Wednesday 12 December 2012

Ballad of the Transit Casanova



I love transit. Today I had the fortuitous opportunity to both witness and partially participate in a thoroughly fantastic skytrain interaction.

I hopped on the train after work and grabbed a free spot. In the corner of the Vancouver skytrains there's a bit of an odd seating arrangement; there's a seat right in each corner facing the center of the aisle, and then along the sid
e of the train there are two seats that are facing directly at these single seats. Therefore if you sit in the forward facing seats you'll be staring right at the person in the side facing seat. Without thinking too deeply about it I sat down in one of these seats, the one closer to the aisle, and found myself seated by a very drunk/high young man who was in the staring seat and incredibly beautiful young woman in the staree seat.

Now the normal societal convention for these seats is to not stare directly at the poor sideways-facing person. However the drunk fellow was having none of that, and could not believe his luck that he happened to be seated facing such a goddess. As I sat down he swung his gaze over to mine and met my eyes with a look of shock and awe. He then quickly swung back to his muse, and then back to me. He gave me a knowing nod. It was to begin.

It took him a little while to well up the courage to finally say something to her. For a time he just sat and stared intently, unblinking, while occasionally making a frantic hand gesture and looking like he was about to speak, but then remained quiet. After a few stops and starts he finally managed to settle on what was sure to be a killer opener. He leaned in and confidently stated...


"YOUR EYES."

Now this girl had headphones in, which all guys know makes it very difficult to start some sort of conversation. The awkwardness of poking someone so they take their headphones out and can hear what terrible pick up line you've come up with to say to them is hard to get past. So this poor girl takes her headphones out and bemusedly looks at her suitor.


"What... what about them?"

"They... THEY'RE SO BEAUTIFUL."

She awkwardly thanked him, and then hesitated to put her headphones back in. She knew what coming.

I should point out that at this point I had decided not to interfere. Sure, I could have rescued this girl from the awkwardness that would ensue, but instead I decided to go with the option that would be far more hilarious. And I'd be around to intervene if anything got out of hand. But he seemed harmless enough; just a lovestruck soul trying to pour his heart out to the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.

After his foolproof opening line our drunk hero knew he had to try to push the conversation forward if any headway was to be made into securing his future bride. He decided to ask her what she did for work with the same forceful conviction as his previous compliment.


"What... WHAT DO YOU DO?"

Our heroine monosyllabically responded that she was a musician. This energized the gentleman, because he himself found music very important in his life. He was a popper/locker and also an amateur beatboxer. He made a point of assuring her that he was likely nowhere near as good as her at beatboxing however. She disagreed that he probably had her beat on that one.

Transit Casanova may have been drunk off his gourd and overcome with the most intense feelings of love that he had ever experienced, but he still had enough wits to know that this girl was not being particularly responsive to his overtures, and that he might be coming off a little creepy and intense. He assured her that he didn't mean to make her uncomfortable, but that her hair was just SO GORGEOUS IT WAS FANTASTIC AND BEAUTIFUL.

At this point I began to get roped in as a wingman. After every gushing compliment Fabio would turn to me and ask if I agreed. I of course agreed wholeheartedly, and threw in a few compliments of my own to diversify his eye-and-hair-centric arsenal. She had a lovely nose too. The guy's brain was only working about well enough to come up with two compliments and a single topic of conversation (what do you do) so he continued to make the same statements and ask the same question several times. At one point, with great effort, he managed to combine his two lines of discussion into a single point, and inquired intently "WHAT DO YOU DO WITH YOUR EYES?" She confusedly answered that she mainly uses them to look at things and not trip over stuff, and wasn't sure what else could be done with them. I offered that if she was Superman she could probably shoot lasers out of them. She agreed, but had to admit that she was not actually Superman.

I wish I could say that gorgeous girl eventually saw drunk guy for the loving, dedicated, and wonderful person that he was but unfortunately their romance wasn't meant to be. Perhaps in another day, in another place, in another level of sobriety they could have made it. But not today at 6:30 on the millennium line skytrain from Vancouver to Coquitlam. Her stop arrived, they went their separate ways, and love did not prevail that day.

But beautiful girl, if you're out there, thank you for putting up with all that for my amusement. I hope you have an unimpeded and quiet remaining trip home.

EPILOGUE: Because some people were wondering, I actually did chat with the gal for a minute after the whole escapade was over, since we wound up having to get off at the same stop. The fellow also got off at the same stop, so I also wanted to stick around to make sure he wasn't following her or anything, but he happily went off on his own way having admitted to himself that he was perhaps not as charming as he had thought he was being. The girl thought the whole thing was pretty hilarious too.