On the D train, a pretty stranger and a brief history of lovely failures

Last night, as I was making my way home from an exhausted day at Pfizer headquarters, I decided to take a walk down the streets with the objective of going to H&M, the clothing store on seventh and 34th street. Often, I have done the exact thing, in order to combat that all too common tedium that arises from every corner of life if the instinctual vital signs aren’t properly followed, and see the people cross us as we pass by, familiar strangers trapped in their usual existences, longing for an encounter that never quite manifests itself. I like being part of this whole hormonal phenomenon. Sure, I’ll be short for the week but I can’t resist inviting that completely perfect unfamiliar person to go out, as if it were the result of a spontaneous combustion. It’s sort of art: if you take too long, it evaporates, like most tangible dreams in their frail initial state. But if you stomp on it, they disappear immediately in the form of refusal, it occurs similarly when we rush into things and come out with the feeling that only if we had exerted some discretion it might have had a different outcome. The key is to be casual, to deceive with honesty, to disarm with hidden venom. Like jumping rope: you let a few rounds hit the floor and calculate the moment in which to jump in. It’s a process both instinctual and well thought out. Then you realize there and then that the moment has escaped you, that the chance you had is forever gone and that it’s you again walking down a street with your mind lost in oblivion, a cycling chimera of possibilities that never quite materialize. How many times we see the mixture of lust and tenderness embodied in a girl, the invisible social barriers that make a stranger such, and even if we dare to speak up or act on, we know more often than not it won’t come to be what already is in our minds? That’s why we must strive to make the wild outdoors resemble the most our inner child, have the courage to take the bull by its thorns and render to calmness the tempest, taming the beast.
I bought a pair of pants one for me and another for a generous cause, and this had already an impact on my mood. Those acts of kindness and vanity are healthy self-esteem progenitors that render our inhibitions useless.
I saw her on the 34th street platform for the D train and I was stopped on my tracks. I made sure that I allowed some space of discretion between us but it was too late then: she had already seen and was seen. Like mad children in love, we just stared into each others’ souls. I felt that all too strange familiarity that I have consistently portrayed on my writings ever since almost a decade ago I lost the opportunity to meet a pretty girl sitting diagonally from me in a seven train on my way to work. I remember at that time I was so shy I didn’t know how to respond to her responsiveness, I was absurdly stuck on the moment of indecision which quite frankly is one of the worst decisions that can be made. I got off in the same station she did, I remember that much audacity. I followed her down the path that leads to transfer with the number One and Nine trains. But then the whole situation got kind of embarrassing and we found ourselves in the mist of invisible crowds, streams of consciousness, and I felt vividly the harsh cold bitterness of having missed a great opportunity. It was one of the moments that propelled my new persona, a man who is no longer afraid of who he is, someone constantly redefining himself, still full of mistakes to be corrected and intensely alive most of the time. This is why I am kind of self-conscious about confessing that at times that old archetype of behavior comes across and leaves me puzzled. Now, ever since my high school sweetheart in disguised, one of my dearest people on earth and beyond, Melody, confessed to me long ago that if I had asked her out back in school she would have said yes; right there and right then, I decided that I will no longer be shy. In a more recent history of self improvement, when I met Claudia, of whom I felt a strong connection to, and then lost her due to not being quite the achiever she is, I decided to build myself from scratch and achieve a level of success that only a legion of self-improved gurus could dream of attaining. With Melody, I crushed my timid self; with Claudia, I became gradually successful. Rarely is the least to say that none of them know the impact that they had on me but honestly I believe that it was I who had the most impact on me. I saw that these tendencies were an obstacle between me and that sense of self-realization that any intelligent human being aspires for itself.
As I sat there, diagonally from the girl of my dreams, I realized that I am constantly in the same existential struggle. But this particular one I have already conquered. She was accompanied by a woman who seemed to be related to her, at least in looks only much older. There were people in between our eyes, and when the train finally cleared I read clearly the answer in her companion’s lips to her desperate question: “Is he looking” she had asked her. “Yes, he is” the female companion answered. Yes, I was. So, I simply wrote down some notes in a piece of paper, thinking perhaps of the boy I once was, and honoring the past and the potential future, I focused on the present. I approached her as she was leaving the train and lightly descended the gravity of my hand upon her shoulder to call her attention. As she turned around, I was facing my myth, which soon became my reality, and handed her my scrabbled note. I hope she calls; if she doesn’t, at least it would be of reassurance that it won’t be my fault. As I wrote briefly in a line on the bottom of the paper: “I know that the chances of you actually taking a chance on me are slim, but I gotta try anyway.” I did my part.