Women on the Subway

For the benefit of everyone who doesn't live in New York City, which admittedly is most of the world, you may not be aware of some particularly strange new york behaviour that goes on in the subways. It is thus: when you are waiting to board a subway it is perfectly okay to engage a stranger in conversation, if interested the stranger will talk back and if you board the same train as them it is perfectly okay to continue the conversation until it ends and try to exchange phone numbers or just mumble something at them as they get off on their stop and have a happy life that doesn't include ever seeing you again neccessarily.

However, once you are actually on the train, 99.99% of strangers will not have a conversation with you for fear of their life. It's like the whole personification of the alpha male syndrome of pack animals. When you look at someone in the eyes too long they may growl at you or move to a different seat to avoid all the intimidation that you are directing their way with your unwanted "eye" presence. Any talk at all between strangers is usually just to alert someone else about something like about how they dropped their bag or that a fat woman is about to fall on them and they may want to move. After the event has passed, so has the conversation. Any questions that are asked after this point will likely be answered with one word and a turn of the head.

So it was with some bizzarre surprise when yesterday on the subway I made a casual remark to a girl and she actually said something. and then something else. and then I remarked to her how bizzarre it was that she was actually talking to me. and then we just talked. then i made her laugh. then as she was leaving i asked if I could give her my email address and she said that she already had a lot of boyfriends.

I can certainly imagine. I mean after all, a girl who would talk to a stranger on a subway must be popular. The kind of behaviour that she displayed is known as "subway slutting". It is practiced only by those familiar with the dark arts, and by that I do mean mud painting.