Touch

Without thinking, I said, "You can hold my hand, if you need to."

"Oh, OK," she said, without much conviction.

The train was still idling at the station, and I resumed reading, but I couldn't fully concentrate on the page. Without wanting to, I realized that what I had just offered was, by New York City standards, a bit out of the ordinary, and, more to the point, I traced the source of my gesture to time I spent in Africa, where touch is part of ordinary discourse between people, even between strangers. Americans, like many Europeans, fear extended contact with a stranger. But the African countries I've been to don't have this kind of prejudice against touch. (This is also true of the Middle East, from what I've seen of it.)

As the train accelerated out of the platform, I waited to see if she would take me up on the offer. She braved the physics of it at first. But as we picked up speed, the train began its steady mechanical sway; and, at the first jolt, she grabbed my hand immediately. I smiled at her to let her know that it was OK, and that, in case she was worried about it, I wasn't going to try to steal her wallet.

"Thanks," she said meekly.

When the train's tumble smoothed out, she let go, but at the next jolt, her instinct for self-preservation overcame her shyness: she grabbed my hand even more forcefully.

I responded by doing the same. I held on to her forearm with equal strength, to let her know that it's OK, that I really didn't mind, and to make this a shared effort, rather than a one sided rescue operation. And so we remained, two strangers holding on to each other and breaking New York City subway decorum, as the train sped under the East River.

Paul Szynol