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  Diary:
Ellia Bisker

 

Thursday May 26, 2006 2:30 p.m., 7 platform, Times Square

 

I was running to get on the 7 train when my right shoe slipped off of my foot and shot ahead of me, flipping over and over in what seemed like slow motion until it reached the edge of the platform in front of the open door of the train, teetering for a moment on the edge, and then silently dropping into the dark narrow gap, down onto the tracks below. There I stood, one foot bare, mouth gaping, totally stunned. My shoe! What was I going to do? "I liked those shoes!" was my first thought. "I wonder if they're still selling those at the store where I got them, could I replace them?" was my second thought. My third thought was to simply get on the train, abandoning my shoe to the ridiculous hand of fate. Luckily that was the moment when the train driver walked by, a tall dreadlocked guy in an orange vest. There was nothing to explain, considering that I was half barefoot and staring slack-jawed into the gap in front of the train door. "You just have to wait till the train pulls out," he said. This happened at Times Square, you see, which is the end of the 7 line, so the trains sit in the station for a while before they go anywhere. "I'll tell them in the office. Someone's getting something for someone else down at the other end of the platform."  Sure enough, the train rolled out (not, I hoped, over my poor shoe) and a few seconds later a woman popped out of the office, looked at my foot, and disappeared back into the office. A man emerged next, a scraggly rangy unhealthy looking guy who followed me to the platform edge, where I pointed, babbling a little nervously, to my shoe, nearby which an alarmingly large and unfazed rat crawled over the rail. "I can't believe that happened!" I said. "Thanks so much! I guess this happens all the time, huh?" He didn't say anything, just put on a pair of gloves and swung himself down onto the tracks. He deposited the shoe back on the platform and I stepped into it like a sheepish Cinderella, and then he hauled himself back up, lying flat on the edge of the platform and struggling with visible effort to swing his lower body up. My impulse was to offer him a hand but he didn't look at me, just doing his job, and then he made his way down to the other end to get the other person's shoe or whatever they were foolish enough to let escape from them. I got on the train across the platform and waited for it to depart, laughing out loud to myself softly. This must have made me look like a subway expert of some kind instead a crazy person, though, because in short order two people asked me if the train went to Grand Central (it did; two stops, I added) and if it was a local (it was; see, the circle means it's local, I explained). Then the doors closed and I made my way back to Brooklyn with a dirty foot, a rescued shoe, and a silly smile on my face.

 

Friday, April 21, 2006, Greenpoint Avenue G stop


On the subway stairs at the Greenpoint Avenue stop, someone has written the words "thank you" in spiky chalk letters so that they're visible just as you're walking up and out and about to emerge on the street. The words always take me by surprise, somehow, even though they catch my eye nearly every day. And it's a funny thing, because I never read them like they're being addressed at me, exactly; each time my eye is caught it's more like a reminder, the way your mother prompts you when you're a kid and someone has given you something: "What do you say?" A gentle admonishment to be grateful. Anyway, the words caught my eye tonight and I was.
 

Wednesday, Feburary 10, 2006, Queensbound G train


"They used to call me the Latin Rage. But now I'm just The Rage."
 

Wednesday, October 13, 2004, 6:00 p.m., downtown "F" train

 

Riding the subway, like pretty much any activity in the city, is a constant barrage of stimuli, which means you learn to screen most of it out if you want to survive and avoid madness.  Today, though, a moment breaks through my filter—a man on the car who has the booming tones of a practiced subway artist but doesn’t seem to be begging, in spite of his “have a blessed evening.”  His only pitch is to call out the names of the upcoming stations like a railroad conductor.  “Forty-second Street next, stand clear of the closing doors,” he announces.  “Thirty-fourth, Twenty-third, Fourteenth Street, West Fourth,” I put down my book to see if he will recite the "F" stations all the way into Brooklyn, but he concludes with “Broadway/Lafayette, Second Avenue, Delancey.”  I can’t help smiling, and a girl across the aisle catches my eye, also smiling.  We share an amused glance, and then at 42nd St. he announces all the transfers and which platforms they require, and then steps out of the car and the doors close.  Which is okay, because now we all know exactly where we’re going.

Thursday, September 23, 2004, 5:45 p.m., downtown "F" train, Rock Center to 14th Street

A young woman, pretty, in the prime of her life, gives up her seat to an old lady who is deep in conversation with another old lady.  They are both tiny and stylish, with sharp-featured faces that look as though they have grown to resemble each another over the years, and it is obvious that they have been friends for a long, long time.  I hope that my best friend and I will be lucky enough to spend so many decades in one other’s company.  I always like seeing old ladies in pairs like this; at the diner in our hometown there were two ancient ladies who often came in together, stooped, hunched, one nearly bald except for a gossamer cloud of fine white hair.  The subway ladies are like this, too, and it makes me glad that they still have so much to say to each other.  When they get off the train the young woman sits gracefully back down in her seat. 

Another woman catches my eye and my grudging admiration when she starts curling her eyelashes with one of those medieval torture device implements, with what appears to be a fat marker clenched in her teeth but turns out to be a tube of mascara, which she applies to the rhythm of the rocking train, the wand end perilously close to her eyeball.

 

Monday, September 20, 2004, uptown "2" train, Times Square to Pelham Parkway, 6:00 p.m.

Today I took the "2" train all the way up to the Bronx, which I'd never done before--my experience of the Bronx has been limited to (a) the zoo as a child, I’m guessing; (b) driving through it on my way down from Westchester to the city; and (c) drug runs in Chris H.'s car in high school (possibly with Dave Z. and Galicia? It's all so hazy . . . but clambaking in the car will do that, I suppose).  It was a surprisingly pleasant journey; the train goes up to an elevated track somewhere in upper Manhattan and you ride above all the buildings in the early evening light (sky still blue but it's starting to be autumn and you know in a few short weeks the light will be almost gone by this hour but for now you are content with your thin denim jacket and the blue blue sky all around you, so clear it looks like a hard candy in a flavor you couldn't possibly describe).

I was going up to the Bronx for love, of course.  Why else would I be speeding along in the completely opposite direction from home right after work on a Monday?  More specifically, I was going up there to buy a bike.  A guy who used to work with a friend of mine from college (i.e., I didn't think he'd sell me a lemon) was offering a good deal on his old bike.  My friend Audrey from work was going to buy this bike for her boyfriend Frank for his birthday but Frank decided he'd rather have the new Doom Patrol trade paperbacks (I can't fault him for that; I love Doom Patrol too), and so I decided to buy the
bike for Greg, who apparently used to be an avid bicyclist, as an early birthday present.  His birthday's January 3rd and that's a sucky time to ride a bike, but now!  Now the weather in New York is just becoming fall, the air a little crisp, so that you want to collect bright leaves off the ground (ideally at my elementary school, by the fence near the upper playground where the trees turned into a bright yellow tunnel every year) and sew them onto all your newly resurrected sweaters, or press apple cider in your living room, or at least ride a bike around town and feel good about breathing.   

