Chapter 60.2: Hot Girl

I sat next to a hot girl today on the PATH train. Physically hot. As in warm. Yes, she was attractive too, though I didn't see much of her face. (It's not considered polite to stare at a stranger from a distance of about six or seven inches.) As I got on the train -- lucky to catch one of the earlier trains, which are often less crowded and therefore plentiful with open seats -- I noticed the attractive girl and the spaces beside her. Usually, I want an end seat, but I suppose most people do, and they were all filled. My second choice is toward the middle, to give the folks on the end some elbow room. So, I ended up next to the hot girl.

Once the door was closed, I felt her warmth beside me and noticed the lack of warmth on my other side. I opened my book of Donald Barthelme short stories and continued to read "Lightning," which I'd started on the NJ Transit train. It's about a divorced magazine writer who's doing a piece on people who were struck by lightning; it's a tale about falling back in love and how it changes your life. I chuckled to myself often as I read. The next story was called "The Cathechist," which is a conversation between two priests, one of whom goes to the park every day to see a woman. The previous day he'd ended up hearing her confession, but he longs to feel her beside him, as she stands with her hands in the back pockets of her trousers.

There's a nice little section:

"And the lady's husband?"
"He is a psychologist. He works in the limits of sensation. He is attempting to define precisely the two limiting sensations in the sensory continuum, the upper limit and the lower limit. He is often at the lab. He is measuring vanishing points."
"An irony."
"I suppose."

The hot girl with the black and white hi-top boots and the black leather bag that contrasted the whites of her french manicured nails left the PATH at 9th Street. Funny, the train didn't seem much colder once she was gone.