Stella

i met a woman on the subway the other day. she was older than me, maybe late 40s but had that young spirit that made it hard to guess at her age. the subway wasn’t too crowded, just a couple of out-of-towners and a male-born applying some pretty fantastic make-up on the bench across from us.  

she seemed a bit lonely, and kind of kept the convo going even though i wasn’t a very good participant at first. we had that chat about how the trains on the weekend were always a surprise, kind of like the new york  equivalent of a pair of minnesotans talking about the weather. we were on the f, which was running on the e line before getting back on the f line and then rerouting to the g line. what a fucking mess. 

so she sees my gear bags, and asks if i’ve got a pool cue. i tell her no, that’s my light stand. that i just got done shooting some headshots and getting some candids for a client and i’m heading to do some portraits for a friend of mine who is into the video game.    

she says oh that’s cool, and then says she used to do a lot of photography. that she loved it so much that she got a job working at a camera store so she could get good deals on equipment, and then that led to her getting a job teaching for a lot of years. she was into the film side of photography and said her apartment was full of equipment and one of these days she was going to retire and set up her dark room again. i laughed and told her i only work in photography now so i can buy more gear and she nodded knowingly.

right when the conversation started getting good, she got to her stop. i introduced myself before she got off, and she told me her name was stella. we didn’t exchange contact information or anything, and you know that is probably a good thing since you never know with these people you meet on the subway. but i felt a pang when she left, like just felt like i wanted to give her a few more minutes of my time to help her feel less lonely. and who knows, maybe she could show me how to work in a darkroom and i could show her how to use  lightroom.  

anyway, i guess i’ll have to get someone else to show me those ropes, but at least i had a good chat on the train. better than what i get from the fucking mta most days.