So I was on the subway on my way to school today and this woman sits down two seats away from me. She's about my age. She wasn't beautiful per se – more like strikingly pretty. She wore black mocassin-style slip on shoes, medium dark blue jeans, and a black peacoat. She was white but her skin wasn't pale or tanned; kind of in the middle. She had gorgeous dark hair with bangs on one side of her head and a medium thick braid on the other. She wore a nose ring and had soft but not at all immature facial features. She began looking rather intently at some point behind me over my left shoulder. It was when she did this that I was able to notice her eyes. It seemed in this instant as though her eyes were wide and her pupils deep and near black like a well or an ocean, but not in the least bit alarming or threatening. Quite the opposite, they seemed oddly hypnotic and entrancing, like someone perceiving something profound on a level I could not. She later looked down at her right hand as if actually looking for something. I saw she wore a silver ring with an unobtrusive celtic design. She also wore sparkling pink nail polish which though in definite contrast with her otherwise very aesthetically dark appearance, was not in conflict with it. Rather the visual effect of the pink was accentuated in a gentle but definite way by its contrast to all the black.
All this I gathered through a series of furtive glances. I was slightly enthralled by this woman, but wanted nothing less than to creep her out or make her uncomfortable. In order to observe her without disturbing her, I turned to face the window on the opposite side of the subway car and put my hood up, feigning sleep or something. I watched her reflection in the window. I watched her face almost exclusively because I had been afraid to really look at her face before lest she notice. Looking at her face, I began to examine her cheek. (In writing this, it is very frustrating that there is not a verb that accurately describes the way in which I was looking at her. 'Looking' just doesn't do it justice, 'examining' is far to clinical and scientific, 'noticing' implies a suddenness, 'observing' implies active behavior on the part of the observed, and 'staring' carries a dumb gawking connotation. I was watching her in the way that one looks at a painting or a sculpture in a great museum; there is no activity, it's not scientific, it is a way of looking at something in order to really absorb the aesthetic essence of what is being observed and possibly extrapolate meaning.) Her cheek was beautiful. It was the kind of cheek you touch softly with your hand in a moment of peace, happiness, romance, sadness, silence, or reassurance. I was reminded of the line from Romeo and Juliet where Romeo watches Juliet unseen and muses that “The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars / As daylight doth a lamp” and then wishes to be her glove because it got to touch her cheek. I decided this expression was a bit of a cliché and conveyed a longing for Juliet that I didn't feel for this woman. Besides it was not the brightness of this woman's cheek that struck me – it was its softness.
As I looked at her in the window, I began to notice the expressions passing over her face. She seemed upset, something was wrong, was bothering her. This manifested in a soft furrowing of her eyebrows and a sadness in her eyes. After a few moments of having noticed her unhappiness, I watched her try to hold her feelings in, to not show them on her face. This was several times followed by renewed sadness and a movement of her lips that indicated wrestling with sorrow, but not quivering of the injured toddler variety. This seemed to mean that not only was something upsetting her, but it had happened recently and it wasn't something trivial. It was also not sadness mixed with any stress (of the just-got-fired variety) or any urgency or disbelief (like after a sudden break up), she seemed to have no trouble at all in accepting the fact of whatever it was that was upsetting her – it just made her very sad. She also didn't seem in any danger of crying, she seemed in more natural control than that.
After a while outward sadness seemed to subside, leaving her looking wistful (not sure if that's quite the right word). She stared off like you do on the subway, leaning her cheek gently on her right hand. I was reminded once again, this time more strongly, of Romeo's musings about Juliet's cheek. “See how she leans her cheek upon her hand! / O, that I were a glove upon that hand, / That I might touch that cheek!” Again, Shakespeare's words did not quite describe what I felt. Romeo's desire is active, forceful, passionate (in the classic sense of being both sexual and emotional), and covetous of Juliet. What I felt was not desire, really, nor even attraction in the usual sense. Rather, I felt a quiet gentle longing for what it would be like to touch the cheek of this beautifully soft woman, without having any real ambition to do so.
What is interesting about this experience, and to me hopeful and self-affirming, is that this entire time on the subway was devoid of any sexual or predatory desire. It is extremely easy for me as a man to fall into the trap of sexualizing all attraction, and then of allowing that lasciviousness to transmute itself into predatory thoughts and impulses (and for too many, actions). I've been incredibly in love during my short lifetime, but not recently. It's been a long time since i've remembered feeling feelings for women that weren't at least a little bit sexualized. And i'm not saying sex is bad, but it can sully the emotional aspect, in my experience. I'm also not saying I “fell in love” with this woman on the subway, but it was truly lovely to feel the way that I did for that 9-stop train ride.
To add the explicitly political aspect of this experience (because I just can't resist doing so), two things occur to me about the social functioning of patriarchy that I see in this experience. The first is, as I just talked a bit about, male socialization includes an incredible emphasis on the sexual and almost total de-emphasis of the emotional. This can lead to sexuality as something that's detached, impersonal (not meaning casual, meaning isolated), and potentially predatory and violent. The second thing is of course the result of that fact on a social scale: a society in which women are (legitimately) afraid of men because men can have sexually predatory tendencies. Now because its important for men (myself and any men who may read this) to view feminist liberation in terms of self-liberation not altruistic “helping” of women, I point out that one result of this that affects men is that this fear women legitimately have of men is a barrier in any meaningful relationship from colleague to friend to lover. It also defines certain social conventions accordingly. The example of this that I think is illustrated by my above story is the fact that actually talking to her or approaching her was out of the question from the word go. I didn't even once seriously consider in any way approaching her because I have some sense of how incredibly creepy that would have been. However I submit that the creepiness of approaching a strange woman on the subway is only the result of a patriarchal culture and the ways in which women have been forced to adapt. The dream then is a world, a culture in which men (should such a category persist) have so proven themselves safe and trustworthy that it can be normal and acceptable for anyone to approach anyone else for whatever reason, without it being threatening. After all, why shouldn't we talk to strangers?
