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For goodness sakes woman. I just saved you fifteen dollars and fifty cents. It's ok to crack a smile.

This went down like this: I'm visiting my gf this weekend. She lives in New Brunswick, NJ; I live in Manhattan. I get off the subway, arrive at Penn Station. There's a New Jersey-bound express train docked and ready to bounce. Yes how convenient! How inconvenient: the ticket personnel and dispenser-type machines are occupied. And line lengths are long, too long. What is a man to do?

Tickets cost more when you buy them on the train. I hate waiting in lines like this. I should wait and save a buck or two. No, express trains are awesome. Patience is a virtue. Act now! I hate spending money if I don't have to. I'm about to miss this train. Think about the money. Time is money. No, money is money. I eschew missing express trains to New Brunswick. An ounce of long-suffering is worth its weight in silver. I'll just purchase my ticket en route and not wait half an hour for the next (probably local) train. I have no cash in my wallet.

Here I go.


IT'S OK TO SMILE

Bank of America and I have been together three years now. We've had a pretty good run. She's reliable, petite, and available for parties on short notice. Except when she's not around. I'm in Penn Station and I need cash: Where is she now? I run out of the NJ Transit hub. Why, hello there. Think relationships. No Bank of America kiosk in sight. Someone else is here... sucking on a red lollipop, long eyelashes, cute shoes for small feet, a nymphet in a mini and a pink ribbon in her hair. And I cheat on Bank of America with the Chase Manhattan Bank ATM across the way, who's younger and less experienced but eager. Which cheating costs me two dollars from Bank of America plus a buck from the Chase people. This is pretty cheap for what amounts to an act of prostitution, essentially. The whole thing reeks of lechery. I hate prostitutes.

On the train at first I'm alone. Soon a chubby Chinese woman is standing adjacent my seat. She needs a place to sit. I'm a gentleman! I move my knapsack, saxophone, whatever to make room. She sits. The train takes off. My chubby new neighbor unsheathes a laptop from its backpack and laptop pouch. She boots up, clicks, is reading things. Sniff sniff, sniff. Hmm. The OS smells like Windows but there's no English anywhere on that screen so who knows. Lines and scribbles. Not words or letters resembling our latin alphabet. Pirated software? Ahoy.

In comes Ticketman a few minutes later. My neighbor and I both spot Ticketman. We reach for our wallets. At roughly the same moment we reach for our wallets; it's spontaneous, unrehearsed. What the hell, though. (I'm eavesdropping.) My neighbor rifles through some bills in her wallet. Slowly. She rifles. Studying her bread, collating like cash denominations between short yellow stubby fingers. Because as fate would have it neither of us have bought tickets to New Jersey prior to boarding the Jersey-bound express train today. She's rifling because she's ticketless like me.




Oh, the Plot thickens. Ticketman works the train car. Ticketman sidles past a baby stroller and is standing adjacent our seat; Ticketman needs my money. What the hell again. One-way fare to New Brunswick, NJ from New York, NY is ten-and-a-half bucks. Plus a five skin penalty for not planning ahead, assbeard. And recall 3 smackers for the filthy Chase ATM sex I enjoyed earlier. A grand total of $18.50 for a one-way ticket to Jersey, when an adult off-peak round trip to the same place runs $17.75. Superb!

I'm friendly and I joke with Ticketman for fifty seconds about how paying more money for less value sucks so hard. I pay Ticketman. But what the crap is this? It appears that Ticketman has forgotten about my chubby Chinese neighbor, who has yet to pay, and whose Chinese face is by this time distracted and back inside the mysterious world of her laptop. There is no English on that screen. None. Like what does that chicken scratch even mean. Like it's a bunch of glyphs etched into a tree on the cover of a fantasy novel from some second-tier Dungeons & Dragons illustrator, or something. God those magic symbols could mean anything.

So Ticketman finishes our train car. He walks into the next train car, meanwhile overlooking the free fare he doled out to my chubby neighbor inadvertently. And the sliding hard plastic doors close behind Ticketman as he splits. Ok, what the crap here. She's riding to Jersey for free.

I say nothing. My neighbor doesn't look over at me. And I say nothing, if you don't count the display of curious anticipation on my face as something. I'm wondering what'll happen next, by George! You see there's a curious anticipation on my face that I'm wondering if my banana tree will come to fruition or if it'll rot in the ground instead. I'm wondering. Is my neighbor gonna look over here and give me the big thumbs up for saving her money while I talked to Ticketman and she didn't have to pay? She's not looking. Ok. Does she get that she didn't pay Ticketman just then. Yes, she gets it. Chinese neighbor reclasps her wallet and slides it into her purse. Shuts down her laptop, resheathes it in its laptop pouch, re-backpacks the laptop pouch. Chinese neighbor stares blankly at the back of the seat in front of her for the next twenty minutes.




