Smile Study Part I

Have you ever tried to smile at someone while you were on the train? Have you tried to make that most intimate of gestures–eye contact–with no other intent than to see if pursed lips would become a smiley face?

I decided to try an experiment today just to see how smiley New York subway riders could be. Note that I’m not equating a smile with friendliness. A rabid dog smiles before it bites you. But I do think there is something to say about a smile upon downtrodden, underground, I-can’t-wait-to-see-the-sunshine lips.

 Here are today’s results. 

7:32 a.m.– Enter a standing-room only F train. It’s cold so hats are on and scarves are still wound tightly around necks and some faces. Coats are thick and it feels humid in the car. I have to loosen my fleece scarf. I start to sweat as my body cools off after the long walk to the train station heated me up. I figure I’ll be lucky if I don’t catch a cold.  

I gaze at two men who, before I can even smile, look away. A woman smiles back briefly, the smile flickering across her lips, then turns away.  

7:40 a.m.– 21st Street stop and more folks get on. I shift to my favorite spot by the door so I can have a good view of the interior of the car. I get my courage up and prepare to look around to see how many people will make eye contact with me and then, if it’s made, how many will return a smile.

I swallow hard. I know I’m living dangerously but I make the choice, in the name of subway research, to go forward and start my scan. Here’s what I see. A pregnant woman and her male partner sit to my left, reading Griffen’s Something Blue. I can’t hear what they’re talking about because my iPod is blasting. I adjust the volume and glance away. They are too absorbed in each other to look up at me.

One man faces me directly but his eyes are closed.  I think he’s asleep. Three people are reading the papers (one Wall Street Journal, two Daily News). Two face me obliquely, their profiles lifted towards the billboards above them, their eyes unfocused in the patented New York subway blank stare.

One man to my right connects with my gaze. Before I can smile, he looks away, his head gliding on well-greased gears. Another man looks away too as our eyes lock for a fraction of a second.

By the door that connects the trains there is a brief scuffle and two men push against each other. The pregnant woman looks up with her partner to see what’s happening. The two men are arguing. One is mid-thirties and the other man in his fifties, both with black knit hats on, the younger man with an iPod earphones tucked into his earflaps. 

“Don’t do that,” the older one says, eyes widening, voice taking on a threatening tone. 

“I’m not doing nothing,” the young man says. 

“That’s right, you’re not.” 

The young man looks away and stares past the older man. The older man looks back towards me.  

I look away. I’m a scientist but I’m not stupid. I write down my observations in a wild chicken scratch because the train is going under the East River and that’s always a bumpy ride.

Then I cap my pen, turn up the volume on my iPod and let a blank stare come over my face as I ponder the data and just what it all means.

[orig. run date March 6]

Smile Study Part II

I walk to the train after dropping my son off at school, the snow forcing me to look down. Everyone has their head down against the wind. I keep my iPod off, not wanting to be distracted from my observation, and too cold to take my gloves off and put the damn things in my ears.

I almost fall twice on patches of ice but maintain most of my dignity by throwing my arms out to the sides and wind-milling until I find my balance. 

Down in the underground at 74th Street beneath Roosevelt [Editor’s Note: I think that’s like Queens or something}, I unravel my scarf and prepare myself mentally for round two of the Smile Study.

“Eye contact, smile, look away. Eye contact, smile, look away,” I repeat to myself.

The double doors in front of me only have one side that opens.  

“Nice,” a man mumbles as we push through the small entrance, some of us squeezing through sideways because it’s already a filled car. 

As I enter I smile at the first two faces that present themselves–two women, and they both smile back before they look away. It’s as if they surprised themselves that they smiled or were betrayed by their own facial muscles.

You can’t stop human nature. My spirits rise. 

There are 32 people in my third of the car. Seven are using iPods or similar devices, one is reading a rock magazine that I can’t read the title of because my eyesight is going. One reads a paper folded in quarters while another uses a paper as a backing for a typed report. Two have books open, and the four people sitting below me all have their eyes closed.

A couple to my side is talking, too low for me to hear. A man, two feet to my left, the steel bar splitting his image in two, looks past me. I stare at him for a moment, then feel the tension as he realizes I am looking at him, and look away. I force myself to make eye contact again. He blinks a few times then stares past me.

I search for someone else. I never realized how difficult it is to make eye contact with someone. Holding another’s gaze makes me feel highly …. vulnerable. I swallow. Duty calls. 

Right in front of me a poster of a woman reading a book too close to an oncoming train reads, “Vive siempre al borde del peligro?” Do you live on the edge of danger? I take deep breaths, then scan 360 degrees and meet nothing but the backs of heads and blank stares. 

I check my watch. It’s 8:48 a.m. 

I decide to expand the search and look to the middle third of the car. A woman standing in profile makes eye contact for a fraction of a second then looks at a poster above her head. There was definite contact before she looked away. It’s as if she can feel me trying to watch her. Her posture shifts slightly. Her stare is not blank and oblivious, but focused–and not focused on me. I look away. It’s too much like I’m a stalker, and that would be bad, even in the name of science. 

I notice movement below and look down to see flickering eyes from a seated woman. She must have looked up and seen me looking over her head. Perhaps she thought I was looking at her. When I look down she goes carefully back to her paper. She has on a black knit hat with ear muffs that make her head gear look like a World War I fighter pilot. She’s reading an article called Study: Atkins Beats Other Diets. She looks up into my eyes, turns her chin up as I smile. Her gaze pushes mine away. I can’t hold the space.

A man in the middle of the car catches my gaze over the heads of a dozen other people. We lock eyes, then both look down. I noticed my hands are clenching my pad and pen tightly.

We stop in Manhattan and the car starts to clear out.  

I look up to see a man staring at me and I look down quickly. Why is he looking at me? Then, remembering that I am the researcher, I force myself to look back at him. Eye contact, smile, look away. He smiles out of the corner of his mouth and I again, look away. What’s happening to me? I’ve been thrown off my game.

I look to my right and another man is staring at me. We both look away. I can’t seem to stop myself. It’s an unexpected reversal. I take a deep three-part breath and steady myself. I’m simply out of energy, tapped out of eye contact capacity. I turn to face the subway doors and watch the darkness pass, gather my forces and turn around. The car is almost empty, the men gone.

The 23rd Street station appears and I get off, my notebook in my bag filled with scribbled notes. Straphangers crowd the turnstiles and we head up the stairs into the snow I’d left behind in Queens. All I see are the backs of wool coats and boots.

I keep my gaze down, relieved not to have to make eye contact with anyone and not to have to smile at all.

–Joe Lunievicz