Slinking Down 34th in a Pink Mini Skirt

“She always looked people in the eye, not to be confident or polite and not to heed the memory of her mother telling her to be aware of her surroundings. She peered into people’s faces to be singularly aware of herself. In another’s gaze was where she wanted to be. The gaze is preferably, almost always, male, and she wanted it to confirm or deny what she hated most about herself and what she thought people liked about her. It often did, but most of the time she was resigned to her own scrutiny as they walked past without the satisfaction of a second glance.

Are you cold? Leaning out of a doorway in a suit, an almond-colored man asked.

No!

But he was, he said.

They laughed as she walked past, and a smile cracked her face down the rest of the block even though he was not the slightest bit interested in her, nor she in him, but she had seen him look at her and then away before looking back and deciding she was worthy of speaking to. His goofy smile gave him away as the sort of good-natured man who spoke to others easily. These interactions were mere fleeting moments; he would not kick himself over words not said for the next half hour, or go home and tell his roommate about her. But she would remember him as she tallied the moments when she felt she shared genuine interactions with strangers that day. If there were none, she felt sullied and unfulfilled. But if she had at least one then she thought it was a glorious day.”