The 2 train at Franklin avenue is just a couple stops away from the end of the line, so when headed in the opposite direction (towards Manhattan), one can almost always get a seat. I normally use this time to read a magazine or space out while looking at one of those disgusting ads for surgeons specializing in curing hammertoe...an affliction I didn't know existed until I first descended into the depths of the New York subway system. But this time I didn't have a magazine, and the ads were towards the end of their stay, so I had seen them all. I was forced into my secret third option, one I avoid because I'm not good at doing it without seeming rude. People-watching on the subway is an art, and I stink at it.
Today I was thrown a lifeline. A man in ragged clothes and an old-fashioned cane came ambling into the car at the next stop and sat down straight across from me. He had all the makings of your run-of-the-mill subway nut, especially when he got out a scrap of paper and started rolling it very tightly...as though he were rolling an empty cigarette. This wouldn't have seemed strange, except that he had a focus and an economy of movement that suggested something else. I tried my best to mask my rapt attention, but then he met my eyes with an upward glance, gave me a little nod of acknowledgement, and smiled at me. I took this to mean that he knew I was watching him, and that was just fine, so I stopped masking it; instead, I leaned forward and unashamedly watched.
He finished rolling the fake cigarette, then pulled out a sheet of mailing labels, took one off and used it like a piece of tape to keep the roll from coming undone. Then he looked at me, smiled, shrugged, and in a cadence usually reserved for old jazz musicians in underground clubs said, "sometimes you got to improvise." I was hooked. I wasn't watching him, now I was staring at him outright. I felt like I was a part of whatever the hell he was up to...like he did this all the time and counted on someone like me being nosy.
His bag then produced a pad of plain white paper, and then a box of pencils. He patiently found a charcoal stick, put his weird little cigarette-thing nearby, got into a comfortable sitting position, and then looked right at me and nodded. He then started drawing me. I couldn't see it, but he would draw a couple lines, then look right at me. In my discomfort I tried looking away, as if to be casual about the fact that I was officially a model, but after he drew a couple lines, he would look at me, and he wouldn't draw any more until I made eye contact. I was in the spotlight, and there was no use in pretending otherwise. He would look at me, draw some lines, look at me, then take his wierd little cigarette and use it to rub the charcoal for shading.
By the time we got to the Wall Street stop, the people sitting on either side of us had forsaken their reading to watch what was going on. Now normally Wall Street is when this particular train fills up and those standing are packed in like sardines, but the attention of the six of us (this guy, myself, and our four collective neighbors) somehow kept a space running across the car that no one would enter, no matter how cramped it was on the other side.
By Fulton Street, he was finishing up, I saw him sign the bottom. Then he looked at me, but this time it had a different quality. He raised his eyebrows and, as he nodded, he twisted his head ever so slightly so as to offer the drawing to me. I eagerly nodded like a little kid, and he went back to work, tearing the sheet off his pad, rolling it up, taking another mailing label and sealing the roll shut. He handed it to me and said in his late-night-jazz-musician cadence, "you just give me whatever you can man."
I handed him some money and asked his name, "Bowie. Like David Bowie." I told him mine, "Boris?" I corrected him. "Oh Forrest. Alright then." Then he went to work on another drawing for the girl who was sitting next to me, and clearly very eager to be his next subject.
I practically skipped to work after that, and when I got to the locker room to change, I opened up the picture that I still had yet to see, but was absolutely certain would be a thing of great beauty. I mean how could it not be? Here's what I saw:
Awful? No. But let's be real, my jawline ought to have some say in the matter.
All the same, next time I run into Bowie, I'll probably stare at him again.
