So on the train home from Ikea today I was sitting there minding my own beeswax reading ma book, listening to the dirty projectors or was it the indigo girls, and mourning the loss of the boy with whom, in the course of 3 stops on the queensbound G train, i had fallen swiftly and perfectly in love.

He looked at me and I looked back. He looked at the seat next to me. It was empty. I gripped my Ikea bag with my calves and pulled it to the right. Pots jangled. I brushed my bangs to the side. Adjusted my watch. Uncapped my pen. Underlined,

In meiner Heimat

where the dead walked

and the living were made of cardboard.

Made a mental note to google Heimat, but felt it otherwise fitting after spending the afternoon at everyone’s favorite Scandinavian superstore. The boy-man sat, our arms touched; I continued to read and our arms touched more and he left. I squinted further into my book and hoped no one could see up my skirt because, frankly, it is hard enough to balance a book and a phone and volume control and people looking at you and a diet coke and a bagful of one dollar birchwood frames without concerning yourself with who-sees-what. I sometimes consider the idea that it is simply not worth the amount of mental and physical energy necessitated by the task of crossing ones legs. I think I am ready to concede that making it through the day without showing at least one stranger an ass cheek or inner thigh is simply not very high on my list of priorities.

Just as I am getting knee deep into my thesis on decency, a swedish meatball of a man wedges himself into my lover’s long since abandoned place beside me. Hello! he gurgles, and I look up and smile into his moustache and he says something cheerily in Polish and the entire car turns to look. I kick my cheap cookware under my seat, shift, hug my overpriced belongings closer to me, and giggle. He points and his friend snaps a picture of us with his digital camera. They prattle on in Polish, and I nod and laugh although I have no idea what they’re saying. I imagine they are asking to take another picture. I take out one headphone and then the other, Oh-ho! I say loudly and more people look. They men are speaking faster and faster now and I look back and forth between them like at a tennis match, each one outdoing the other in what I can only imagine to be outrageously offensive sexual advances. They imitate me turning away from them, hugging the subway pole. This keeps me from doing just that. I smile and nod, two other old Polish men come over and sit down. Everyone joins in, a Polish woman next to me takes out one headphones and says something to them in what I can only hope is admonishment.

“You do not know what we are saying?” the newest member says to me, in a heavy Polish accent. The other men continue, blah blah blah, Polskie, blah, Polskie, blah blah…,” is all I hear. It sounds fun, though. I am not Polish, I say. Ah! they all yell and talk louder.

“We are Poland,” the man next to me says.

“I know,” I say, “I am not.”

The oldest one takes another picture. People on the train laugh. I raise eyebrows, start to collect my stuff. I consider taking the train a few extra stops because I don’t want to insult them by getting off at my stop. I wonder if they would do the same, as we don’t have many things in common, but Catholicism is one of them.

The man hands me a pen. It says NASFT Fancy Food Shows. I click it a few times. They all cheer. I read, “Fancy Food Show, yes, this is you?”

“Yes,” he nods proudly. Then speaks more Polish to me, even though he knows I won’t understand. I love this about people; I’ve found we all do it. I smile and nod because his energy is contagious and, “No, I don’t understand,” seems like such a sad thing to say sometimes, so I nod more and hand him back his pen and he says, No, for you, and I put in in my back and he laughs and claps and they all speak more enthusiastically and I figure I probably just married him without my knowing.

A man halfway down the train car joins in their conversation, and they all yell back and forth and take more pictures of me and I arrive at my stop, praying to dear sweet Jesus up above that my skirt isn’t stuck up my butt when I go to stand up, and it is a little but I yank it out with precision and the men all wave the way you teach babies how to wave, very deliberately, very slowly, yelling, “Bye-bye! Bye-bye! Bye-bye!” after me, my huge blue bag, filled with cardboard, slung over my shoulder.