The Jerks

A friend of mine and I were heading home on the subway from Hollywood. We had failed to gain admission to a sold-out improv show. It was relatively late by this point, and the trains running at that hour are invariably packed with interesting characters. This is not something I'm especially glad for. Interesting people tend to encroach on one's privacy in such close quarters. I would just as soon have a boring ride home myself.

My friend is like many people in that he is more social than I am. I'm capable of it to a point, but initiating conversation with strangers is outside my area of expertise. He thrives on things like that, it seems. As we waited for a train peculiarly slow in arriving, he struck up a conversation with a pair of women who turned out to have come from a Tom Petty concert. I guessed that one might be the other's daughter, but I don't know that, and how do you ask such a thing?

Just as the conversation had gotten going in earnest, a guy comes along on a skateboard and tells these women not to believe us. The women wondered if this guy and his friend were friends of ours. They certainly weren't, and over the course of our newfound acquaintance with them, they sure did nothing to create such a relationship with us. It seemed as if they, bored and rather chemically influenced, decided to occupy themselves by impeding the socializing of others.

From their arrival, the previously-flourishing conversation dwindled to nothing as the women withdrew out of what I have to imagine was a self-protective instinct. I can't fault them. I'm inclined to do the same thing under similar circumstances. It was an unpleasant trip on the whole, and matters weren't helped any by this other fellow in a school security guard outfit who felt it necessary to aggressively assert the "school" aspect of that to me unsolicited. I was, it's safe to say, glad to be off the train and within the walls of my apartment.