Beloved Nothingness

C03 // red wine

I often chose to take the train down to New York City, more for the ride than a visit. There were times that men would drop their bulk onto the seat beside me and reject the rest of the empty ones, but usually, it was a time of refuge. In the midst of my freshman year in college, taking a few moments to think and create were as precious and rare as an exotic bird. Armed with a sketchpad and my thoughts, I could spin my hours into a golden fleece that kept me warm for weeks.

There was solace in being alone, caught in the midst of other peoples' lives on that train. I'd witnessed fights and breakups, engagements, and even women going into labor on that train, life beginning and ending at the drop of the hat. It was intimate, in a way, to experience so much just by observing from the wings.

It's easy to spin a tale watching someone for long enough, and I flesh out an intricate life for them on paper. The dark-haired woman with the cheap tube top and the Prada purse has rich parents who are embarrassed by her failed life in the city that never sleeps, and she receives luxury items at each Christmas gathering as if they will remind her of her roots, bring her to her senses. The woman with the cinnamon roll bun and bird books is living in a cottage to write the next great American novel and thinks that instant coffee is the work of the devil. The businessman whose shirt is too wrinkly and whose belt doesn't match his shoes has a wife who left him for another woman, and he's trying to drum up enough gusto to show up to his nine-to-five one more time before he finally throws in the towel. Their posture is captured by my pencil first, a circle for a head, a square jaw, ovals for the chest and hips and joints all connected by fluid lines. Their essence. My stories, likely and ridiculous alike, stem from that posture.

Then I flesh in the face and draw the outline of a body, noticing a few more wrinkles, a hidden tattoo, a sprinkling of freckles on a shoulder blade. Next comes the clothes, gracing their frames like frosting on a cake. The hair is fitted like a wig, and the face is finalized after the proportions are triple checked one more time. If one feature is a little too wide, a little too tall, a little too far over, the subject completely loses their identity. I owe them that, to draw them with integrity as I encroach upon their story.

If they notice, which they hardly ever do, I let them keep my drawing. The jagged remainder from the ripped-out page serves as a reminder to be stealthy, to take what I need to fuel my soul without sacrificing their peace.

"What are you doing?" Breaks my peace, pencil stalling on the paper. The English is heavily accented and gruff, but matches the frowning, giant redhead with his legs barely fitting in the seat beside me. The train was actually full that day, and I was the one to encroach upon his space even if I kept my back toward him and my eyes on a pregnant mother and her sobbing two-year-old. I find myself drawing mothers often. But this man beside me doesn't need to hear that, or know why I am drawn to any woman with a tell-tale swollen belly underneath her shirt.

"Drawing from life," I offer, my voice coming out meeker than I intended it to sound. He has a textbook wedged between his stomach and the seat, but the margins are filled with an illegible cursive. "And you?"

"Trying to understand this," he muttered, brow creased as if he was angry. His hands are so large they make the paperback seem like a toy book.

Finally, I ask, "What language is that? That you're writing in?"

"Russian," he retorted, and I thought his accent might have thickened when he said it, just a little.

"Really?" I cleared my throat a little, shocked by the lump in it. I couldn't be sure if it was because he caught me in my act, or if it was because of his close proximity. "I am by no means a Russian expert, but I didn't think the alphabet looked like that."

He flipped to the front of the book, where there were a few words that looked more like the Russian I'd seen before. "The print and cursive look very different," he explained. "Of course, we learned some English at school, but I am much better at speaking it than reading it. I have to translate and make notes in my language if I want to remember."