by Michael Lai
It was just like any other commute to work on a busy Monday morning, or at least it would have been if I hadn’t left my book at home again. Even though I wasn’t in any particular hurry this morning, somehow I managed to forget the only thing that keeps me entertained during the train trip (I try not to let my mobile phone enslave me more than it needs to), while still remembering to pack my headphones.
I always wear a pair of headphones on the train, but there is no music playing from them – it’s an excuse not to pay attention to anything else that is going on around me. If you want to know how to get through a book quickly, I have two tips: 1) Train yourself to visualize what you are reading AND 2) Spend more time reading. Normally that’s how I can get through as many pages of my book without being disturbed, since any conversations that I try to have with people on the train always take much longer than what I (and those people) expect. Don’t get me wrong, I am not an introvert (or the closet variation), it’s just that people normally don’t have much to say on the way to work on a Monday, unless you like hearing all the things that they were doing over the weekend with a very strong overtone of short-term nostalgia. But without the book (oh how I miss it right now), I only have the people inside the carriage to entertain me, and you can’t really expect much from people who are wishing that they are still enjoying their weekends rather than having to go back to work this morning.
I check the display inside the train. Still ten stops to go. Or roughly twenty-five minutes.
The funny thing that happens when you start paying attention to the people around you is this – you begin to notice how little attention everyone is paying to everyone else. It doesn’t matter whether they are staring into the abyss of their mobile phone screen or tapping away on a laptop mindlessly. No one seems to care about what is happening around them, maybe except to look up on the odd occasion to make sure that they haven’t missed their stop.
So like I said before, it was just a typical morning peak-hour train trip where you don’t expect anything interesting to happen. I am sure that I wouldn’t even have noticed her sitting right over on the other side of the carriage, if it wasn’t for those bright pink headphones (one of those that cup around the ears completely), and the waves of blonde hair flowing down like a waterfall well past her slim shoulders, her right hand dipping into those waters and stroking them playfully.
And there would still be nothing special to me about this woman at this point, until she answered a phone call – more specifically, it was the way that she held the phone. The moment I locked my gaze on her delicate hands, elf-like they were because of the slenderness of the fingers and the fair colour of her skin, it was hard to take my eyes off them.
I lost track of time. I took another look at the display. Three stops to go. Where did she get on the train? Where is she going to get off? Will I see those pulchritudinous hands again?
Maybe you are attracted to a particular type of girl, be it someone who has a bright and gorgeous smile, or a special twinkle in her eyes, or a physical feature that you are especially drawn to. I have been told that people can just as easily fall in love with a person’s voice, or the way that they smell (like in those pheromone parties). But perhaps you are not someone who puts a lot of emphasis on physical appearance, and you prefer someone who can make you laugh (or laugh at your jokes). I have also known couples who share very specific interests such as participating in cosplay (of related anime/manga characters) or have a collection of the same rare Pokemon characters.
At this point in time, I am sure you realise that I value above all the hands of my ideal woman. Sometimes when I walk past the office kitchenette at work, I would stop and observe the women there, even occasionally finding myself staring at their hands a little bit too closely just because I like the way that their hands move when they wash the dishes. There’s nothing too offensive or obnoxious about having a keen interest in someone’s hands, and at least it is not something people usually take too personally if you don’t happen to like the way they look. The only exception to this (and sometimes it can get you in trouble) is if a woman mistakenly thinks that you are looking at their ring finger (whether there is a ring there or not).
Truth be told, there is a lot you can learn about a person from their hands, and I don’t mean through palmistry or counting the number of lunulas (the half-moon shape at the base of the nail) in your fingers because I haven’t mastered those arts. However, there are certainly many other characteristics like the different lengths of the fingers, the size of the palms, the smoothness of the skin and the shapes of the fingernails that you notice. While individually they don’t quite give you a complete story, taken together they can reveal a lot more than you think.
I turned to look at the display once more. Two stops to go. How I wished that there were still a few more stops before I had to disembark. Even better, we will both alight the train at the same stop. If she didn’t get off at the next stop, should I stay on?
I replayed the moments in my mind when she answered the call from all the way across the other side of the carriage. She had to take the headset off of course, which she did with her right hand, so it was her left hand that I fixed my gaze upon. The mobile phone was held in a pistol-grip like fashion, the forefinger separated from the other fingers and resting lightly on top of the device. The thumb curled around on one side of the phone, and the rest of the fingers wrapped around the other side. Some people keep all of their fingers except the thumb on the same side of the phone, kind of like the thumbs up symbol, but I particularly liked the way her fingers cradled the phone. Even the way her left pinky tapped rhythmically against the side of the phone, no doubt to the beat of the last song that she was listening to, made my heart skip ever so slightly faster.
Before I was able to snap out of my trance, the train came to a stop at the next station, and she quickly finished her conversation, put her bright pink headphone back on, threw her beige carry bag over her shoulders and stepped out of the carriage almost in one motion. It was only after losing the sight of her disappearing into the crowd that I was left to wonder what her voice might sound like. Is it boisterous and playful like the colours of her pinky headphones, or is it gentle and elegant like her lovely hands and graceful fingers?
If only I had been on the same side of the train carriage as her, I could have stuck my head out of the door before it closed and looked at which way she walked. Maybe next time I’ll catch an earlier train tomorrow and get off at her station, so I could observe more closely as she walks past. And maybe if I am lucky she will notice me, and I could somehow let her know how lovely I think her hands are.
Not that I could ever say those words in front of her (sigh).
I looked up at the display inside the train one final time, since the bright letters that spelled out my stop are now flashing across the display. As I got up and moved towards the door, someone who was also trying to make their way out of the train bumps into me, probably busy staring at his phone rather than where he was going. As he turned to face me, I could guess that he was probably trying to make an apology, but because he wasn’t facing me I had very little idea what he was trying to say.
Finally, when I managed to get his eye contact, I used my left hand to point to my chest, then to my ear and shook my head. He had that surprised look on his face, and the shape of his lips mouthed the words: “Oh, you’re deaf, I am so sorry I bumped into you.”
Michael is a sporadic creator (who doesn’t write a lot these days). The SOUL (Science, Origami, Ux Design, Linguistics) of his existence can be found in the intersection of art and science, and at his LinkTree.
Isonomia Quarterly 