Art Subject & Dentist Appointment

There are insignificant - if not inane - things that really make me feel like a New Yorker, like walking to work in a black 3/4-length wool coat and stilettos or going to a Manhattan dentist - which I did today for the first time.

Last week, a colleague sent a mass email to our division recommending a dentist in Chelsea. I had never seen an email regarding dentistry sprinkled with smiley faces and consecutive exclamation points so I decided to take her referral. I had been inactively seeking a dentist anyway and Dr. Emily Ro, D.D.S. takes our company's insurance ... and she's on the West Side. Plus, per my colleague's email, "you get to watch movies during your sessions and she has a mouth camera that shows you what she's doing [exclamation point, exclamation point, exclamation point, smiley face]".

Later during my evening commute, I noticed that someone was drawing me on the subway. I had showered after my cardio kickboxing class at the gym and was back in my corporate attire, but my waist-length hair was pulled into a sweaty knot on top of my head so perhaps my messy geisha look made for an interesting art subject. As I sat down on an uptown 3 train, I noticed the man across from me flipping to a blank sheet in his sketch book. Less than a minute later, I realized he was drawing me. I pretended not to notice since I didn't know how to react or if I should react at all.

As I stared blankly at the floor, I could see him in my peripheral vision, looking up at me briskly and back down at his book. This went on from 42nd Street to 72nd, where he exited the train and rearranged his art supplies in his backpack on the subway platform. I had wanted to peek at his drawing, but didn't feel like inviting any subsequent conversation. So somewhere out there in New York City is a sketch of me that someone drew within two stops on an uptown express train, which I pretended not to know about.