So: the Bronx.  White Plains Road was bustling and the park was nearby and it was a pleasant walk to the comfortably run-down building where I bought the bike after some conversation with its owner, who was friendly but unwilling to bargain down from his asking price, too bad.  He was a geographer and urban planner and told me that in October there are tours of an old subway station in Brooklyn.  You get to climb down to it through a manhole in the middle of Court Street!  I’d heard about this before from Greg’s friend Tim (current owner of Greg’s former bike) so I knew it was true.  

I hauled the bike up all those subway steps and all the way home, watching the sky darken through the windows before we descended into the tunnels.  I felt very good.  Like I had passed another gauntlet in the process of becoming a real New Yorker, bringing a bike on the subway--I don't need a car for anything anymore.  Which is good because my brother has the car in Ohio and will probably keep it for the foreseeable future. 

There were various incidents on the train ride home—a man vigorously picking his nose, a boy placing small square advertisement cards all over the car, a woman selling toys and trinkets making an abrupt about-face on her way through the door at the end of the car when she caught sight of a transit cop on the other side.  A young man in a suit and suspenders with his hair slicked back like Eddie Munster, tying a silk tie.  A teenage couple, the boy with terrible acne, the girl in terrible jeans decorated with cut-out denim stars, his hand resting casually around her right breast, cupping it.  And a fight breaking out on a platform just as the train glided away down the track, people in the car craning their heads to get a glimpse before we slipped into the dark of the tunnel, everyone missing that story. 

 

Thursday, August 26, 2004

 

 

A fourth-hand subway story from Jen via Orly via Louisa:

 

Dead. Possibly.

 

This morning as I was sitting on the subway listening to the White Stripes and thinking of all the different ways I could defile Jack White, a ruckus broke out.

 

When I walked on I noticed a man (Homeless? Drunk? Really tired? Whatever) slumped over 3 seats sleeping. Not unusual or noteworthy. About 10 minutes into the ride I heard a loud THUMP and swiveled my head around along with 40 other people to see the formerly sleeping man now slumped face down on the train floor. Not moving. Like, at all.

 

Panic ensued as 40 New Yorkers tried to figure out a way of helping this person without having to touch him. By this point the train had come to a full stop in between stations and wasn’t budging. Everyone got out of their seats and crowded around the body talking fast and loud about WHAT THE FUCK TO DO. Finally an older Hasidic man took the initiative and declared he would perform CPR as the other 39 of us all thought the same thing: "ew."

 

The area was cleared, the body rolled over and the tension thickened. Just as he leaned down to start the kiss of life the body shuddered and yelled out, "MUTHAFUCKIN COCK WHORES.”

 

A collective sigh of relief was breathed as people shouted the news back to the other end of the train ("He said COCK! He’s OK!") and within seconds everyone assumed their usual commuter stance of annoyance while the not-dead man rolled around the ground laughing and loudly yelling "COCKS!"

 

Not one minute after nearly making out with a stranger to save his life the old Hasidic man sat down next to me and said, "I think I liked him better when he was maybe dead."

 

Wednesday, August 25, 2004, 5:45 p.m., downtown "F" platform

 

Here’s an important question: do subway rats ride the subways? Rats, as we all know, are frighteningly intelligent creatures (we’ve all seen/read The Secret of NIMH, yes?) that adapt to the most inhospitable circumstances with alarming ease.  It’s an easy leap to believe they could learn to use the Metropolitan Transit system to get around town. 

 

Today when I disembark from the "F" train and make my way toward the "L," my question is answered when I see a large rat scurrying along the platform with the flow of the crowd.  It starts up the stairs, and the people around it part like the red sea to give it as wide a berth as possible; the rat ignores them and pursues its path with single minded purpose. Clearly it has just gotten off the "F" with the rest of us, just another commuter going about its business, trying to get home after a long day. 

 

Wednesday, August 11, 2004, 9:45 a.m., Manhattan-bound L train

When I hear the woman yelling at Third Avenue, I think maybe we have a fight on our hands, and I crane my neck, trying to get a good view of it through the packed train.  But in fact the tight tone of her voice is reserved for the bunch of kids she’s herding onto the car.  Not that I can see them, mind you, invisible as they are in the forest of tall adults, but I can hear them giggling and then shrieking with joy as the subway lurches forward.  “Whoaaa!” they shout.  The adults throughout the car remain poker-faced and glum.  This really isn’t much like an amusement park ride for all of us working stiffs, but the kids’ excitement still puts me in a good mood by the time I have to jump off the train at Union Square and fly up the stairs to catch the next one.

Tuesday, August 10, 2004, 9:15 p.m., Brooklyn-bound L train

Ever so slightly drunk on the L train and everyone looks a little misshapen, freakish, bizarre.  A girl with a stud in her face below the lip and to the right like a forgotten silver crumb, asymmetrical faces reading Italo Calvino and Harlequin romances, the ride accelerated by my mental languor, my buckling knees.  Three drinks with my old boss a little too much on an empty stomach.  Time to go home and cook some pierogies and broccoli to soak it all up.

Wednesday, August 4, 2004, 9:35 a.m., Manhattan-bound L train

I’m late for work before I even step into the subway car, which is about par for the course lately.  It’s just been so hard to get out of bed these days, though once I’m up it’s not so bad (thanks to the magical elixir that is iced coffee, delivered to my system via the kindness and good cheer of the ladies at La Villita where I buy it every morning).  Today I probably would have been even later but my cat, god bless her, was hungry and kept coming in to my room to meow at me, kind of an auxiliary snooze alarm.  “Two minutes,” I told her at ten after eight and immediately collapsed back into the pillows.  At a quarter after she jumped onto the bed and bossed me upright and into the kitchen, where I mixed expensive vitamin powder into her food with the devotion of a mother.  I think I’ve officially crossed the line over into crazy cat lady land, a region I’ve been skirting for most of my life. 

 

There have been several good subway incidents since my last entry, but I’ve let them pass unremarked.  Laziness, I guess, or just an unwillingness while I’m riding to do anything but let my mind go mercifully blank, which I suppose is just another kind of laziness.  There was the F-and-G odyssey out to Coney Island for the Siren Festival with Greg and Tim, then the long tired ride home, sleeping with my sweatshirt hood up to shield me from the obnoxious people all around.  There was the guy last week on the packed morning L who with me and his girlfriend was one of the last to squeeze onto the car.  “We’re all family here,” I heard him say, trying to assuage his fellow riders’ anxiety.  “We’re all in the same boat.”  “Yeah, we are now,” I muttered under my breath, but then he laughed and I had to feel friendly in spite of myself.   

