I know I probably sound crazy. And honestly, I really did know that wearing a Superman suit wouldn’t make bullets bounce off of me. It’s just that I wanted to feel like that for a little while, even if it wasn’t real. I just felt so terrible that I felt I had to try something, no matter how nutty, to make myself feel better. Anyway, it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time, so I did it.
When he fell silent, I decided I needed to change gears. “Okay, so how did you get your costume?”
He brightened up. “Between my apartment and my subway stop there’s a little tailoring shop. It’s run by a wonderful old seamstress named Golda Mermelstein. Anyway, on my way home I stopped in and told her what I wanted. She listened to me silently while I described what I was looking for, then pulled out her tape and began to take my measurements as though what I’d asked for was an every-day occurrence. “You should come back in a week,” she said in her thick Yiddish accent. And that’s how I got my costume,” he concluded. “She did an amazing job.”
He stood up and turned around so I could admire Mrs. Mermelstein’s handiwork, and I realized that my initial impression had been correct: Alex really was pretty fit. The stretchy material clung tightly to him, and I took a minute to admire the workmanship.
He coughed politely, and I realized I’d been staring too long. I quickly grabbed my pad and looked at the notes I’d prepared. “Why don’t you tell me about the first time you wore the suit?” I asked.
He sat back down. “The next Saturday was when I decided to wear it out for the first time. It was the scariest night of my life.”
He grinned at me suddenly. “It wasn’t easy to get into it the first time, you know. I have a new sympathy for women who wear pantyhose. But anyway, it felt pretty good once I got it on, kind of like athletic wear. Besides, I told myself, it would take forever to get out of it again so I might as well go with it.”
As I walked to the subway, I noticed a number of people staring at me, but nobody said anything. I guess people in New York are used to seeing odd-looking people walking down the street. But I did notice that when I went down to wait on the subway platform, the people around me all edged away.
The same thing happened when I got in the subway car: nobody would sit near me or look at me. But after a while I noticed a little girl maybe six years old, riding with her mother. She was staring at me, and all of a sudden she came running over and asked, “Are you Superman?”
I saw her mother start to panic and I didn’t want to scare her so I kept my arms by my side and smiled at the little girl. “No,” I told her, “I just like to dress up like Superman sometimes.” Then, before her mother could grab her away from me, I asked, “Do you like to play dress-up?”
The little girl looked at me solemnly. “Oh yes, but I like to dress up like a princess.” With that, she raised her hands over her head and twirled like a ballerina. I smiled again and began to ask her about being a princess. Her mother watched me closely, but I could see some of the tension relax in her face. I also noticed some of the other passengers watching us, and I even caught a smile or two from them.