Did That Really Just Happen?

I've taken public transportation for a long time. In high school, I took a public bus to school. While working in Washington, D.C., for a semester in college, most of my time was spent on the bus and Metro. While working my first job out of college, I took the bus until I bought my first car. And ever since I started working in Boston, I've taken the commuter rail and subway nearly every day.

So I've come to learn the ways of "train people." There are normal people, like me, who take public transportation. And then there are people who I believe exist solely to ride public transportation to make the normal people uncomfortable. For the most part, I'm able to disengage. I wear my headphones (the international symbol for "I don't want to talk to you") and am always engaged in one of the following activities:

• sleeping
• reading a book or magazine
• doing a sudoku puzzle
• crocheting

I am lucky that these behaviors have led to a fairly good track record of being left alone. But the other day I was forced to reevaluate my skills. Or just be perplexed at the new tactics of "train people."

Lately, since I have extra time, I've been walking to the train station instead of taking the subway one stop. However, it was raining when I left work and I was afraid it would begin to really storm again, so I decided to pop onto the T (subway). I was standing at the platform in standard form (headphones, working on a sudoku puzzle paperclipped to the cover of my novel), minding my own business and in my zone. Then the strangest thing happened.

Because I'm risking some of you judging me in this post, I must preface: I love the gays. I can honestly say that I have had the pleasure of being friends and working with some funny, sarcastic and genuinely nice gay men, albeit some have a stereotypical effeminate-sounding voice. Good guys, even if they don't particularly like girls--that's ok. So what happened next was weird.

I'm standing on the platform, in my zone, and this guy walks up to me. He's tall, light-skinned with "pretty" eyes, a few nondescript piercings and is reasonably dressed for what I assume is a undergrad. Nothing screamed homosexual to me, but if I were sitting on a bench playing gay or straight, I might have said bi. And then he started speaking.

Strange Guy: Um, excuse me? (yes, there was a lilt to his voice)

Me: Yes? (Taking out one headphone. WHY? WHY??? Damn me and my willingness to give directions to someone who looks lost.)

SG: Um, yeah, hi. So I saw you, um, standing here, and um, I just wanted to come over here, um and say hi...because you're, um, kinda cute. So I just wanted to say hi. Sorry.

Me (completely and utterly flabbergasted and confused): Oh. Ok. Thanks. Hi.

And then he just disappeared. For real. I don't remember seeing which direction he walked in, but when I came out of my confused haze, I looked around the platform and he wasn't there. There was a staircase nearby, so he may have gone to the lower platform, but that made it all the more random for me. So why was I so confused? Most women would be flattered to have a guy approach them. This is what was going through my mind while he spoke.

• Oh, he's so cute! He doesn't know he's gay.
• Wait--kinda cute?
  
• Maybe he does know he's gay and doesn't want to be, so someone told him he should just go up and talk to random women because then he might like girls.
• Oh no, he wants me to say something back.

And then when he left:

• Yeah, that was a training exercise, because who stops to talk to someone when they are on there way to catch a train on another platform?

I think I'll keep walking up to the train station.