This past Monday morning at about 6:45 a.m. I was walking down into the Dundas West station (and mentally trying to brainstorm ways to meet a man) when I saw a cute guy also walking towards the staircase.

I looked at him, he glanced my way, I looked away again. I walked down into the subway platform area. He walked by me (being quite tall and so a faster walker) and I gave him a half-smile, which he returned.

When the crowded subway car arrived I got onto the same car as he and stood about four feet away, surreptitiously checking him out. Cute guy was cute in a rugged, tanned, roughly dressed, kind of way. Cute guy was tall and lean. Cute guy looked a little older than me, maybe 36 or 37. Cute guy was not wearing a wedding ring.

My inner monologue was something along the lines of “hmm, he’s cute, but he’s not interested, they never are, why do I never meet anyone, WHY did I pick this morning to go without makeup, WHY did I wear this orange tam today when it’s the kind of thing that women find cute and fun and men think is stupid looking, oh well, he’s not that cute, hey he’s looking at me again…”

A seat became free and I sat down. The seat beside mine became free and after that token pause especially polite people always observe to see if a pregnant-with-quints woman or ninety-year-old double amputee will take it, cute guy came and sat down beside me, and smiled warmly at me as he did so.

I smiled back. He took out a book. I took out my knitting. We kept exchanging smiles. He said my knitting was nice. I said thanks. His book seemed to be about philosophy, but he wasn’t really reading, just flipping pages. More knitting and page flipping and exchanged smiles, and finally I thought, to hell with this, and came up with some sort of conversational gambit, which I don’t remember but which worked. We started talking about knitting and kinds of yarn and things to do on the TTC and working with your hands. Cute guy asked me if I’d made my hat and scarf. I said yes. I said knitting was a nice activity for commuting. Cute guy said he meditates on the cars, and later that he’s done a few things but right now he works in construction.

It was going well but we were almost at Yonge station. I was dying inside because I really wanted to give the guy an email address but it was just too soon and there wasn’t going to be enough time. I said Yonge was my stop, and to my complete and utter joy it was cute guy’s as well. So we ducked into the nearest bathroom and I did cute guy like a crazed she-weasel.

Okay, to be strictly accurate, I didn’t. Just wanted to be sure you were all paying attention.

What actually happened was that we walked upstairs together and got on the northbound train, still chatting amiably. Cute guy just moved to Roncesvalles in December and loves the area. We compared notes on it and on the Junction. Somehow it came up that cute guy has studied philosophy.

Then cute guy told me his name was “Ewan”, asked me my name, and gave me a bone-crushing handshake. He told me his stop was at Lawrence. Between Eglinton and Lawrence I inwardly debated giving him my business card, and finally at the last moment whipped one out and said if he wanted to email me, perhaps we could go for a beverage sometime. Ewan said, “I will!”, gave me another bone-crushing handshake, and left the train.

Of course there was no guarantee that he would, but I was so elated just by mere incident that I grinned to myself like an idiot all the rest of the way to Sheppard station, while the middle-aged woman sitting to my left watched me grinning and knitting with a bleared and jaundiced eye.

I figured the window for Ewan to contact me was about five days, so that if I hadn’t heard from him by Friday I wasn’t going to. The week passed.

On Friday I came into work and found that I had a message on my phone. I nearly fell off my chair when it turned out that the message was from Ewan as I had given up hope. Perhaps he was merely waiting until Valentine’s Day was over as any sensible guy would do.

However.

He wanted to thank me for giving me the card and for my invitation, as it was a “huge compliment” that he really appreciated (at this point I could just feel that “but” coming) but (what did I tell you) he was going to have to decline for now because he had a lot going on in his life at present, and wanted to keep things simple and isn’t dating right now. However, he is “keeping in touch with the good people”, and I’m welcome to email or call if I get a chance, and to that end he left both his email address and phone number before wishing me a good week and happy knitting.

It most likley won’t go anywhere. In my experience people don’t turn down someone who really interests them, and don’t develop sufficient interest in the person later on. But in an abstract, state-of-the-universe sort of way, I really really like that Ewan not only kept his word about contacting me but took the extra step of giving me his contact info. I like that he was just as nice as he seemed to be.

And I’m going to send him an email if I can figure out what his service provider is. It sounded like “diev.ca”. Does anyone know what that could be? It’s not aol, rogers, primers, gmail, or anything else I can think of.

