Two African men on the shuttle train from Prospect Park. They’re in their forties, dressed nearly identically in long, button-up shirts, khakis and African caps. I can’t tell what language they’re speaking, but their body language is animated and evocative (one seems to be trying to explain something or make a point which the other doesn’t grasp or accept, and this results in exasperated eye-rolls, emphatic pointing and gesticulating). Despite this apparent difference of opinion, there’s a certain tenderness to their gestures, their expressions, their vocal registers, something subtle but nonetheless distinctly warm in the way they engage each other, touching each other on the shoulder every so often as if to ground the dialogue in haptic connection. This demonstrative, affectionate form friendship is, I realize, completely alien to me.