Hello Ted

There's a man seated across the way from me on the 4 train right now.
He's unassuming.
He wears a suit.
His hair is brown, receding, but thick and well-kept, definitely cut every three weeks.
He has a deep furrow in his brow and subtle crows feet.
He sits like he's tired.
His nails are short, bitten. Not in a bloody, nic-fit/nervous/need a fix sort of way. Just bitten.

There he goes, chewing his right thumb.

He's got a watch on his left hand.

Watch is nice, shoes are nice, shirt is pressed, tie doesn't match all that well, but it's kind of sweet that it doesn't.

I could give him a story.

He could be an attorney. The kind that sues people.

He could be a banker. The kind that does private equity or investment banking. Although, it is only 6 pm. Kind of early for an investment banker to be heading home. Definitely not a trader. The market closed hours ago and this guy definitely hasn't had a drink.

He could be a copywriter, worried about a deadline on a campaign for Gillette that's better than "the best a man can get". Maybe one where the girlfriend steals the gel to shave her legs and it runs out and he goes to use it and is mad for a second but then he touches her leg and realizes this is still the best a man can get.

Good one.

He could be out of work having just spent the whole day interviewing and trudging around the city trying to get a break.
He could have been at a funeral, his eyes are looking a little worried and sad.

I could use my creative genius to turn him into a womanizer, tired because he went home with some girl he met on OKCupid last night and went straight to work this AM, bolting before she woke up.

Or I could make him a poet, full of brooding and beautiful words that he could recite to me as a drift off to sleep. That is, after he courts me for months trying to make things perfect and comfortable enough that he can show me this side of him.

He's probably Jewish though. That thick hair.
That means he's got a overly involved mom and he adores her. It also means he's the marrying kind, but it's off limits here because I'm Shiksa.

His brow's probably furrowed because his boss is a jerk and he just wants to stick it to him and start his own hedge fund.
It's in the works.

His eyes are puckered because he's single and he doesn't have a woman to show him how to use eye cream.

Men do it if you tell them about it.

His watch on the left means he's a righty. Probably really stiff and calculated. No imagination there. And his clothes are so together that its boring and annoying. His tie doesn't match because, come to think of it, he probably still lives at home with his mom and she laid his clothes out for the day when it was dark in his room and accidentally grabbed the hunter green instead of the navy.

We wouldn't last two weeks.

He just caught me looking at him.

He just smiled.

He just said "what are you doing over there?"

Turns out his name is Ted. He's 32 and he's an accountant. His week was really long but the overtime is worth it because he's saving to buy his girlfriend a ring. She's angry he comes home so late, especially tonight because she's going to Massachusetts for the weekend to visit her best friend. She just had a baby.

I told him what I was writing. He laughed.

He's going to read this.

He told me what his story was about me.

That girl is pretty. She looks like she's about 24 (yahtzee) and is probably married to some rich asshole because she is in those LuLu Lemon workout clothes that my girlfriend likes and it's 6pm so she obviously didn't work today. I feel bad because she seems so interesting. I wonder why she picked a jerk like that. Maybe the money?
She's reading Viktor Frankl. Whoa, existentialist. Maybe she's a lesbian. The lipstick kind. I bet her girlfriend is hot. Or maybe they're married now. They probably own a yoga studio.
Her hair is cool. And she's not wearing any makeup.

In NYC? Definitely a lesbian.

Whatever, she still looks good. I think lesbians are cool.

What is she doing? She keeps looking at me. She just looked and then wrote something in her book. She's chuckling about it. WTF? Bitch.
-No thoughts for a few minutes-

She just looked again, damnit. Eh, it's cute, I'm asking...

It's amazing what we come up with without asking. It's amazing how much we judge without knowing.

It's also amazing how easy it is to get to know something about somebody and to make someone smile.

Ted gets off at Atlantic av. I get off 2 earlier.

I could imagine where he lives or what his girlfriend looks like. Instead, we exchanged numbers and I'm going to I to his cookout on may 6th in prospect park.

Just thought I'd share. and Ted, I want to check out that place on union. Sounds pretty cool. You aren't square at all are you?