 

There was my long, long trip out of the way when I was just trying to get downtown to my Arts Management class last Saturday, then the endless announcements once I was well into Brooklyn about the R being rerouted (Yeah, thanks, MTA dude.  If you tell me one more time about how I can transfer at the previous stop, I will create a disturbance).  And taking the 7 (which I have only ever taken maybe twice before in my life) into Queens when the L into Brooklyn was stopped, feeling very cranky about it thanks to my uncomfortable blister-inducing shoes until I heard the music coming from the center of the platform, a Chinese woman accompanied by a man on a keyboard slightly more sophisticated than my childhood Casio.  The woman was playing a stringed instrument like a lute that I don’t know the name of—it had a round belly and four tuning pegs, and the frets were really deep so that every note that came out of it was bent, and she used all of her fingernails to pick out the melody, if you can even call it a melody.  It was so haunting and strange that I dropped a dollar bill into her case and was almost sorry when the train finally came. 

 

But my favorite was the guy last Friday night who was explaining what he was reading in the Daily News to his kids, two boys maybe seven or eight years old with inquisitive faces and winning gaps in their teeth.  They talked to me when I got on and sat across from them because they wanted to know if my tattoos were nicotine patches, and then watching them I got to really like them—the dad so genuinely liked his kids and wanted to hear what they had to say, was talking to them with such enthusiasm and interest and respect.  As opposed to, say, yelling at them to shut up, or smacking them, or ignoring them, or not being around at all, which is what I tend to notice more of.  The dad was talking about Bush and Kerry and Michael Moore, how some people work seven days a week and still don’t have enough money to pay rent and buy food and also have enough for clothes and things, and how Bush lied about Iraq.  “If people found out the truth, there’d be a revolution!” he said.  “They’d storm the White House!”  I was too cynical to believe him, but I loved his passion.  Also, and I guess I’m a classist bitch for being struck by this, the dad wasn’t a white-collar white suit-wearing dad; he seemed like a working-class guy, and his English was voluble and articulate but Spanish was definitely his first language. It warmed my heart, to be honest—in spite of the way the world appeared to be going to hell, this dad at least was doing a good job.  His kids were going to turn out to be nice people. 

 

Friday, July 2, 2004, 9:45 a.m., "N" train, Union Square to 49th Street

God damn it, I left my favorite pink sweater on the subway this morning, and it’s gone.  I guess it could be worse—it’s not like I can’t get by without my pink sweater, and it’s not a wallet or a set of keys or a legal file (I was once on a subway where someone had left a legal file and everyone in the car looked extremely worried as one woman looked to see if the guy’s name was on it, which it was, much to everyone’s relief), but man, I really liked it and since I bought it used on the street I have no idea where I could get another like it.  Last April I left my leather jacket on the Metro North, and that was worse—it had been sort of expensive, at least for me, and was my only jacket that wasn’t a winter coat, and I had driven madly to the next station to beat the train and had almost, almost made it, but not quite.  Unsurprisingly, it never showed up in the Grand Central lost and found. 

 

You have to chalk these things up, I’ve decided, to the transit gods.  It’s a kind of ritual sacrifice, annual dues you have to pay one way or another.  Some gods demand blood; all things considered, maybe a pink sweater isn’t really so bad.  

 

Friday, June 25, 2004

A chilling week for subway deaths: first the shooting on Tuesday, then on Wednesday a woman is crushed after she faints onto the tracks.  It makes you want to mutter a prayer of protection, a magic spell, before descending into the tunnels. 

Wednesday, June 23, 2004, 9:30 a.m., Manhattan-bound "V" train

Dear Disembodied Voice on the Subway PA:

 

While riding the train into work this morning, I was thrown into a frenzy of confusion upon hearing you instruct me to "use all available doors" shortly after said doors had closed.

 

Exactly what, at that moment, did you want me to use them for? Admittedly, one door was holding me upright as I leaned against it for bodily support, but more to the point, how can I reasonably be expected to use all of the doors, and how in God's name am I supposed to tell which ones are available?

 

I ask you: why do you taunt me with bewildering commands so early in the morning?  I'm doing the best I can, and still you torment me!  It simply isn't fair to present me with such impossible requests.

 

In protest against your sadistic mind games,

A Commuter

Monday, June 21, 2004, 5:30 p.m., Downtown B/D/F/V platform, Rockefeller Center

I just saw a man walk to the edge of the platform, apply a finger to first one nostril, then the other, and forcefully shoot two large blasts of snot onto the track below.  Then he shook his hand out and walked onto the "D" train.  I am never touching a subway pole again.

Friday, June 18, 2004, Sixth Avenue/14th Street station, "F" platform

As I get close to the stairs I notice the dog first, then the woman gripping the handle strapped to his back.  The dog reaches the top of the stairs and stops.  "Wait, I don't want to go to the L," says the
woman.  "This is the way to the L, isn't it?" she asks the air around her as she turns around.  "Yeah," people answer, and she navigates through the crowd and back the way she came.  I'm never anything but amazed at the idea of blind people finding their way through the subway system.  It just seems so much more perilous and confusing than the outside world, which is ridiculous when I think about it. If
anything, it's the outside world that's the real feat, huge and chaotic as it is. Still, I close my eyes for a second when I get down to the L, and it's terrifying.
 

Wednesday, June 16, 2004, very crowded "F" train, Rock Center to 14th Street

"Gotta let em out, people.  Can't get in till you let em out," intones a black man with a grizzled beard and a red baseball hat that reads, "Vienna waits for you."  His left arm is in a cast, set in an uncomfortable-looking position, and I am impressed with his patience. Vienna may wait, but New York most certainly does not. People shift their weight behind him like they are considering a stampede.
 

Saturday, June 12, 2004, "F" train, 14th Street to Broadway/Lafayette

On our way downtown, Greg, Tim, and I spot a bride, a pirate, and a cowboy.  I mean, what is this, Halloween?  The bride, identifiable by the veil pinned to her hair, is surrounded by a bevy of her
friends on their way to a bachelorette party, I guess, or maybe a strip club. When do people have bachelor and bachelorette parties, anyway?  I like to know as little as possible about this kind of thing.  It does seem like it would be a bad idea to have it the night before, though nothing says class like getting hitched with a hangover.

The cowboy is leaning against a support column, hat tipped over his eyes, his boots and jeans and meaty arms making him look awfully authentic for a guy standing in the subway, of all places - like he
usually rides his horse down to the Lower East Side but old Silver is feeling a little under the weather tonight.

The pirate is my favorite, though.  He is wearing a kid's felt pirate captain hat on top of a white baseball cap, which should look stupid but instead just looks rather rakish.  This has everything to do with
the attitude of jaunty confidence he projects, which also allows him to carry off a pair of New Wave sunglasses and a bright yellow and red button-down shirt in African-print cloth.  He looks like a voodoo
master, a swashbuckler, a charming buccaneer. I can't help wondering where his ship is docked.
 

