This morning started off crabby. I slept late, couldn't get my boots on (to buy: shoe horn), and almost burned my breakfast. I planned to leave the apartment by 8. I actually left the apartment by 8:45.
The only benefit to running that late is a less-crowded train. Not so today. Just another crabby thing.
At 42nd St. I missed a 1 train by 1 second. Another followed, and I got on and found a seat. Right before the doors closed, four Parisian tourists piled on. The women sidled in next to me. The men sat across from me.
I'm going to call the men Frenchie and Jacques.
Frenchie looks over at me. His eyes go wide. He turns to Jacques and says something in his ear all while staring at me like I've got a fucking third eye. Now Frenchie and Jacques are both staring and there's nothing subtle about it. They stare. They confer. I stare back. I read more the meh book that I had with me. I look up. Still, staring.
So I take it that in France, they're free of fluffy chicks? That's the best I could tell. Or maybe they just hated my leg warmers?
After a few more stares Frenchie and Jacques turned their gaze away from fluffy me and onto a teenage boy with a skin condition. Charming! And these are the tourists that Mayor Bloomberg would like me to treat with care and kindness?
But I digress. I readied myself for the next stop, and I wondered what I should do. The stares where so glaring and obnoxious that I felt the need to act. I thought back to the David Sedaris story about riding the train in France with the bad American tourists. He did nothing. I couldn't do nothing. What I wanted to do, in a really primal way, was give Frenchie and Jacques the finger. It was a crass thought, but satisfying. And then I thought back to Meg's recent subway anecdote and stopped myself. Instead as I got off the train I swung my head around to Frenchie and Jacques and made a crazy, twisty, monster face. No comment, no screaming, just bugged out eyes, a grimace, and a scrunched up nose.
I left wishing I'd done something more dignified.
All day long this encounter bothered me. I should have said something. I should have done something. I should have beaned them on their beret-bereft heads with my library book. Instead, I made a crazy face.
So tonight I'm at Times Square. A W train pulls in and I kid you not--those same tourists spilled out of the train onto the platform. Frenchie, the instigator, opened his eyes and mouth wide with recognition. My eyes followed him. He turned to Jacques and the women and pointed at me. POINTED. Frenchie wore a smirk, and Jacques laughed, and the women all looked confused.
I couldn't believe my good fortune! There they were. I had a real, live second chance for justice! In that second I loved New York and all the second chances it gives to those of us who need them. I stared down Jacques and Frenchie. We made eye contact. We held eye contact. And then I gave up and ran into the train.
And the moral of the story? Always carry a stale baguette in your bag to use as a weapon against nasty French tourists.