It happened..... on the TRAIN!

Once upon a Red Line…

The journey started simple enough, just another day getting on the red line- destination: Home. Lucky enough to have a seat to myself, I found my eyes wandering around the car as always, watching… waiting. Finally, the Red Line Theater was about to begin.

A 30ish man had positioned himself at one door of the train, leaned against the glass partition leafing through a copy of a periodical entitled, Black Men. On the cover, some young ingénue whose name was unimportant, since her assets were plastered all over where the text on the cover would be. Look left, a woman in her 20s is reading a book.

Then… her eyes go up. Focusing on the man ahead of her she sees the magazine. He’s tilted it while reading, exposing the women on the pages to her own line of sight. Her eyes slit, the train seems to quiet down. She casts her gaze downward to the knowing pages of her book, but they swing back up again. And again. One more time, and each successive look seems to furrow her brow deeper and deeper. The air is thick with intent, disgust, and restraint. She seems revolted, that someone could so openly parade a magazine full of half-naked ladies so shamelessly: especially under the guise of mouthing the words as if he were actually reading instead of flipping from photo spread to photo spread. She would rip that magazine out of his hands, if she wanted to.

Instead, she resolutely looks back down to the pages of her book, forgetting about the ladies draped all over his pages. The train, like time, moves on… until the next stop, at least. There was a woman next to the reading woman, taking up a seat next to the aisle. She got up, leaving a spot next to the reader vacant. The Magazine Man, took notice and decided to become the new occupant.

Needless to say, Reading Woman was a little off-put to say the least. She glanced at the Magazine Man and then quickly replaced her bookmark, closed up, then stood up at the next stop, distancing herself quite expeditiously. Salvation came when another passenger disembarked, leaving her an open seat nowhere near Magazine Man.

Her dilemma wasn’t finished yet though… oh lord no. She reached her destination alright… but it was Magazine Man’s stop too.