 

Thursday, JUNE 3, 2004, 9:30 A.M., "N/R/W" UPTOWN

Good lord, my subway roulette skills totally stink today.  At 34th street the "R" announces it will be crossed to the express track, so I switch to the "N" across the platform, which then sits with doors open—until a "W" thunders in and I switch back over, upon which of course the "N" moves and the "W" sits.  Finally we are shunted up to 49th street and I arrive at work my traditional 15 minutes late (as usual, no one notices or says anything), which is how I can tell my jet lag is gone and life is back to normal.  I am just returned from traveling in France for 2 weeks, and in spite of having had some fabulous adventures (motorcycling, hitchhiking) it feels good to be back in my life. 

 

 

SOME NOTES ON THE PARIS METRO

 

The Paris metro tunnels have a very particular smell—not a bad smell, just distinctive.  The first train I take I can’t stop sniffing the air.  Someone once told me that the smell is saltpeter and this is because there were once saltpeter mines under the city, but I’m not sure if this is true or what saltpeter is exactly.  Something to do with gunpowder, I think?

 

The doors on the train cars do not open automatically here; you have to pull up on a little metal handle, or push a button (depending on what line you are riding) when the train pulls into your station.  The doors can open a few seconds before the train comes to a complete stop, so you see a lot of men in suits hopping off the moving train like little kids, or hobos. 

 

The subway tunnels are generally huge and plastered with gigantic advertisements, most of which feature women in various states of undress with suggestive text alongside.  In some neighborhoods there are anti-sexism stickers plastered on the ads, and I believe there is some kind of legislation protecting the legality of this kind of response. 

 

There are little metal trash cans in the subway stations but they are all sealed now because of terrorism, and instead of putting in new clear trash containers as they have out on the streets (really just metal hoops that can hold a plastic bag) there are these cardboard trays on the platforms that look kind of like trash themselves. 

 

The first metro tickets we use during our visit are a pair I had from the last time I was in Paris three years ago, not knowing when I would be back.  Though these tickets are blue and the tickets machines now dispense purple ones, they still work, much to my delight.

 

My favorite metro stop: Arts et Metiers, covered in copper to look like the inside of a Jules Verne submarine, even equipped with porthole window displays. 

 

My least favorite metro stop: Chatelet, in spite of the musicians who are always playing, just because it is so very large and it is exhausting walking the thousand miles of moving walkway to make a transfer.

 

In most metro stops there is a photobooth machine that lets you take ID pictures.  This is because you need one in order to get a monthly pass (they use a ticket system, so you have a single ticket that’s good all month, but to prove it’s yours the number on it has to match the number on your “carte orange,” your metro photo ID).  But in addition to ID photos you can also take silly souvenir pictures, with the Eiffel tower in the background, or a heart around your face and the words “Je t’aime.” During our stay all the photobooth machines have special “Kill Bill 2” photos, but we don’t take any.

 

In the metro it is easy to pick out the Americans because we talk so loud and with such disregard for who can hear us.  I think even if the language weren’t a dead giveaway our manner would be.  But in any case it’s irrelevant since here we are murmuring as best we can, probably deafening everyone around us.

 

 

THE SECONDHAND SAN FRANCISCO SUBWAY REPORT

 

June 2, My friend Heather writes:

 

I think you'll be pleased to know that last week I gave a violent fuck-you to the transit gods after a train sat still with doors closed long enough for the train-bitch in the bike car to shrug scornfully ("sorry you have to wait another 30 minutes but really it's your own pitiful fault for not showing proper respect for the holy train schedule") at me standing forlorn on the wrong side of the window.  I lacked the nerve to do it to her face, but as soon as the train began rumbling away I lashed out in rage and gave the Heatherless vessel one wicked wipping with my banana peal, which exploded all over the dastardly tin

siding.  Ah, revenge.

 

 

May 13, My friend Louisa writes:

 

I talked to this random guy when I was walking out of a BART station. He seemed normal, he had friendly eyes. He was a bit presumptuous. Here's our conversation (btw, I was carrying a red handbag and wearing jeans and a v-neck, hunter-green sweater):

 

GUY: I like your bag.

LOUISA: Thanks.

GUY: Why did you choose that bag?

LOUISA: One of my favorite colors is red.

GUY: Oh. Then why are you wearing such drab colors?

LOUISA: Well....I guess my excuse would be....I just moved here and I'm living out of a suitcase.

GUY: So, are all of your colorful clothes on the bottom of your suitcase?

LOUISA: I guess...and a lot are in storage too.

GUY: I would think that you would choose all of your colorful or red clothes to bring with you in your suitcase.

LOUISA: [Shrug.]

GUY: So where did you move from?

LOUISA: NYC.

GUY: So, are you a fugitive?

LOUISA: No [laughing....what? .....whatever. giggle, giggle].

GUY: SO why did you move *here*?

LOUISA: My boyfriend got a job here.

GUY: So, you're following him?

LOUISA: I guess you could look at it that way, but my job in NY wasn't that exciting so I thought "why not?"

GUY: I gotta go to a store on that side of the street [pointing to the other side], I'll see ya.

LOUISA: Okay. Bye.

 

Wednesday, April 28, 2004, 6:00 p.m., "F," "V," "G" trains, Rockefeller Center to Greenpoint Avenue

Clearly the transit gods must be overextended these days making sure my car doesn't get ticketed or towed, because they're not giving me a whole lot of help on the subway front, that's for damn sure. "Why don't I just come straight over to your house," I tell Greg, getting ready to leave work. I'm hungry and there's no real reason why I have to go home before I go over to his place for dinner. "It'll be faster." This is a lie.

First I get on the "F" instead of the "V" at Rock Center, which as far as I know will bring me to the wrong stop in Queens to pick up the "G." I get out at 57th Street and cross the platform for the downtown track. Eventually a downtown "F" deposits me back at Rock Center, where this time I pick up the "V." Except that I don't get out at 23rd St & Ely because I'm expecting it to say Court Sq., the name of the G stop, so I take the train an extra stop to Queens Plaza. To my relief, there are signs for the "G" there as well on the opposite track, but when a Manhattan-bound "V" train pulls in the conductor advises me to take it because the "G" doesn't always stop here. I backtrack another stop, finally manage to get on the "G" train like I should, and then some idiotic instinct, probably the same one that tells me it's a perfectly good idea to stay up until 3 in the morning on many a given weeknight, propels me to disembark at Greenpoint Avenue even though I know Nassau is where we always get on in the morning. Of course the Greenpoint stop is all the way the hell up Manhattan Avenue and I doggedly pound the pavement along it, wondering exactly how far away I am. When a bus approaches behind my left shoulder my reflexes are about as fine-tuned as molasses and it roars on past me before I even register that if I'd gotten on it I would get to my destination in about ten seconds. Continue pounding pavement with my boots, which, I am discovering, are not at all Made For Walking, not without some good insoles, at least. I'm practically crippled by the blisters by the time I hobble through Greg's door and collapse in a pathetic heap on the couch, a good hour since my departure from the office. Gods, why have you forsaken me?

