Crossing Time

There's an advertisement for some condominium in Stamford, and its selling point is that if you work in Stamford, why would you waste all this time commuting from New York and spend the exorbitant New York real estate price when you could be saving money and spending the time doing what you like in Stamford.

There's nothing I like doing in Stamford, of course. Perhaps my taste for life is more eccentric than the clients of these condos. And for the cost of this eccentric taste I have to pay not only higher rent but the commuting cost. And what a commute.

I have two different kinds of commutes. Today I did my commute number 2, from Washington Heights. The A-train went local, and my bus was letting the bus behind us get in front of me, and then on the commuter train I realized I didn't have my October monthly pass. We will find out in a few minutes if the conductor will let me use my September pass. What a way to start a Monday. But still, I got to do what I want that cannot be done in Stamford. I got to dance last night. I got to hang out with my pianist, before the dance and after the dance. I wasn't sure if she was going to invite me over. I no longer take that for granted. But she did, and we talked about my tango. I have been cautious about talking to her about tango. We both tango, of course; that is how I met her. But I always feel that tango can get in the way of developing a relationship that cannot rely only on tango. However, she is very open minded, very patient about it. I am, I guess, more concerned about my own ego. She and I don't have the best connection a lot of times, and worse now that I am nervous about tango interfering with our relationship. But last night's talk made me feel more relaxed with her. She is, after all, a piano teacher, and so she knows how to handle students, and while she isn't "better" than me in tango, she knows how to approach someone, especially with an ego in the way, if she wants to make suggestions. I was surprisingly open to listening to her.

Who is this woman?

It takes time to get to know someone, to develop a connection, a relationship. That's patience. But it also takes also a lot of courage in the face of uncertainty. Before we went to the milonga, we talked a little about all the uncertainty that awaits her. She mentioned that there's an opening in a music school in Jerusalem that a friend of hers had suggested. My heart naturally sank a little before bobbing back up. And in the darkness of her bedroom she told me she still saw no future for us, but at the same time she didn't want to lose me now. I told her that on one extreme I wanted to end it all now, and on the other extreme I would follow her to Jerusalem if I must.

The New York City subway is the bastion of weirdoes in the world, I can nearly say. In a crowded train, was it on the under-construction 7 line or the ever troublesome A line?, a man still in his hospital patient clothes lay across two seats. His head was resting against the wall of the train, and his feet were separated from the next passenger by an empty seat that no one wanted to take up, even though the train was super packed. Oh, I remember now, it was a 7 train. I had my grocery from Chinatown, Little Italy, and the Union Square farmer's market, my hands were tired, and the train was a brewing tuna can of discontent. For whatever reason, there hadn't been a train for a while so I was lucky to board the first train after this hiatus in which a whole platform full of human creatures shoved its way into this can. This hospital apparent-runaway lay there oblivious to the discontent. He was in his, I suppose, late eighties, early nineties, though possibly only looked so old because of whatever ailed him. On his right sleeve was a big blotch of dried blood. His hair was completely silver, and his face was difficult to look at. It wasn't in pain, but it was transfixed by past pain. He moved a little, but said nothing, not even moved his mouth. He closed his eyes for a little while. He didn't notice when someone standing outside the door of the train on the Queensboro Plaza platform shouting for people to move in so he and his other human beings could squeeze in, refusing to wait for the next train that the PA was saying would arrive in three minutes. I was amused by the man shouting, especially when he directed his command to "you there, in red", to move into whatever tiny space that the shouter could be using if that selfish man in red would move in. We suddenly become pieces on this game you play, the game that has tiles on a board with one tile missing, and you're supposed to shove the tiles around to make some pattern in the end. It was a game that everyone was playing except the old man in hospital gown occupying three seats.

I thought about this man when sadness and uncertainty grips me. I thought about my sadness and uncertainty when I saw him. New York is full of weirdoes whose weirdness belies some human tragedy of some degree, of some sort.

On a different subway train I saw one disheveled man had his dinner all splayed out on the seats around him. He and/or his food reeked of some unpleasantness that created an empty radius around him. The smell of rotten garlicky good propelled me to the other end of the subway so quickly that I didn't get to see his face. A woman stood not far from me with the handkerchief covering her nose. This is New York for you, I guess. And that man has better things to worry about than some girl worrying about her emotional unavailability and its effect on our undetermined future.

She said very bluntly that she didn't want to tell me in three or four months that this wasn't going anywhere, thereby hurting me. I thought about it. It made sense. It made even more sense since it has happened to me not just once in the past couple of years. It would be the same cycle. A woman finding comfort in me, for whatever reason, and then for whatever reason, or different reasons, she comes to accept that what she felt wasn't some intense romantic love but something more like a friendship, or insultingly worse, a brotherly love. I thought about that happening again. I was very tempted to just leave. Leave everything behind, the hopes, the wishes, the present. How do you live in the present knowing that there isn't any shred of hope for a future. There must be something between a full promise and complete detachment from the future. I asked her why she invited me over this night, and without hesitation she told me she liked me. I remembered the Polish girl. I remember too many things. Too many things people have said and done that in the end didn't make sense and often unfair.

Then the morning came. I saw her face, so peaceful, her breathing, her everything, her presence. I can't think. To leave and give up not only an unpromisable future but also a present that actually does make me happy. Every morning I am there I leave behind a small poem for her, a poem before I started my day, before she started hers. A poem to remind her that some men in this world can be dedicated, can still be romantic fools. I never took upon myself the task of reinvigorating the lost romance in her, lost ten years ago in a man who put it in a suitcase to Australia and never returned it to her. I never thought I could be that person. But I could be me. And my decision on whether to end all this depends solely on whether the decision would make me happy, would maintain in me the dignity I deserve.