Flirting

I'm a big flirt.  I've always been a big flirt. 

These last few years my flirtations have fallen on deaf ears for the most part.  I smile at men on the street and their eyes slide right over me.  I get saucy with a man at a bar or in a line and he suddenly has urgent messages on his phone. 

And it's not just flirting and men!  Women completely ignore me in conversation. I have asked random women to please hand me something or pass something my way and they simply glance at one another as though I were a ghost.

I can say, "Excuse me," to a person who is blocking my path and they look me up and down with a general look of distaste, then they shift about an inch.  Really?  You just looked at me and you think an inch is enough room? There is a general consensus that yes, an inch is plenty of room for my fat ass to squeeze through as an inch is usually all I am allowed.

Things like this have always bothered me, mostly because I have this aspect to my personality that makes people talk to me.  Random people on the street will tell me their life story, people in line at a store will explain about their underwear problems, my seat-mate on a train will have no problem talking about their sex life.  But if I make the approach, or if I am the one requesting, people often completely ignore me.

The amazing thing about being a fat woman is that the bigger you are the more invisible you become.

And this is especially true where flirting enters the picture.

It can be a little funny, watching a guy try not to visibly freak out when I flirt, watching him search for a hasty exit without being too rude. But only a little funny.

So I was completely caught by surprise when a man flirted with me on the train the other day!  I didn't really know what to do with myself.

I have seen him before on the train and he always catches my eye and smiles.  I hadn't really thought anything of it, until the other day.

We were standing in the scrum to get onto the train when I noticed that the man I was standing next to had his attention on me.  I glanced up at him to find him looking directly at me, a slight look of surprise on his face, like he'd been looking for me and I just happened to appear.

"Hi!" he said with a smile.

"Hi!" I replied. 

He then proceeded to block a path for me to get onto the train before him.  I smiled and thanked him (it was quite gallant) and got on the train. I entered through the door on the left but I turned right to go into the opposite car.  I found my way to a seat by the window.  As I settled in I noticed that he had followed me into the opposite car and was just sitting in a seat a row away facing me, but positioned so that he could see me between the seats.  I smiled at him again as our eyes met and we sat.

"Surely this is a coincidence," I thought. "He can't be following me."

But he was.

As the train made its way toward the city I settled in to enjoy my book. Every so often I would glance up to catch him looking at me. We were too far away to chat, but I always smiled.  So did he.

When we finally arrived in the city he tried to remain seated while I made my way into the aisle but a very polite woman insisted that he go in front of her.  When he reached the bottom of the short stairway in the train he turned to look for me and he smiled such a smile when he saw that I was looking at him.  I actually blushed (I never blush).

As often happens in New York we were separated by the crowd heading up into Penn Station and we lost each other on the upper floors, try as we might to keep each other in our sights. 

I must admit it was the most amazing feeling.  To be flirted with and smiled at and to feel his energy flowing at me.  The feeling stayed with me all day, making me giddy and effervescent.  I couldn't put a finger on exactly what the feeling was, but I liked it.

Then yesterday I was dealing with one of the move-an-inch-out-of-the-way people, sighing as I tried to explain, yet again, that my body is too large to fit through that tiny space, and I realized what that feeling was.  I have become so used to being invisible, so used to being derided and ignored, that I had forgotten what it felt like to be me. 

That feeling that I felt was the feeling of being me.

I am the same me I have always been; the same flirt, the same sass, the same ... me.  In all the illness and drugs, and with all this fat that I have become I had forgotten that feeling. I had forgotten what it felt like to get that kind of attention from strangers.

But a man flirted with me on the train.  He made a path for me, smiled at me, made sure he always knew where I was.  He reminded me that I like being me. 

He smiled at me, and I remembered.