Saw a couple of French girls on the West 4th platform —hell, I'm looking at them now. I could only hear them, behind me, as I walked down the stairs. Had my usual sad fantasy that they'd talk about me mockingly, that I'd turn around and say something back, that they'd gasp and apologize, I'd roll my eyes, etcetera, etcetera, a vain and pitiful train of thought if there ever was one, and of course they didn't say anything and why should they give a fuck and who really does anyway.
I let them pass me and had a look at them. Young. Attractive. One had a scribbly little tattoo on the back of her thigh, right below her short shorts. For a moment I wondered what the hell it could possibly say in French there, right by her ass, and immediately I realized: of course it's not French. It can't be French. It's English. American English.
Because American English is the language of tattoos.
I got up close enough to read it and here's what it said:
If you stand for nothing
You'll fall for anything