P.S. To add insult to injury, apparently I could have picked up the "G" from the "F" after all. Bleah.

Monday, April 26, 2004, "L," "Q," "R" trains, Bedford Avenue to 49th Street, morning rush hour

I haven't even gotten to work yet and it's already shaping up to be one of those days; I've seen both of my trains pulling out of the station just as I reach the platform. If I were feeling a little less fried and cranky (not just general Monday crappiness but the fact that I was on the road back from DC until after 1 a.m. the night before) I'd probably be inclined to look on the bright side, willful optimist that I usually am - the trains did pull out ahead of me, true, but a second "L" came quickly and the "Q" caught me up the "R" at 34th St. But I am utterly drained and in a foul mood, so I will see it as an omen of doom for the day instead.

Sunday, April 25, 2004, Red Line, Washington, D.C. Metro, 10:00 a.m.

My Aunt Marsha lives in Silver Spring, out by the last stop on Washington DC's Red Line, and it takes about an hour to get from there to central DC. I have driven down for the weekend with two friends from high school for the March for Women's Lives, and as we ride in towards the Metro Center stop on the very clean subway train (food is not permitted aboard, a friend informs me on my return to dirty NYC), it gets increasingly packed with people - women and men, both for and against the issue, in groups with matching T-shirts, with buttons and stickers on jackets and bags, with handmade signs and posters in hand. One girl in braces across the aisle from me holds a half-unrolled sheet of posterboard on her lap; I can see the magic-markered words "women's issues" carefully printed near the bottom. There are young people, old people, high school students, families, people like us from out of town, all of us about to converge on the Mall for the march. There is something deeply exciting about participating in this; I can almost even appreciate the sight of the oppositions foot soldiers with their religious propaganda - I feel privileged to live in a country where people on both sides of a hotly charged issue can peacefully demonstrate - but mostly my heart just leaps to see how many people care so passionately about this, about the freedom of to women to control their bodies, about ensuring that reproductive rights remain intact, all of those buttons reading "IT'S YOUR CHOICE NOT THEIRS" and "KEEP ABORTION LEGAL." If the Metro is like this, I can only imagine what the march itself is going to be like.

Friday, April 23, 2004, 9:30 a.m., "Q/N/R" platform, Union Square

"Ladies and gentlemen, there is a downtown train at Eighth Street, one station away," says the loudspeaker at the "Q/N/R" platform at Union Square. Is the announcer taunting us with a near miss? No, he meant uptown - a minute later the train pours into the station.

Friday, April 23, 2004, 9:20 a.m., "L" train, Bedford Avenue to Union Square

"People have always asked questions."
- pamphlet on the ground (Jews for Jesus?), "L" platform, Union Square Station

"Is Christian Slater Addicted to Strippers?"
- The Star, Manhattan-bound "L" train to Union Square

Thursday, April 22, 2004, 7:15 p.m., "L" train, Bedford Avenue to First Avenue

My roommate and I are on our way to see the show "Pyrates!" at the Theater for the New City (running through May 9, FYI). The train is luxuriously empty; it's nice to be going against the commuter flow for once. Across from us is a woman with a dog on her lap, and instantly I am in love.

Now, I'm not much of a dog person. Mostly I just don't get what the appeal is - dogs are overeager and messy and smelly and demand too much attention and you have to take them outside every time they need to take a shit. But this dog is adorable. It has a foxy little face and tiny white teeth and a tongue that curls like a cat's; its face is surrounded by a soft corona of reddish-brown fluff that my hand twitches to touch. It's got to be a puppy by its blunt muzzle and oversized paws, but I don't think this kind of dog (I think it's a Pomeranian) gets a whole lot bigger than this - probably the woman will always be able to toss it in a handbag and bring it with her on the subway. For all the attractions of cats, you can't take them on the subway with you no matter how cooperative they are. This is admittedly a distinct advantage to owning a dog.

Still, I'm not about to go out and get one any more than I'm about to go out and have a baby. I don't even have houseplants, for god's sake.

Thursday, April 22, 2004, 6:00 p.m., downtown "F" train

Dueling scriptures on this car: two blonde women, seated roughly opposite each other, the one on the right's lips moving in Hebrew, the one on the left paging through some kind of Catholic book of daily meditations. In the back is tucked a newspaper clipping that reads: "Honor Sought for 9/11 Priest," next to which is a pasted-in fortune cookie fortune I can't quite read, just below the words "Lychee nut" printed neatly in blue ballpoint.

Which lady is winning? My money's on the Catholic until she puts her prayer book away and pulls out a big romance novel. That's going to cost her a few Hail Marys.

A few feet away from me is a guy in a floppy black hat who is carefully holding an enormous bunch, almost a whole armful, of white calla lilies in his arms, their stems as thick as a man's thumb. When he gets out at 14th Street I follow him down to the "L." His flowers look surreal in the cement tunnel, alien and beautiful and preternaturally lush, and I want to ask him where he is taking them but then I think they're probably for some designery boutique somewhere, or else I guess they could be for a funeral, and either way I don't really want to know.

Monday, April 19, 2004, 9:45 a.m., uptown "Q/N/R," Union Square to Times Square

When the "N" express stops at 34th Street and sits in the station for about a hundred years with its doors yawning open opposite the local, I decide to play subway roulette and cross the platform to the "R." Of course I lose; I usually lose at this game, and the "N" immediately shuts its doors and starts moving and then there is an announcement on my train that there is some funky rerouting going on because of a sick passenger at Fifth Avenue and we will be running express only from 42nd to 59th Street.

Eventually the train doors close and we move uptown one stop and I have to walk up to my office from Times Square, which is only five or six blocks but a slow five or six what with the hordes of slow-moving tourists clogging up the sidewalks. I'm thoroughly annoyed by the time I get to work a full half-hour late. But then I hear about the collision at Penn Station between the Amtrak train and the subway train, and all the people hurt, whiplash, broken bones, and I remember that I'm lucky just to be annoyed, not injured.

Thursday, April 15, 2004, 7:30 p.m., "L" platform at Sixth Avenue

As I'm heading down to the end of the platform so I'll be properly positioned at my stop (this is an art that eluded me until I started living in the city last fall) I hear someone say my name. I stop in my tracks and look around but there's nobody around I recognize. I start walking again. Clearly I'm hearing things.

