Diary of a train pervert
I realize that even though I am traveling, I am not reporting on my traveling. I am, however, reporting on the things that I am thinking about while traveling. Is that okay?
In that way, this is not precisely about the trip I’m on, but it is about a trip. Right now I’m in Japan, which out of its rich culture lends us the lovely title of this entry. However, the actual trip in question took place in France some time ago.
Lately I’ve been grappling with a certain philosophical question which is also about fucking. I think it can be summarized this way: there are women you find attractive, there are women everybody finds attractive, and then there are women whose formulation so perfectly matches every sexual fantasy yet discovered that you really, really stare at them like an idiot.
What are those people for?
So on a train in France, heading to Germany, I sit down. A young girl gets on, she sits down across from me. She is the best-looking woman on the Earth or its satellites. This stuns me. She looks into my face and I think it stuns her too. I can’t even be a person. I’m staring. I look away, and I sneak a look back. She’s just acting like a girl on a train, juggling magazines and her sweater. I am destroyed.
She says something to me pleasantly, but with a kind of scared look on her face. I think she senses my fear, and it confuses her and thus scares her. I reply without warmth, because like all Americans I learned in high school to dismiss those people you need desperately. Also, how would that work?
Worse, she decides to take a nap. Now I am really in trouble, because I can almost get away with staring at her. So I stare. But I look away a lot, and count, to make sure I’m not staring more than some percentage that is still not acceptable. I can’t explain why, but this girl has ruined my life by sitting across from me on the train.
So what did I do? I did what any lover of beauty and hater of inner peace would do, which is not only did I stare at her, I surreptitiously took her photo. Which I still have, and I can tell you exactly where it is, because I look at it from time to time as a kind of talisman. There is nothing raunchy about the photo. It’s just a girl on a train, sleeping. There is no skin or provocation. But to look at it is not an erotic experience, it is an erotic experience followed by death and the death of the world. Even years later, with plenty of women walking by all the time, this anonymous girl is still the best-looking woman known to unimaginative perverts with small, quiet cameras.
Help.
by Jack, October 5, 2003 11:00 AM | More from Women
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i know this is old, but you've piqued my curiosity. is there any way i can see this picture?