his red thatch

I took the subway home very early in the morning after working a night shift. I sat down in an almost empty car. A heavy set man walked on. I barely noticed him at first, but he came and sat directly across from me even though there were a million places to sit. He was a redhead and, I couldn't help but notice, had a thatch of chest hair to match bursting out the top of his shirt. It was so thick it looked like a full head of hair. Wincing, I looked away. Too much stimulous.

A few moments later I looked up to find him staring at me. He held my gaze unselfconsciously, which made me uncomfortable, and then looked back down at the pad of paper he was holding. He was writing something with a sharpy marker, He looked up again a second later and then down to his pad. He kept doing this and I tried to ignore him. And then it hit me. This guy was DRAWING me. I glared at him, but he just continued to draw, looking at me and down at his pad, looking at me and down at his pad, over and over. He didn't care that I knew he was doing it. It infuriated me that he was being so unabashedly creepy. I didn't know what to do. Should I get up and move to the next train? I didn't really have the balls to do it for some reason, Part of me felt sorry for him, so I did the least assertive think I could thing of. I dropped my head pretending to nod off in a position I knew he wouldn't be able to see my face, which worked. Almost right away he got up and moved to sit by an Asian lady, the only other person on the train. He immediately got to work on a drawing of his new subject.

A couple of stops later as I was waiting at the door for the train to pull into my stop I had a direct view of the man's pad of paper. He was partway through his drawing of an ELEPHANT. Like a kid would draw! I mean seriously, was that really what he was seeing in this poor lady? I was dying to ask him to show me my portrait.