Hmmm...that strikes me as really weird, OS. I'm sure it strikes you strangely, too. Maybe I just haven't dated enough. However, I've always dreamed of chatting up cute guys on public transportation, but it hasn't happened to me yet.

Not sure about the mail addy, but happy new year, it sounds like a turn for the better.
Even if it doesn't turn out to be anything expected, he could be fun and lead to other little serendipities, like new places and new people... definitely a good thing.
For some reason i first thought of deva or other spiritual imagery, but didn't pull up anything on an easy search.

I met a girl on a bus once, chatted her up on the basis of a button she was wearing and we ended up going out for a while, though in the end she wasn't really for me, nor vice versa. Stunning but lived in a very different world and not one I was interested in. The funny thing was, on our first time out, she told me that one of the reasons she'd been looking my way and smiling was because the woman on the other side of me had been looking at me sidelong and kind of holding her hands out in front of her to show the lack of a wedding ring, and she (girl I went out with) thought it and my clear obliviousness to it was funny. I probably should have ridden that particular bus more often.

The last time i was on a subway was in DC on the metro, and there was a particularly attractive fellow on with me. We smiled and made small talk for all of one stop, which can be very fast on the metro. i was still smiling when another man came on the car and he decided i was smiling at him and sat across from me making bizarre back and forth hand signals at me, as well as strange kissy face expressions and unexplainable eyeball rotations. i think it broke down to "you and me get off this train and go" whatever. Anyway, i endured this for three more stops and everyone on the car gave me sympathy eyes and felt badly for me. One old lady even patted me on the shoulder as i finally got off.

Orange Swan, shame about the ending, but I really enjoyed reading that. Thanks for sharing.

This story was all over the free Metro paper a few weeks ago. I have to say, by about Day 4 it was getting very old and tedious, and by the time the date was reported I was just about ready to throw up at the next mention of the pair of them.

If the plot had taken a different turn, this could have been a really great meet-cute story. :)

I rode the subway from York Mills to North York Centre for a meeting once and caught the eye of a guy who, unbeknownst to me, ended up getting off after me. I remembered him from the train, our eyes met for a split second as I scanned the car to see who from my office was on the train - apparently it was enough of a connection for him to follow me out the building and introduce himself. This would have been my meet-cute story if I had been remotely interested, but I wasn't, so I declined the business card and walked on.

i have a sadly abruptly ended got hunted down by repeatedly missed connection story i might repeat but for now, the sun will always shine...

I think I saw the 'they had a date' edition of that Metro saga, essexjan. Struck me as weird.

First, I don't get how one can be so interested in someone just because of the way they look, having never spoken to them. Physically attracted, yes, but romantically interested enough to want to hunt them down? Don't get it.

Second, can you imagine this happening if it was a guy saying, 'I took a picture of a fit woman on the train, please help me find her!'? Obviously creepy. But the other way around, not so creepy, apparently.

Maybe it's just me but I don't really see the ending as a bad thing. There's no telling why Ewan, unless he fills us ..er.. Orange Swan in on the details, has decided to not date at the moment. I'd keep my options open, email back and forth, meet up for a museum show or similar. Sounds pretty open ended to me, but then, I've never really dated and could be reading the whole thing wrong.

Second, can you imagine this happening if it was a guy saying, 'I took a picture of a fit woman on the train, please help me find her!'?

Yeah but that would be more difficult because it'd be an upskirt picture.

This is that attitudes thing I was hinting at.

There is that lower incidence of women being violent criminals, rapist and serial killers.

Sure, but separate from the whole personal safety thing, it's just a bit creepy, isn't it? No? I obviously have no romance.

Hey, I actually have another subway meeting story that's better than this one.

A male friend of a friend used to see a woman on the subway every morning. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen, and that he was falling in love with her. But he couldn't get up the courage to approach her. He was afraid she would just think he was some wierdo.

The one day he was at a friend's place and he saw a picture of the woman on his friend's wall. He said, "Hey, do you know this woman?!" and his friend said, "Yes, that's my friend Renee."

The guy told his friend about seeing Renee on the subway every morning and said, "Man, it's fate. You have to set me up with her."

Renee was just out of a bad relationship and was in that "I will never date or love again" phase. Her friends had hard work to convince her to go out just once with this guy, but finally they coaxed her into it. Renee met the guy, it went well, and they started going out.