The summer after I graduated from college this happened to me all the time, that I'd think someone in a crowd had called my name, or I'd see someone on the street and think they were someone I knew - I was always wrong. It's not something that happens much lately, not now that I do actually run into people I know on the street, on the train, now that I've established a life for myself here. But I really thought I heard my name.

"Hey, Ellie," someone says again. I look to my right and there, standing in the door of the Manhattan-bound "L," is Alisdair, a friend of a friend who works in the same building as I do. The doors close on the toe of his shoe and pop open again; the Brooklyn-bound "L" starts to rumble the opposite tracks. "How are you?" he asks through the doors. "Good," I say. "That's my train, though." I wave and run across to catch it.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004, "F" station at 23rd Street, 5:45 p.m.; Brooklyn-bound "L," 6:30 p.m.

"There are too goddamn many people in this city," huffs an overweight man with a canvas violin case as we wait in a gigantic immobile crush to funnel up the stairs leading up out of the 23rd Street station.

"Too many people!" shouts a kid in a red jacket, exactly half my height, on the "L" at First Avenue His hipster mom asks if he wants to wait for the next train but he just clamps onto the pole next to me.

"I had the harshest commute this morning. The "F" was almost as bad as the "L." I don't know how you do it every morning," Greg writes me at work earlier that day.

It's not that I disagree - New York is insanely crowded, and nothing hammers that home like traveling via subway during rush hour (unless maybe it's traveling via car during rush hour) but usually I manage to cultivate a nice little world of my own and just slip into that while I'm making my way from train to train. We're an adaptable species; it's amazing what you can get used to.

Anyway, I can't help feeling like we should be careful what we wish for. Most solutions to overpopulation involve things like the Black Plague.

Wednesday, April 14, 2004, B61 bus, S. 4th to N. 7th St.; "L" train, Bedford to Union Square, 9:20 a.m.

When I am running late in the morning, as I so often am, sometimes I am lucky enough to catch the bus at the corner of my street and ride it the dozen blocks or so up Bedford Avenue to the subway. My walk is about ten minutes and the bus saves me a good five, which is significant when it's the difference between just making a train and just missing one. Greg and I are just about to turn the corner onto Bedford when I lean out and see the B61 letting on passengers a block or so down. "Hey, look, we can catch the bus," I say.

Greg has made fun of me before for taking the bus such a short distance, even though he knows it's not about laziness, it's about time. "Come on, are you kidding?" he says. I am not kidding. "It's 9:15 and the bus is right there and we're getting on it," I tell him.

"You can get on the bus," he says, gesturing toward it with the hand he's not using to smoke. "I'm going to walk."

"Aha - you just lit a cigarette, I see what this is about," I say. I dart a glance down the street; the bus is approaching.

"Go ahead," he says. "It's all right, I can be late." I give him a kiss and fly across the street to the bus stop.

Greg is a fast walker but the B61 is faster. Still, when we stop at a light he catches up to the bus and grins as he shakes his head at me hanging onto the bar. Then the light changes and the bus surges ahead, leaving him behind again.

At the Bedford stop the platform is full of people waiting; I stake out a spot near the stairs and look for Greg in the stream of people coming down them, thinking it would be funny if he and I ended up on the same train in the end anyway. But I don't see him, and then the train thunders in and I get to work more or less on time, which just proves that I was right.

Tuesday, April 13, 2004, 9:20 a.m., "L" train, Bedford to Union Square

I'm really tired this morning, the result of two very late nights in a row, and I'm hoping to get a seat on the "L." Really I'm grateful to have caught it at all - I was running late to begin with, and then I needed to move the car to the other side of the street (yes, dear readers, this subway diarist has a car, though usually it's in my little brother's possession these days), and the train was already in the station when I rocketed down the stairs, my heart pounding as furiously as my feet. But now that I'm on it I remember how tired I am, and I'd like to sit back and close my eyes until I have to get off and switch.

I don't see empty seats, so I find a place to stand at the end of the first, surprisingly unpacked car, right in front of a woman who is fanning herself vigorously with an envelope and who has her handbag and a large paper shopping bag sitting on the empty half of the two-person seat she is occupying. I almost ask her if I can sit there, but I don't. Instead I think about the story I heard on NPR a few months back about a study this psychologist did years ago that involved sending his students down into the subway trains and making them ask people for their seats. The study had two results - first, it appeared that most people, if asked, would in fact give up their seats - surprising, right? But it also became evident that the act of asking was extremely difficult - stressful, embarrassing, shameful - because it transgressed certain unspoken social norms. This same guy did studies about blind obedience to authority, people's tendency to be helpful when it wasn't necessary, urban psychology - interesting stuff. (For further reading, do a Google search on Stanley Milgram.)

At First Avenue my inner struggle - Ask? Don't ask? - becomes moot when a woman by the door gets up and I make a beeline for her seat. She has two green foam curlers prominently stuck in her bangs, and I'm kind of fascinated by this. At what point in your day do you stop dressing like you're in your house and consider yourself out in the world? Not, it is clear, on the subway. We've all seen people applying makeup on the train, putting on that face, getting ready to confront the working day. Does it not count as out in public until you emerge from underground? Once at Times Square I saw a woman curling her eyelashes as she waited for a train, using one of those medieval-looking tong-like implements. My dad likes to rant about the women who put on a whole beauty counter of cosmetic products while riding down on the Metro North in the morning - "It's not just some powder or lipstick, but foundation, with little sponges! Don't they realize people can see them?" -but in some ways I admire their ability to just completely ignore their environment; I think it displays a valuable skill of urban survival.

Maybe I've got it all wrong, though, and green foam curlers are a new fashion statement. I wonder where I can get some.

Friday, April 9, 2004, dream train, 2:00 - 8:00 a.m.

All of my dreams took place on the subway last night. The cars were like the wide "J/M/Z" cars, just two benches facing each other, and the train rocketed through the tunnels, which I could see out the windows, dark and made of arched red brick.

#1: I was sitting next to one of my former coworkers on the train; I was surprised by how old she looked, her face almost like leather. There was a sticker on her bag that said "Lean Cuisine" and how much weight she had lost eating it. Other coworkers were in the car with us - all of their bosses were leaving the company, so they were trying to get to work in time to be given their leftover things - cosmetics and toiletries, mainly - and hopefully be taken out for a farewell lunch.

#2: I was holding a small bottle of orange cough medicine in the cleavage of the dress I was wearing. It was very low cut so the bottle was pretty eye-catching, especially since I kept taking it out to open it and sniff the contents and try to decide if I was going to take some - I could see the guy standing next to me looking at my chest out of the corner of his eye every time I reached for it. I never did convince myself to take the medicine - I knew it would taste awful.

#3: A black snowball was traveling through the subway looking for its family. Most of the other snowballs in the city were white (as snowballs tend to be), so the black one was pretty conspicuous and felt out of place. It rode through the subway tunnels until it got to the country, where a whole herd of black snowballs and snowmen were waiting for it at the station.

