44 Seconds

Every morning I take the train to go to the office. I go to the station on foot, cross the plaza, take the huge escalator leading to the trains and head to the end of track 12, just after the newsstand, where usually there is nobody. I go past the little crowd waiting at the beginning of the platform and when in the car I find all the place I want.

I like measuring and counting. Several times I have kept the time between the entry and the track: 44 seconds. Except for the times that I stop for coffee and croissants in the small coffee bar at the station when I am very early. But I try to avoid it because I do not like the coffee there; better at home, or in the coffee bar near work.
Today I am not early. Certainly it will take the usual 44 seconds.
The station is even more deserted than usual. Many are already on vacation. I put my new high-heeled shoes, they are uncomfortable and make a dry sound that echoes in the empty hall. Some turn to look at me, I hate to draw attention to myself. I slow down slightly, try walking as softly as possible, but there’s nothing I can do. Tock, tock, tock, tock.

As I approach the track, I see a man, from behind. thirty feet away. Young. He’s on the phone. Walks nervously and talks with excitement, angry at someone. He’s wearing one of those striped T-shirts that I have always found horrendous. Yet there is something in his figure, the proportion between his shoulders and the legs, tightly wrapped in cotton trousers, the sensitive curve of the neck, that strikes me immediately. A beautiful body.
What’s going on, I think. It is not your habit to admire a boy’s ass. It is not my habit, answers a voice inside of me, but this one is really extraordinary. Let’s take a look at his face, too.  

I’m surprised, amused and disturbed by my own thoughts. I thought I knew them. Where is this admirer of asses coming from? Am I always like that? I don’t think so. Today less than ever, after a night of tossing and turning in bed with the light of the full moon hurting me from the badly closed curtains because I did not have the strength to get up and draw them tight. A night of waiting for the meeting with my main client this morning , who is unhappy, does not want to pay and has threatened to end with us.
A day that promises to be horrible. Not one of those spring mornings, when you come out to the street where mysterious and intoxicating pollens blend with the suddenly warm air and everybody is more sensual. All loaded with fresh season’s hormones, we and the others who decided to put that light dress, pull out a confident smile, their eyes lit up and at last interested in the show of legs, hips, the play of muscles, piercing eyes. Today is just a simple crappy day of oppressive heat, immersed in hot and humid air that places a weight on the moment that you decide to sit on the bed, your eyes swollen, irritated, your body feeling as if covered in dust, waiting to find the strength to get up, lose yourself on a hot coffee, and under a shower.

I am now a few feet from him. Gesturing with angry movements, he gives me his profile. Beautiful.

Several times I was asked what I like in a man. What I think is beautiful is very clear to me, but it is difficult to put into words.
I’m fascinated by structures and proportions. Let’s say that it is a proportion, a relation between four lines: forehead, cheekbone, nose and jaw. Variations are allowed, but these four lines must be in harmony. I should draw it, to make it understandable.
Is beauty important to me? I would say no, but I find it difficult to support this statement at this time, when I find that my tongue is lingering in along the inside of my upper lip. What is happening to me?
Now we’re close, I’m passing him. I hear what he says. He is addressing a woman.
His voice is not equal to his appearance. Anger, a petty rage. He’s saying:
“It is not true! It is not true at all. I met her by chance, I told you. No, that weekend together story is a lie! He said so because it is he who is interested in you. In you and in your money. The bastard! But if I meet him … “
And then his eyes. While we cross, as he’s talking to this woman, he records for a moment my body, weakened by the heels, by my attention, by the imperceptible slowing down while listening to what he says, by something in my energy that must reveal my interest.
He looks at me, looks at my body more than at me, at my legs more than at the body, at those damn high heels that I decided to put on. He gives me a quick glance, intense, obscene, aware that in turn will arouse my interest, which is what I was hoping, maybe unconsciously, a moment ago and now disgusts me.
He forgets me in an instant and gets back to shouting at the woman.
I see behind him the sad little girl waiting, seated on a large black suitcase, rhythmically kicking heels that do not reach to the ground, humming something with her mouth closed, eyes raised towards the enormous vaulted ceiling. She will carry within her the image of a handsome and angry father, looking at women, forgetting her on top of a trolley baked by the sun while he argues on the phone.

I keep going along the platform. Just imagine: what usually happens in two, four, ten years, may just as well be contained in 44 seconds.