Getting emotional. Ok, back up. Back up. I'm backing up. It must have registered to this woman on some level that she skirted the fifteen fifty ($$$) she was obliged to pay. Since she didn't pay for her trip. You know. It must've registered that I paid my way into New Jersey without this girl ever paying for anyone, ever. Since I was being talky with Ticketman and that was her saving grace in this situation. And I paid for that [saving] graciousness! Let's face it, China. I was kinda ripped off here. That Ticketman left with close to nineteen of my dollars and none of hers.

Wait be cool, I tell myself. Be cool chief. Chubby caught a break today, good for her. Tough luck, that's poker! Uhm, no. Something bothers me. You know what it is? She should've smiled. Chubby. Chubby should've smiled — IT'S OK TO SMILE. Seeing as she dodged the usual (read: de jure and historically firm) exchange of goods and services and kept her sixteen clams. You know. Could've smiled. To acknowledge if only to herself, and to me, that she got a train ride for nothing and today she's a thief. Still not smiling. She's not acknowledging anything here. Now a decent person, in her situation, would acknowledge this and smile. Come on now. Look at me. For a second look at me. Peek over here, Chinese neighbor. Shoot me a glance so that I know that you know that I caught a bullet for you just then.

Come now. Afterward we'll laugh with sincerity. If with brevity. And I can go back to sulking over funds and a life misspent. You can go back to reading that electronic druid script you call a language, Chinese neighbor.

Mmmph. Let's do it. Come on now! We'll restore the natural equilibrium of the universe or some shit. Ok? OK??? She's not coming on. Oh. Did she look? Almost? No I imagined that. Look here please. Hey. Listen up, you should be happy you saved some coin. Look here please. You can even forget that I was involved. Then I won't even ask you to reinburse me for half of your ticket to Jersey, if you'll look over here this instant.




Gosh! I can't take this nonsense, anymore. I tilt my head, then lean my entire body forward in some baroque gesture. I force eye contact with my Chinese neighbor. She's looking at me, maybe confused. I smile weakly. I relax my upper body somewhat. I have her full attention. She looks at me. Good. I point at the top of the seat in front of her. The top where her ticket stub or receipt for ticket purchased onboard should be, but isn't. She looks, follows my finger to her ticketless seat, then to my clearly-ticketed seat and finally back to me. I mouth and whisper the words, "I know what you did."

Her response is immediate and unmistakable. She lowers her head. Almost to the ground, she lowers it. Her eyes, too, are lowered. She's queerly still and there's this silence about. She's real quiet. I say nothing; I wait. Eventually, peering down at her from above, I can see in her face that her lips are moving. She replies to my indictment, softly, "Ok."

I'm out fifteen dollars and fifty cents. It's ok to smile, you ogre!!

The remaining moments on the train are different. My neighbor raises her head but only slightly. She remains quiet and does not look at me again. Not directly anyway. Neither does Ticketman return. I start to feel something, I don't know what, that maybe something profound has happened. Something that suggests a personal response of a sort, a vehicle for self-reflection, you know, something eluding identification but real. I don't know what, exploring sensitivity, character analysis. Facing attitudes of unaltruism, self-servitude, impatience, close-fistedness. Whatever. Generally I try not to think about such things. What things? Oh, they hang heavily in the air of this express railway car, undisturbed, unsaid, unexamined and unaddressed, while the train careens toward New Brunswick New Jersey and we sit in them in stillness. Such things are here, now. (Are you listening to me?) They're thick and breathable and they're ours—my Chinese neighbor's and mine—whatever they are. Such things as what? I can't be bothered to care. When we get to my stop, I shuffle awkwardly through them and exit the train.

Later I explain all of this to my girlfriend, who apparently is also Chinese. Here we go. I get this song and dance about how I shamed this poor girl—how her culture takes interpersonal relations seriously, even in non-formal, impromptu social situations of relative unimportance. (I'm a typical American boar, who doesn't understand her country and their ways, and on and on. Seriously what is this. Because my comfort and desires are evidently not an issue here, to take into consideration. Need I remind you that I was screwed out of ten bucks today? Does that not matter. And now about that thing you said, in regards to my chubby Chinese neighbor on the train. Come on girlfriend, get real. We can't live our lives in regular paralysis on the off chance that we'll offend any Tom Dick or Harry that comes along. We don't live that way, in fear. People have their own personal cultural values and hang-ups and everything besides. How do we even know?)



±ΥΓΕΤ쳡


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