Tuesday, April 6, 2004, memory train (1953, IND uptown, 96th Street to 110th Street)

My mother tells me a subway story as we are preparing food for the Passover seder we are having in a few hours. "I was writing it to you in an e-mail," she says as she chops a carrot I have just peeled and handed to her, "but I deleted it by mistake."

All of her best e-mails to me, it seems, are ones she has accidentally erased; it's like a collection of things that don't exist. Somewhere in an alternate universe there is a whole library of e-mails to me that my mother has deleted before sending. Sometimes, it's true, she manages to recover one, which probably causes her to delete it by mistake in the alternate universe. Unless it's her deleting it in the other universe that makes it show up again here...but I digress.

In my mother's subway story she is nine years old and riding the subway by herself. She has been riding the bus by herself for a while to get to and from school, but she doesn't take the subway; today, though, it's nasty outside and she decides to take it just one stop uptown along Central Park West to get home. She gets on at 96th Street; just as the train is getting to 103rd, a man offers her his seat. Because she is flustered, and because she is used to doing what adults tell her to do, my mother takes the seat, and instead of getting off at her stop, she rides all the way up to the next stop at 110th. "Now, 103rd and 110th Street were completely different neighborhoods," she says. "One hundred and tenth was Cathedral Parkway - when I got out of the subway I had no idea how to get home."

Eventually she did make it home, obviously, since she didn't live out the remainder of her childhood wandering the Upper West Side, but it's clear the experience made an impression on her. I'm not completely sure what the moral of the story is, though - 'Don't be bullied by politeness?' Possibly. Or maybe 'Other people don't necessarily know better than you.' Two perfectly useful morals. But I can't help wondering what it said in that e-mail.

Monday, April 5, 2004, 9:30 p.m.,"E" train, Eighth Avenue to Bedford Avenue

I've been crocheting when I'm in transit lately. I finished a striped hat for a friend's birthday while riding the B61 bus all weekend between Williamsburg and Red Hook, and now I'm making myself a bikini. It's kind of funny working on it in public - the top is pretty damn skimpy, and I'm crocheting it out of fire-engine red yarn, so it's rather eye-catching. Mostly I just keep it in my lap.

On my way home from bowling at the Port Authority Lanes (really the best place to bowl in the city, if you're into cheap drinks and seedy ambiance), the guy sitting next to me on the "L" is talking to the guy across from him. My seatmate is young, black, big jacket, strangely fixed expression on his face. Guy across is middle-aged, white, business-professional-looking, holding a book. He's telling my seatmate to try Amazon - I guess he asked where he could get a copy. Seatmate says, "That's in line, on the internet, right?" Book guy says yeah and gets off at Union Square. I continue to work on my crocheting. I've started making the bottom to the bikini, which I can already tell is going to be a lengthy process of trial and error. Right now it's just a long narrow row.

"Do you know where can I get a kit like that?" seatmate asks, looking on with apparent interest as I work. I'm a little surprised by the question - not "What are you making?" but "Where can I buy that?" and it's not often that guys ask me how to equip themselves to crochet - but far be it from me to promote gender stereotypes; after a beat I tell him 39th street. He wants to know more specifically so I detail the exact location, and he asks how much a kit like mine would cost. It's not a kit at all, just a ball of yarn and a crochet hook, but I just say probably five dollars and suggest that he consult with the person at the store. The thing is, I don't believe for a second that he's actually planning on going down to Unique Knitkraft to learn how to crochet, but I can't tell if he's trying to hit on me or not. He was just asking that other guy about his book, so maybe he's asking everyone with an obvious prop where they got it, or maybe he's just high and interested in anything people are staring at; his eyes are extremely shiny and oddly intense. But then after a few minutes he says, "You're good at that," and I decide he must be hitting on me after all, because clearly he has no idea what being good at this would entail.

Wednesday, March 31, 2004, 7:00 p.m.,"L" platform at Sixth Avenue

The German language, not that I speak more than a few words of it - enough to purchase stamps and a few buzzwords adopted into English academic jargon - is filled with very specific names for things: schadenfreude, weltschmerz, bildungsroman. The Germans create these words by tacking nouns onto other nouns in apparently unlimited chains, which Jeffrey Eugenides, in his book Middlesex (highly recommended, by the way), calls "train-car constructions...like, say, the happiness that attends disaster."

There are times when I envy the Germans their ability to so precisely describe what I'd otherwise consider more or less indescribable states of being, and this evening is one of them. Mid-transfer between the "F" and the "L," I find myself longing for a single word for the feeling you get at the moment when you're at the top of the stairs and your train is standing at the platform at the bottom of the stairs (past the metal railings and the mass of people in front of you, you can just glimpse the sleek side of it) and you are stuck behind the slowest-moving crowd of leisurely amblers you have ever seen in your life - there must be a word for that useless frustration that coats the inner surface of your skin like a cold sweat.

A word would be useful, too, for the simmer-down you experience once you have bolted triumphantly into the car and find yourself standing there like a panting idiot as the train continues to sit patiently in the station with its doors wide open. And for when, to add insult to injury, the conductor announces that there is a delay due to a brake problem on a train at Third Avenue and you get to stand there even longer with the surely unhealthy brew of stress chemicals still juicing through your veins, probably giving you cancer in 50 years.

P.S. In Germany, in addition to a staggering array of descriptive terms, they also have an honor system on their subways. Man, can you imagine that in NYC? What a joke.

Wednesday, March 31, 2004, 9: 15 a.m., "L" train, Bedford to Union Square

When I took the bus to school as a kid I liked to imagine that civilization as we knew it had ended and the bus was stranded somewhere and we were all going to have to live on it together forever. It's funny the games you play in your head when you're young - a couple of my close friends were frequent players of the morbid but satisfyingly self-indulgent If-I-Died-Who-Would-Actually-Come-To-My-Funeral game, and my boss recently told me about how, when she was a child at boring family dinners, she and her cousin would entertain themselves by sending a little invisible man back and forth to each other across the table.

I used to read a lot of science fiction, so maybe it was only natural that the bent of my thoughts tended more toward end-of-the-world scenarios. Or maybe it was just the grown-up novelty of getting to ride a city bus to junior high instead of a yellow school bus that made me think about playing adult, starting a new society from scratch. I would imagine tying everyone's jackets together into a kind of hammock and suspending it from the poles at the back of the bus, and then I would pair people off, because the human race had to go on, didn't it? I always paired myself off with whatever boy I had a crush on, which at the time seemed about as far-fetched as the rest of the scenario...ah, to be thirteen again.

