Subway Moment, midafternoon, Wed., Nov. 16:
A foxy looking twentysomething commuter pops up, exiting an arriving D Train on the D/R platform, Atlantic-Pacific station. As I leave the R Train for the D, I'm carrying my sidebag, Moleskin and pen, my black Buddy Holly’s perched on my nose in a way I’m thinking has a public intellectual panache. We pass each other to, I swear, a little electric charge, I’m thinking as I take what I’m sure was only a second before the woman’s seat, the form-fitting plastic still warm.
Next to me is a glossy magazine face down. Smiling, I turn it over. It’s AARP Magazine, with Antonio Banderas on the cover: Lead story: “New Ways to Beat Diabetes.”
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Most of my running life I’ve been bad. Or at least inattentive. If nothing else over the past near two years since I’ve taken up the idea that I’m a marathoner, I’ve come to see that what I’d long felt was a reward for being a runner was that I didn’t have to watch what I ate. You name it: hamburgers, pizza, second helpings of birthday cake, Girl Guide (in Canada, Girl Scouts in America) cookies by the handful, trans fat-loaded potato chips, Cokes, french fries. I’m one of those runners who has trouble keeping pounds on, let alone gaining weight. So for thirty-plus years that’s what I did.
