed to be from different walks of life. One was wearing a well-cut suit and tie and reading The Economist; the other was in a yellow hooded sweatshirt and a trucker hat reading a religious magazine in Spanish. By my estimates, they were approximately the same age--late forties, early fifties. They seemed so different, and I naturally made assumptions that could be totally wrong (because you know that saying "when we assume we make an ass of u and me.") But it got me thinking about an assertion Joan Didion makes in an essay about New York. She says that it is a town for the "very rich and the very poor." I may pose the addendum and the young (who are sometimes also poor-ish). These two men and I may have been that trio.
The men were standing so close that they probably would have been able to feel each other's back sweat if they hadn't been wearing a sports jacket and a hoodie, but they actually never talked or saw the other's face. As I let my contemplation of them consume my mind for the better part of my commute, I found myself wishing I could follow them both home and see how they lived.
Or better yet, I wanted a Freaky Friday scenario and to have these two men switch lives.
But the thing is, besides being crammed tightly together in the subway, their lives will never touch.
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