This morning as I hurl myself into the packed-to-the-gills "L" train (one of the older models today, not the fancy new kind) this old game of mine comes to mind, and I look around the car at the people standing shoved together like livestock, shoulder to shoulder. It's clear that when the world ends we won't be able to survive like this for long - even Bedford Avenue to Union Square is pushing it, in my opinion. But then I think it doesn't matter. Because we'll probably all just end up eating each other.

Monday, March 29, 2004, 6:30 p.m., downtown "F" train, Rock Center to Second Avenue

The two guys in next to me are discussing whether or not animals make facial expressions.

"If a tiger's really happy, he looks like this," one of them says, displaying a blank stare.

"I don't know. I think they have facial expressions," says his friend.

"No way," says the first guy.

"Some animals have them," insists his friend. "I feel like monkeys probably do."

"I've never seen a frog make a facial expression," counters the first guy.

"No," agrees his friend. "And turtles definitely can't."

"And fish, they don't show shit," says the first guy. "You have no idea if a fish is happy or sad."

Can't argue with that. Fish are pretty inscrutable.

Wednesday, March 24, 2004, 8:00 p.m., downtown "N/R/W" platform at Union Square

The guy sitting next to me on the bench coughs. "Bitch," he says under his breath.

Did a woman just knock into him as she went by? I didn't notice anything. Or was that directed at me? I wait for him to say something else, but he is a silent lump to my left, glum in a gray winter jacket.

Then I hear him mutter, "Basketball, or melon ball," and as the train comes in I think, ah, he's just crazy.

BONUS TRACK

The Day Aunt Peggy Peed on the Train (well, not actually)

"Do you take old subway stories?" asks Kierin.

"Sure, why not," I say.

Aunt Peggy, born and raised and still living in Ohio, comes to New York to visit Kierin and her family when Kierin is a kid. They are riding the train from Manhattan into Park Slope. Peggy really has to pee, and doesn't understand that subway trains do not have bathrooms on the cars; in fact, she is under the impression that there is one right behind the door at the end of the car, the one to the conductors booth, and she tries as hard as she can to open it.

"So did she get it open?" I ask.

"I don't think so."

"Did she pee on the train?"

"No."

"That would be a better story," I say.

"Yeah. I think I remember being there, but I could be wrong," Kierin adds.

Tuesday, March 23, 2004, 9:30 a.m., uptown "N/R/W" platform at Union Square

They are dressed almost identically in knit caps, baggy low jeans, big puffy jackets. Dad is sporting some serious jewelry - the diamonds in his ears are the size of rocks - and the kid is like a tiny mini-dad, real cute, with "Rocawear" spelled out on his back.

Dad stands protectively at the edge of the platform, arms crossed, facing his kid. "We gotta go to the next stop," he says as the kid looks up at him. "You wanna walk?"

"Yeah," says the kid.

"Fuck that," says dad, giving the kid's cap a playful cuff. "We ain't walking shit."

"Fuck," the kid echoes softly, and then the train comes and dad makes carefully sure his kid gets safely into the car.

Monday, March 22, 600 p.m., "F" train, Rock Center to 14th street

I am what you might call a champion sleeper. Generally speaking, I can fall asleep anytime, anywhere, but while in transit is best. Cars are particularly sleep-inducing (a boyfriend in high school, I am convinced, broke up with me because I could never stay conscious when he was driving us somewhere), but any kind of vehicle is a likely place for me to drop off. I used to commute into the city on the Metro North, and in those days I had it down to a science, picking the aisle seat with its lower back for a headrest, or bunching up my scarf to use as a pillow against the window. My ride was about 45 minutes long, and I actually got some real extra sleep that way almost every day.

What I do on the subway now is not what I consider real sleeping. It's more like a catnap, or the sleep my computer gets when I don't type anything for a while: I'm entering a state of suspended animation, but my senses are still keeping track of what's going on around me. Usually when I get a seat I close my eyes and relax, and when the train hits a stop I open one eye for a second or listen for the name of the station; I always know where I am. But today I must have been extra tired, because while I am dozing on the first leg of my ride home at the end of the day, I hear 34th street being announced and suddenly I have NO IDEA if I am on my way to work, or on my way home from work.

Have I gone too far? What train am I on? Which direction am I going in? Is it morning or evening? I experience a moment of pure disoriented panic as I cast about for my bearings, and then the world snaps back into place around me. Under the circumstances, I'm really glad to know that I am in fact on my way home and done with this day.

BONUS TRACK

Daniel's Thirdhand Subway Story

"You should really get Daniel to tell it to you himself," says Greg.

"Well, tell me anyway," I say.

Daniel's train is really crowded. Some guy gets on and is standing at the end of the car right next to the conductor's booth. A woman tells him to move, he asks her where does she think he's supposed to go? They start arguing loudly, but somewhere along the way when Daniel isn't paying attention they make friends, so that by the time he is getting ready to get off the train they are talking about what their favorite fruits are.

"Do you like oranges?" the woman asks. "I like me some oranges. And green apples, I love green apples."

Sunday, March 21, 2004, 7 p.m., "L" train, Union Square to Bedford Ave

Daniel is trying to school Greg and me in the proper response to when the person sitting next to you won't give up any of their personal space. I am sitting between them with my legs spread in a wide V, like the guy Greg was stuck next to on the "C" train down from the Museum of Natural History a little earlier this evening - the guy was taking up practically the whole bench like he was in his damn living room and wouldn't cede so much as an inch to Greg, perched uncomfortably next to him with his knees in to avoid getting really cozy with the guy.

"What I do is I go like this," Daniel says. He draws his leg away and then whacks it back into mine, banging sharply against my knee. "You've gotta be really aggressive--there's no other way. This city forces you to become an asshole." He has a crazy glint in his eyes; I'm sure he's more than capable of getting vicious when provoked.

I see his point but I don't know if I'm fully convinced - it's an overt act of combat, pretty much, and I don't know that I'm prepared to deal with the consequences if I instigate actual warfare. Still, I can't even begin to count how many times I've been stuck next to some guy who feels like he has the right to take up all the space he wants. It's such a macho entitlement thing when a guy spreads his legs like that (to show off his big balls, perhaps?), and I always feel like I'm at a distinct disadvantage in the situation because the guy never cares if his leg is rubbing up against mine, but I feel like he wins if I let him touch me at all, even to push back. As a result it always goes the same way, with the guy taking up more and more space as I shrink away from contact.

Maybe next time I will try the attack route and see where it gets me, but looking at my track record its more likely that I won't. On the "F" on my way into work one morning a few months ago, the train was jam-packed and a guy behind me was pressing into my back really hard. It was the dead of winter and I was wearing about a thousand layers, so it was hard to be sure when he started rubbing up against me, and for the whole train ride I couldn't quite believe what was happening even though I'd heard other women tell absolutely identical stories more than once: a crowded train, a feeling of disbelief (Is he...? No, he couldn't be.).

Did I tell him to stop? No. Yell at him? Embarrass him? