The other day, on the subway, I overheard a conversation between a scruffy man leaning on a walker and two attractive young men who appeared to be brothers. (It was actually more “maniacal monologue” than “conversation,” and it was of sufficient volume for me to have overheard without leaving my apartment, but I like to paint these encounters with as civilized a brush as possible.)

What got my attention was when the scruffy man declared, “Everyone knows that it a guy’s got big feet, he’s got a big thing. I mean, in the changing room or something, you can’t help looking around and being, like, whoa! So now I can pretty much tell if a guy’s got a big thing. You just gotta look at his feet and then look him in the eye. And if he meets your eye, you know, yep.”

The young men to whom he was speaking nodded sagely at this point. I wondered if they even spoke English (they looked German), or if they were just trying to meet his eye to influence his evaluation.

The conversation (or maniacal monologue, if you prefer) shifted then to travel. The scruffy man had apparently been to the Bahamas and Miami, locales that, if one puts any credence in his report, featured beautiful women forming lines to service him in a particular way, one after another.

The woman sitting across from me on the subway bit her palm to keep from laughing.

At Forty-second Street, the three men departed the train. On the subway platform, the young men thanked their scruffy companion for the insightful discussion. For me, this was the best part of the encounter: they were serious, and the scruffy man knew it. He received the appreciation with a regal inclination of his head, as if he were a tribal elder imparting great wisdom to the next generation. Then they were out of sight as the train departed and everyone remaining in the car furtively met each other’s laughing eyes, a thin crack in the veneer of New York indifference.