Peoplewatching on MUNI

Today I missed the street­car and went down to the under­ground trains to try to catch up. The under­ground trains don’t go near my office, but they do go up Mar­ket and are faster than the “His­toric F‑Line” street­cars, so I hoped I’d get up to Embar­cadero before the street­car I’d just missed.

On the Mis­sion Bay train I saw a fas­ci­nat­ing woman talk­ing to the man she was next to. Both were stand­ing on this crowd­ed train near a set of doors oth­er than the ones I’d entered. There were sev­er­al pas­sen­gers between us and I had to switch between view­ing direct­ly and look­ing at her reflec­tions in the train windows.

What I observed were, I believe, signs of attrac­tion. I don’t think that these two were a cou­ple, but I could be mis­tak­en about that. They cer­tain­ly were not strangers to one another.

The man was unre­mark­ably still. He respond­ed in con­ver­sa­tion but there was no accom­pa­ny­ing move­ment and no ges­tures. At one point he moved to acco­mo­date oth­er pas­sen­gers get­ting off the train, but oth­er than this betrayed noth­ing by way of move­ment or gesture.

This woman, by con­trast, was absolute­ly ani­mat­ed. She leaned in to his per­son­al space sev­er­al times with­out touch­ing him, and it looked a cou­ple times as though she would lean her head on his arm, which was out­stretched to hold on to a sup­port pole. She did­n’t actu­al­ly touch him at any point, though. She’d lean in and right back, almost as if test­ing the bounds of his space as she talked.

Her eyes were alight, and it seemed to be her cus­tom to glance down at his shoul­der and then fol­low her own gaze back up to his face. She was savor­ing every moment of liv­ing in his pres­ence, and although I could dis­cern noth­ing notable about him, clear­ly there was some­thing she found not just fas­ci­nat­ing but dis­tinct about him. She was unself­con­scious in her appre­ci­a­tion of him and exu­ber­ent in her engage­ment in the conversation.

Some­times I see this in a per­son in a spark or a flash. They will sud­den­ly be their best selves for a fleet­ing moment. It’s amaz­ing to see some­one shine like that. Usu­al­ly it’s short-lived. They let them­selves free momen­tar­i­ly and then almost imme­di­ate­ly crawl back into their shells. Not this one. This one sus­tained it effort­less­ly from Pow­ell Street to the Embarcadero.

A cer­tain sad­ness cov­ered me as I watched from the out­side in because I rec­og­nize that free­dom and joy as an alien arti­fact. I don’t know if I remem­ber feel­ing that envig­o­rat­ed about some­one else and I’m cer­tain I don’t recall see­ing that in any­one else’s behav­ior toward me. On the lat­ter point, I see three pos­si­bil­i­ties don’t know what of them is least damning.

Is it that no one has ever expressed that sort of reac­tion to my pres­ence? That’s a rather grim propo­si­tion, one that trig­gers dis­tress­ing pains in my solar plexus. But the alter­na­tives are sim­i­lar­ly unap­peal­ing: that I have either blocked the mem­o­ry of any­one being thus vis­i­bly glad­dened by my pres­ence, or that at such times I have ignored, ratio­nal­ized, or oth­er­wise dis­missed the pos­si­bil­i­ty with such thourough­ness that it went beyond my notice.

This would be com­plete­ly in line with my par­tic­u­lar brand of self-fla­gel­la­tion, and of course just pon­der­ing the ques­tion or writ­ing about it is con­tin­u­ing the feed­ing frenzy.

Still it comes back to what Pla­to said about the roles of the lover and the beloved. Is it true that two lovers are incom­pat­i­ble? That one can ever fill one of those roles? I won­der if it’s pos­si­ble to switch roles at a point in one’s life, to stop being the lover and become beloved.

So all the whin­ing the poets do about unre­quit­ed love is redun­dant; of course love is nev­er returned. It is at best tol­er­at­ed or per­haps appre­ci­at­ed. But if rec­i­p­ro­cat­ed it is doomed to implosion?

It seems so much eas­i­er, if per­haps less noble, to be the beloved. But also how hol­low, nev­er to pur­sue, nev­er to chase. With what would one fill one’s days? And such an exer­cise in tol­er­ance to grow old with one to whom one feels no obsession.

I’ve long sus­pect­ed that this falls along gen­der lines. Being male I am in the role of lover, nev­er loved but hope­ful to be tol­er­at­ed. Ever eager to prove one’s util­i­ty and earn one’s place on the plan­et and ration of oxy­gen. Thus our suc­cess­es even­tu­al­ly destroy us. If the world were to become so safe and so com­fort­able that util­i­ty was no longer desir­able, we the lovers of the world, would have to resort to mak­ing mon­ey or killing or dri­ving auto­mo­biles at ever greater speeds or some form of com­pe­ti­tion until the end when we would with­er alone with noth­ing to offer.

..And then there was this woman on MUNI who remind­ed me that it’s all pigshit, that it’s not every­one. It’s only me and the stu­pid rules I con­struct in my head to make sense of a life that, by very nature, I can nev­er comprehend.