Never trust a man in Glen plaid.

Some days it’s pinstripe, grey, with some sort of pastel shirt, lavender, pink, French collar, yellow tie. Something sharp, color schemes I’d never think to put together, there they are, right in front of me at 8AM and looking like the best thing I’ve never thought of but should have. Solid navy wool with pale blue shirts, turquoise ties with flowers, and brown leather wingtips.

He is there every morning as I wait for the bus, never repeats a suit and has a staring problem. A staring problem in that he stares at me (and most other women) every day when I walk over and stand, reading The New Yorker, trying not to notice that he has a staring problem (and a great eye for fashion) even though it’s so obvious that he does.

He pretends to read the Metro en route, and I usually don’t notice when The Staring Man gets off the bus at 66th and Central Park West, because he never speaks. He only stares.

One day, I will speak to The Staring Man/The Suit Man and find out that he’s got this weird disorder in which he can’t control the movements of his eyes. I’ll learn that this handicap has caused him a lot of trouble in his life up until this point: professors always thinking he wasn’t paying attention when his eyes decided to transfix themselves on the open window, the CEO at UBS who interviewed him and was offended when all he could seem to do was stare at the blatant non-real-hair that looked like a small cat sitting atop his otherwise bare head. And with Julie Jennings, the love of The Staring Man’s life, who left him because she couldn’t handle his head always turned as they walked down the street together, staring at every other woman as they passed by.

All of this was against his will, naturally. “Gosh darn eyes!” He curses himself. His bad eyes. His bad luck. Because really, he’s a good person at heart. And now he overcompensates with really nice suits, a suit for every possible occasion in an attempt to keep him not looking as creepy as, say, if he were wearing jeans and a Ramones T-shirt, making him look more “sex offender” than “slightly eccentric businessman.” How can you not trust someone in a Savile Row Henry Poole?

One day I will talk to him, ask him about his disorder and feign sympathy. Because initially he had me looking behind myself searching for the person he must have been looking at, and then realizing, foolishly, embarrassed, that it was me (do’h!). I will get him back for those moments where I had to pretend that I was just stretching my back or that the brick wall of the building behind me was really interesting. Oh yes, bricks, fun.

Staring Man and I are going to war, a war I’m waging on bad etiquette and for anyone who has ever stood on a street corner and felt visually molested. I don’t know how I’m going to do it or when, but I have a feeling, even with his eyes open and transfixed, he’s not going to see it coming.