To all those men who, in the wee hours of the weekend mornings, try and chat me up while I'm trying to ride the train in peace,

Hi.

This is probably more words, total, than I'll ever speak to all of you combined.

Let me start off by saying that I've tried to get into your heads, to figure out why you would pick me as the object of your affection -- at least for those fleeting moments after we've pulled out of Penn Station.

I can see the whole prelude unfolding in my head. You go out to the bars in the city, to have a few drinks with your buddies, escape the doldrums of suburbia, see the wilder crowds, maybe catch a game on a big screen TV, even maybe pick up some pretty girls. But it turned out that you got in an argument with your friend over something innocuous -- the Mets' chance at the wildcard, or whether Armageddon sucked -- and you've had too much to drink and you feel kinda woozy, and the cute chick from Queens blew you off when she claimed she was "going to the bathroom."

And so you're on the train, maybe the 1.14 to Ronkonkoma which you're stuck on for an hour and a half until you get to Central Islip, and you see a girl -- one who's sort of maybe cute, but not so much, not too pretty and perhaps, just perhaps, you won't get flat-out rejected.

And so you talk to her. Turn on the charm, ask her where she was tonight and what she was doing, be interested in her activities -- you know, test the waters a bit. See if you've still "got it," hope that you're not wilting under the harsh, antiseptic lights of the train's inside, which present a marked contrast to the not-quite-there, smoky embers that illuminate the bar.

And some nights that girl is me.

Usually I'll just disengage, chalking up your sudden interest to your drunkenness, or the hour. I'll sink further into my magazines and music, acting oblivious or semi-conscious until you give up and fall asleep.

But there are, once in a while, those nights when I feel that, if the situation were shifted the tiniest bit, I might be only a hair away from succumbing to your charms. It might be because I'm tired and not in the mood to put up a fight, or because I'm filled with just the right amount of beer and ultimate despondency about my life, myself, where i fit in within the whole pretty-girls-who-get-picked-up continuum. (Sort of like your dilemma, but reversed -- the rejected aggressor versus the non-hunted prey.)

I'd be lying if I said i didn't, well, appreciate the attention at those times. Because -- you know? -- it's nice to be noticed when you're feeling down. Even if it's by someone who reeks of Meister Brau and is wearing a ripped, bleach-stained shirt that says USA ALL THE WAY on the front.

On those nights, when I get off the train, I might even feel a bit guilty for rebuffing you, for the overwhelming sense of dread which reflexively suffused through me when you sat down on the end seat of my bench, for the way that I smiled thinly at you when you attempted to engage me in conversation. Even though the appreciation-to-revulsion factor was about 1 to 99; even though, at any other point during the evening, it's highly unlikely that we'd be on the same block, much less conversing.

And it's because of this -- this tangle of feelings that entrenches itself inside of me, turning what should have been a relaxing train ride into something infinitely more annoying and brain-consuming -- that really, I think we'd all be much better off if you just left me alone, let me drift off into the reverie of my Walkman and stare out the window and lose myself in the patterns of neon and light that I face every night. Less rejection for you, less sour aftertaste for me. We'll all win.

Just let me read my Harper's in peace,

Maura