Me and my wife the Boogie Train take the F home to Brooklyn every night. Last night, there was some handsome overly put together tall guy sitting across from us. Too cute for a hipster -- too pretty, more a high school girl's idea of Jim Morrison, wearing Bono glasses and a damn black sweater in the eighty degree heat -- but clearly a guy making pretense to some slackified cool.
Anyway, when the snackbag gets up from his seat to get off at his stop, it is revealed that he has a paperback copy of Catcher in the Rye slipped into his back jean pocket, with the title nestled just above the denim. My wife, damn train that she is, bursts out laughing. She laughs so loud that he turns around. She just makes eye contact and keeps on laughing.
I've stashed books in my back pocket plenty of times. The only natural movement is to slip a book in upside-down and facing buttward. It's sometimes tempting to leave it face out, and announce what big words you read.
Dumb. This guy thought it made him look literate. It didn't. She called him out, because she's the fucking Train.
You know how on the cartoons Bugs gets those big hearts in his eyes whenever a female rabbit walks by?
