Dying Inside

Somewhere about 180th Street I look up and see a girl sitting diagonally opposite me and apparently studying me. She is in her very early twenties, attractive in a sallow way, with long legs, decent breasts, a bush of auburn hair. She has a book too — the paperback of Ulysses, I recognize the cover — but it lies neglected on her lap. Is she interested in me? I am not reading her mind; when I entered the train I automatically stopped my inputs down to the minimum, a trick I learned when I was a child. If I don’t insulate myself against scatter-shot crowd-noises on trains or in other enclosed public places I can’t concentrate at all. Without attempting to detect her signals, I speculate on what she’s thinking about me, playing a game I often play. How intelligent he looks. . . . He must have suffered a good deal, his face is so much older than his body . . . tenderness in his eyes . . . so sad they look . . . a poet, a scholar. . . . I bet he’s very passionate . . . pouring all his pent-up love into the physical act, into screwing. . . . What’s he reading? Beckett? Yes, a poet, a novelist, he must be . . . maybe somebody famous. . . . I mustn’t be too aggressive, though. He’ll be turned off by pushiness. A shy smile, that’ll catch him. . . . One thing leads to another. . . . I’ll invite him up for lunch. . . . Then, to check on the accuracy of my intuitive perceptions, I tune in on her mind. At first there is no signal. My damnable waning powers betraying me again! But then it comes — static, first, as I get the low-level muzzy ruminations of all the passengers around me, and then the clear sweet tone of her soul. She is thinking about a karate class she will attend later this morning on 96th Street. She is in love with her instructor, a brawny pockmarked Japanese. She will see him tonight. Dimly through her mind swims the memory of the taste of sake and the image of his powerful naked body rearing above her. There is nothing in her mind about me. I am simply part of the scenery, like the map of the subway system on the wall above my head. Selig, your egocentricity kills you every time. I note that she does indeed wear a shy smile now, but it is not for me, and when she sees me staring at her the smile vanishes abruptly. I return my attention to my book.

The train treats me to a long sweaty unscheduled halt in the tu

I walk along 116th Street. To my right, the broad greensward of South Field; to my left, the shallow steps rising to Low Library. I remember South Field when it was an athletic field in the middle of the campus: brown dirt, basepaths, fence. My freshman year I played softball there. We’d go to the lockers in University Hall to change, and then, wearing sneakers, polo shirts, dingy gray shorts, feeling naked amidst the other students in business suits or ROTC uniforms, we’d sprint down the endless steps to South Field for an hour of outdoor activity. I was good at softball. Not much muscle, but quick reflexes and a good eye, and I had the advantage of knowing what was on the pitcher’s mind. He’d stand there thinking, This guy’s too ski