A Night in the Subway
I talk a lot about my experiences on the subway these days. Most New Yorkers do. In a city that is designed to accommodate as many people as possible while making sure that they never have to acknowledge each other’s existence, it’s only the people who shout louder than our earbuds that we have in common. And in a city with far more disposable income than cars, weirdos on the subway are so inevitable and so full of color that even the most humdrum, introverted lifestyle seems active and vibrant when viewed under the flickering flourescent light of the MTA. Not a day goes by that you don’t see at least one busker, fist fight, arrest, or self-pleasuring Japanese clown. And try as you might, you can’t ignore all of them.
And every once in a while, you have a single ride that nicely sums up the entire commuting experience. I was coming home from Harlem the other day when I had such good fortune, as a treasure trove of oddity paraded itself in front of me.
The first entrant was a homeless man trawling the cars for donations. But not to be confused with a simple beggar or the shameful indignity of a traveling hipster with a ukelele, he came equipped with a most unique approach to panhandling: he was the city’s first homeless stand-up comedian. His act was short, probably spanning about five minutes, but it was all on the theme of living below the poverty line. “This is my home,” he’d proudly declare, “a ten-car condominium. So pick up after yourselves when you leave, I’ve got company coming over tomorrow!” Not all of his punchlines were so easily comprehensible, though. He offered the following explanation for his current circumstance: “I had to leave home, with a wife like mine. She weighed 349 pounds…and that was on the weekend!”When his act was finished, he thanked the captive audience, collected a few coins, and proceeded on with his evening, only to be replaced by someone with an equally unique approach, even if not an equally compelling one. An elderly black man with a coffee cup full of change got on and asked, “What is this, the A train? Man, all the ugly motherfuckers get on the A train!” It seemed that we’d traded Jerry Seinfeld for Don Rickles.
I transferred to the E train at 59th Street to complete my voyage home. If anyone else finds themselves on an E train late at night, here’s an interesting game to while away the trip to Queens: scan the car, and carefully examine all your fellow passengers. Size them up, try to extrapolate their life stories and personalities as best you can. Then try to guess which one of them the smell is coming from. If you happen to be in the same car as an obviously intoxicated burn victim, the game won’t get you to the East River, so it’s good to have backup plans for distraction.
On this particular evening, I didn’t have to worry, as one was quickly provided in the form of the worst flute rendition of Hey Jude I’ve ever heard, performed by a man who hadn’t learned the most basic subway performer’s rule that if you’re playing a two-handed instrument, you should find something to lean on so you don’t fall over in the spotlight.
As he staggered towards the far end of the car, my eye began driftin over the shoulder of the woman sitting next to me. She was reading a Kindle with what seemed to be unusually large print for someone under eighty and with no corrective lenses. I have exceptionally bad eyes. But with contacts, I can still read print smaller than a billboard, and I tend to assume that if you can afford an e-reader, you can also afford a cheap pair of glasses. But nonetheless, this woman had opted to read her book with text so large that the average sentence couldn’t fit on a single page, and the unmistakably large characters kept drawing me back like a moth to a poorly spell-checked flame. The plot, as best as I could gather, revolved around a woman named Eboni, who seemed to be having some troubles with arson. I can’t say the plot was riveting, but it was better than staring at a business man’s crotch (my alternate means for entertainment), so I checked in every few pages to see how our protagonist was doing. Needless to say, I was a bit surprised when my eyes wandered over and read that a new character had been introduced into the narrative, and “he pushed his saliva coated head into her quivering mound of…”As the implications of large-print pornography started to sink in, the doors opened and I was home. I left the train and ascended to the surface world, where I couldn’t help but hope that the homeless comedian would soon get his much deserved Letterman spot, the flutist would make it off the train without chipping a tooth, and Eboni had found true love. She deserved it, after all she’d been through.
-TC