The guy proposed to Renee after they'd been dating for three months, they got married less than a year after they met, and now they have a baby.

You're right in that there is the possibility of something happening, Deborah, it's just that it's not likely.

Ewan did leave me his contact information. Calling me to say thanks but no thanks would have been a polite blow-off; leaving his contact info is going the extra mile into sincerely-want-to-leave-the-option-open land.

So... I'll consider the option as open. Without counting on it or ceasing in my efforts to meet someone else.

No, reason to bank hope on one brief meeting with a guy. Let's not go to fairy tale delusion land.

Here's my afore mentioned story but it's not quite a train story:
While living in Denver, i use to go around this area downtown that has a tram running the Mall which is a strip of stores and office buildings. At one end of it was a little area of card shops and an Au Bon Pain, little boutiques you wonder about who possibly keeps them running, etc. and this guy worked as a lawyer in one of the office building that had a window view down. He apparently saw me walking around and once ran out to see if he could have a chance meeting with me. He ran out and walked towards the tram which is where i was headed and as he step onto the departing tram, i cut in front of it to cross the street.
A couple weeks later, he walked up to me at the bank and introduced himself.
Now this was all very weird and a lot of stuff was going on i'm not going to talk about, but he looked like that guy who's name i can't remember, was in Summer School and Moonlighting and i think is on some navy lawyer show, except he had one blue eye and one brown eye, like David Bowie only naturally born with it.
He hurriedly introduces himself and i walk with him while he tells me this story and so i give him my number except i tell him not to call for a few weeks as i'm leaving town in a couple days and a bunch of stuff is going on that i didn't tell him and i'm not telling you right now.
Anyway, he calls that night and it's an odd situation not involving him but we have a long talk and he's nice enough and interesting and definitely very game.
Unfortunately that is all i know as i ended up splitting town in a very messed up situation (raving crackheads and the local air force are somewhat involved) but i unbeknownst to me, the utilities i canceled got turned back on and i was charged thousands of dollars i only found out about from bill collectors.
So i have no idea what happened to him, especially if he called back at any point. i never had his number and i right now don't even remember his name.
This is not very unusual in the course of my life.

Sorry if i told that before, but that pretty much sums up a lot of criminally bad timing, luck, mixed up messages and circumstances that happen to be my life.

Great story, OrangeSwan, but I have to admit it took me several minutes to continue reading after the "crazed she-weasel" part. I was laughing just too much.
I once went to visit my best friend and her husband in Ogden, Utah the summer I turned 19. On my last there, she and I were driving back from a lake when I caught the eye of a guy in a little convertible. So we started vehiclular flirting, and eventually my friend pulled into a parking lot. He followed. We chatted for about half an hour, and he asked if I'd like to go to the movies that night. (my flight was in the afternoon the next day). I said yes, but he never called. I found out when I got home to New Jersey that my friend's phone was out of order, and that he tried to call but couldn't. (I'd given him my home address and number, too.)
Would you know, a week later, he called me from Newark airport!!!!!!! He'd flown across country to see me, but this really freaked me out. I did actually pick him up (i didn't know what else to do), and he stayed nearby. He even installed a nice stereo in my crappy car. He stayed three days, then my family and I were going to Maine for my grandparent's 50th anniversary and we dropped him at a different part of the airport on our way. We corresponded a bit after that, but he wanted to settle down and get married (he was 23) and I was over him by that point. Still, it's a huge ego boost that a chance encounter led a guy to cross the country for me.

To the possible creepiness of it all, the last time i read the SF craigslist missed connections (which was probably the last time anyone link to them) i started randomly reading through them and found two ads of two men who had stiffly overwritten ads for some "Asian Goddess" they had seen in their local wandering. My favorite part was that there was a third listing from someone who told them both to "leave those poor girls alone! That poor woman probably has to get her coffee at a whole new starbucks because of you!"
with the missed connection thing, at least you don't have to respond, and that guy in the metro didn't have to respond, but he did get a free trip out of it.

Persistence is called wooing and sticking it out when it's not unwanted. Persistence when it's known to be unwanted is stalking.

A lot of great stories start with someone who wouldn't take no for an answer, same for a lot of really terrible stories start.
It's not a fine line, though, unless you have really bad vision.