Let's stay together.

At the end of the day there’s nothing New Yorkers want more than to get home. We work late nights, long hours, and suddenly our days are gone before we even had a chance to notice. So when we’re on the subway half asleep we’re not really focusing on the article we’re reading in the latest issue of The New Yorker (is Michael Chabon right? Are superhero’s costumes overrated?) -we’re dreaming of the feeling that will come when we finally put our heads down on our pillows.

I was on the uptown 6 train on my way home tonight, staring at my reflection in the window because I was too tired to pretend to read as we sped from 42nd to 59th. When you’re not pretending to read on the subway you’ve really got nothing else to do but look at other people. And the more you try not to look at other people the more you think about how you have nowhere else to look. I spent one too many times trying not to look at the pinstripe suit who was standing with his back against the door holding a faded leather briefcase, that I think I ended up looking at him more than I should have. What can I say, he was cute.

Sometimes it feels like there’s nothing else we can really do in New York but force moments with strangers in the hope that perhaps that one of them will reach out and ask for our numbers in that great New-York-romantic-moment you only see in the movies. Sure you realize after a while it’s ridiculous, but what else are you supposed to do when you’re bored on the subway? And let’s admit it, sometimes even the most independently single can become inwardly desperate.

But the whole point is that when the doors opened at 59th street a man got on the train with his guitar hoping for some late dinner money and announced he was going to play a song. When the first lines of Al Green’s "Let’s Stay Together" started to come out of his mouth I burst out laughing. It was automatic because it was so ridiculous, because such an intimate sounding song with all of us half asleep workaholics forcing moments with each other or staring at the floor - who could help but laugh when he, in his fedora and out of tune guitar cooed the opening sultry words "I’m. I’m so in love with you. Whatever you want to do. Is alright with me."

Fortunately I was the next stop and fled because, as always seems to happen at the most inopportune moments, once I started laughing I had a hard time stopping. I smiled on my way out (just missing the last verse) to the suit, who smiled back in a very you’re-ridiculous sort of way and not in the let’s-grab-dinner-on-Friday-night way I’d been secretly hoping for.

Another New York moment gone in a flash, sure, but it’s always nice to know that even when times are good or bad, happy or sad -you can’t help but want to stay together with the only city in the world that refuses to give you anything but an ordinary Tuesday night.