She was pacing on the platform, tap tap tapping, swishing a long coat, boots trimmed in fur. She kept pulling her hair down between two scissoring fingers, like she probably had ironed her hair at home and was worried the humidity would bring the kinks back. She couldn't believe the L wasn't running properly, that there was no train between 8th Ave and Union Square, and now some other announcement was being made. She worriedly asked the MTA official about getting to the Morgan stop, saying that she never took the train and therefore didn't know anything about the train system, and the MTA official gave an answer like, "Tonight there's a shuttle to Bedford, where a true L will be Canarsie-bound," which makes perfect sense to anyone familiar with the L, but of course did not help this girl at all.
I've seen that kind of interaction many times, usually in the context of a language barrier. A person with limited knowledge of the language asks a native speaker a question, and the native answers with contractions and slang and a few "you know"s thrown in, and absolutely baffles the foreigner. It's like some sort of autism, where you are unable to empathize with a person enough to see from their point of view. ...unable to break things down into digestible parts...
I was sitting against the wall, on my Sector 9, wearing my new sweatsuit, reading the cover of Charlotte's Web, thinking about contact improv, bar mitzvahs, NOLS courses, and the nature of jealously. I wonder if The Temptations really made a good Christmas album. I wonder if Julia is really happy in Seattle. I wish I wouldn't have said that he smoked crack. I wonder if she could like me, even though I look nothing like Gael Garcia Bernal, or really anybody else.
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bat mitzvah
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