Bridge and Tunnel Girls

Last night I watched a flock of girls in comically tiny, cheap black dresses push their way like queens into a New York City cab in front of Penn Station. "Webster Hall," said one girl loudly. I could tell by the way she said it, by her shiny stockings, by everything, that she'd never been there before.

I took the escalator down to make the 1:24 Dover train home, thinking about how their night is just beginning and mine winding down. It was freezing and I was exhausted. A part of me, though, wanted to dive into that cab with them. My husband, maybe reading my mind, smiled and shook his head. I wanted to talk about those long nights I'd had in my early twenties, how those girls were just like me, dressed all wrong for the weather, their insecurity and vulnerability so pronounced, it was like I saw them naked.

For a very short stretch of time, I too used to plan Saturday nights around Hoboken and Manhattan. "Where are we going this weekend?" I asked my new best friend-of-the-month, Louisa, who lived in Brooklyn with her noisy parents and a mysterious upstairs kitchen we weren't allowed to walk through (old school Italian).

"Tunnel," she'd utter. We'd slip our feet into awful, heavy black shoes. I'd dip my hand into a jar of Aqua Gel and carefully arrange hundreds of spiral curls and blow dry it carefully. We'd select our strappy halter tops and debate over wearing a coat.

Louisa would need to be lectured: if you meet someone at the club, I'd say, please don't leave me alone too long. I'd be pressed up against a wall, the music grinding me down like a tooth, but life pumping through me with all its romantic, dramatic promises. I was terrified of the men, all those handsome, aggressive Israelis, those silent, angry Russians, the playful dance gods otherwise known as Filipinos. (Somewhere right now a guy in Brighton Beach is blogging about standoffish, uppity girls like me in those clubs, scrunched up against the wall and coldly avoiding everyone's eye. You never really know. He could have been a wonderful guy. But in those settings, anyone could be a serial killer. Everyone in the flesh parade. Everyone vaguely terrified until stone-cold drunk).

Louisa was replaced by a few other casual girlfriends. In and out of the city, racing in my stupid shoes to make the 2 am Bayhead train. NJ transit like a circus. My make up smeared on my face with sweat and dance club fog machine grit. My nose a perfect 90 degree angle reflected in the train window. So many anxieties on those rides home. I gave out my number, will he call? Am I too drunk to drive my car home from the station? Will I ever meet someone? It seems like I fretted away my life on those train rides.

We went into the city yesterday for my friend's birthday. I wore flat boots and a warm coat. My husband drove us to the station and we soberly took a taxi from the restaurant. On the train he held my fingers and he let me kiss him when the lights flickered. There were squawky, drunk people everywhere going home. But for the girls piling in the cab, the night stretches open. The necessary abyss.

We have to humor those girls, those flocks of NJ transit girls, running for that last train. Wincing on the sidewalk with their bad shoes and sometimes crying. Sometimes laughing too loud and looking at me like I came from some distant planet, not knowing I'm just like them, just two or three stops ahead on the same line.