a 1950s New York love story

The first time I saw her we were at some low grade bar.

Between whispers of smokes and silouhettes, the humidity bore down on us and clung to our shirt sleeves and collars. A large window captured the patchwork sky outside almost like a painting. I stood at the side with my hands in my pockets and watched as couples slow danced to the jazz band. Their hands moulded together and heads resting on each other, men’s noses in their partners’ silky hair and accordion smiles etched on their faces.

And in the midst of it all, there she was. She certainly hadn’t been the prettiest creature on the dance floor with her almond eyes and protruding collarbones. Her hair was cropped short into a bob that framed her face in an unflattering manner. I’m sure some other fella thought she was pretty. A fella who might’ve likened her almond eyes to that of some exotic actress and her collarbones as the perfect vessel to house his lips. Some fella might’ve taken one look at her black bob and declared her to be so different from the faces of Monroe or Hepburn that she was unparalleled in that sense. No, she was not pretty to me but she was something to look at.

Not a moment later she met my eyes. I suspect she had been watching me watching her for too long. She made her way towards me, slipping past the people who were still dancing to a tune that everybody seemed to know except for me. My fingers curled and uncurled inside the pockets of my trousers and if I hadn’t been so nervous for what was to come I would’ve scoffed at her confidence.

She stopped when she was close enough and took out a box of Marlboro from her tattered purse which hung limply at her side. ‘Got a light?’ she asked. I restrained myself from raising an eyebrow and pulled out a lighter as she requested. Her eyes held mine as she lit it up and breathed it in and maybe it was because she was closer now than before but only then had I felt as if I was actually looking at her. Pink lips wrapped around a cigarette- probably cheap lipstick. Black strands of hair that framed her too pale face and a pastel silk dress that hung off her too thin frame. Her shoulders and elbows stuck out in a way that told me she wasn’t eating enough. Her eyes were smudged with some cheap mascara and she had sprayed some kind of cheap perfume all over herself. And yet I looked at her.

I looked at the way she fingered her necklace and saw how it was probably given to her by some relative that was endeared to her. I looked at the way her hair seemed uneven at the ends and saw her fiddling with some silver scissors in front of a bathroom mirror because she couldn’t be bothered to go to a salon. I looked at the way her fingers were fragile and her eyes were deep set and saw her putting aside her share of bread for her younger brother or sister. I looked at the cheap cosmetics she had applied for tonight’s escapade and saw how she was just another girl wanting to have fun, wanting to find love and be loved and love as much as she can. Just another girl who wanted to beautiful so much so she could look in the mirror and glitter with pride or have some random man warm her cold hands with his lips. A man who would tip his hat to her, who would call her beautiful and hold open doors for her.

All of a sudden I regretted doing what I did; judging her from afar and even up close. When I watched her sway awkwardly on the dance floor, shouldn’t I have been the gentleman who would grab her around her waist and spin her gently the way she wanted to be spun. When I saw her grab a drink from the bar, shouldn’t I have been the gentleman who would’ve gone to sit next to her and say ‘This drinks on me.’ Shouldn’t I have toasted to her beauty, to her courage, to her desire to be loved, to her eyes which glimmered against a velvet sky, to her arms which were as able to wrap around the waist of any man as anyone, to her heart which longed to know love.

And in that moment I knew. If there was anybody who had ever taken my breath away at the first sight, it would be her. Cheap perfume, too thin body, and pink lips and all. At that very moment in my life, love was captured in the form of this girl in some dimly lit, smoke filled bar in New York, 1950.