I usually go to my office by bus. It runs along Massachusetts Avenue, one of the main arteries connecting Cambridge and Boston. Despite the decline in the quality of service, the ride often provides a welcome interlude and a time to think about irrelevant things. As I was stepping out of the bus this afternoon, my gaze fixed on the pavement, I saw a long red skirt fly up in front of me, exposing a pair of tanned legs. The subway, I thought, while the Red Line thundered underneath. I looked up and saw a young woman I had recently met at a party, where she had shown a couple of her short movies to a small group of friends. If I am not mistaken, she studies cinema at a local university. Our trajectories crossed, and as she moved sideways and backwards from the subway ventilation grill, pressing her skirt down with her hands and squeezing her legs together, she looked at me with a smile of embarrassment and delight, and exclaimed: “Isn’t this unbelievable?” It indeed was. Both of us thought of Marilyn Monroe and the fact that it was exactly twenty years since her suicide. I smiled, stalled, and uttered a friendly “Hi.” But she presently assumed a sober expression, continued walking past me, and added a couple of brisk words to shake me off: “Oh, forget it—I don’t want to talk about it!” I made a few steps by her side, because I was going in the same direction, but before long I finally realized that she had not recognized me. Thus I first slowed down, let her gain some distance, and then decided to take the first perpendicular street. I was afraid that she could misunderstand my apparently following her after this innocent incident. Cambridge is full of lunatics… And I walked home slowly and awkwardly, wondering whether she would have recognized me had the memory of Marilyn not intervened so directly.

Addendum (March 1, 1995)

Ma peur, quand je marche derrière une femme, qu’elle s’imagine que je la suis.

From Jules Renard’s Journal: 1906-1910, Tome IV, Paris: Union Générale d’Éditions, 1984 , 1093.