3 Women

A drunk Indian woman from Trinidad, who may also have been mentally-challenged (it was hard to tell considering the advanced stage of her intoxication), fell in love with me in my uncle's bar on Saturday night. She told me that I looked "sad" and "worried" and that she wanted me to buy her another drink. I told her that she probably had enough and that it would be better if she just went home and slept it off. She wanted a hug before leaving and I obliged, but as I returned to my beer she pounced from behind and slobbered me with two wet kisses, one on each cheek, to the general amusement of all the bar regulars.

A little later, waiting for the PATH train into Manhattan, I noticed an attractive young woman on the platform. We boarded the same passenger car at opposite ends, but looking for a seat, she found one directly in front of where I was standing. "Did she do that on purpose?" I thought (of course, as you may have already guessed, I was slightly intoxicated by this time). As the train proceeded into the city, I found my eyes returning to gaze upon this woman (I was too drunk to dip into the copy of Conrad's The Secret Agent that I had brought along). I couldn't help myself. After a bit of this surreptitious staring, I noticed something odd. Occasionally the young woman would cover her mouth with her hand, but from the angle where I was standing I could see that what she was really doing was sneakily sucking her thumb. As a former thumb sucker myself, I was not only taken aback by the fact that she was still sucking her thumb into her late twenties/early thirties, but that she would do this in such an openly public place (I would never have had such nerve back in my thumb sucking days). Now I was fixated. I couldn't turn my eyes away. And none of this seemed to have any effect on the young woman. I might as well have been invisible. Before I got off of the train, I felt like I had to say something to her. Leaning in to speak as the train pulled into my stop, I said without thinking, "Just remember that you're beautiful." I guess I caught her off guard because her thumb was still in her mouth as I departed the train.

Later, at the Marah concert I went into the city to see, Xmastime introduced me to two young women I had given a ride to some seven years ago or so for a previous show at The Stone Pony in Asbury Park. One of the women seemed much more beautiful than I had remembered. In fact, she was quite stunning. Imagine my utter deflation when the first thing she said to me was, "You've gotten fat and old." Ah, now that's more like it!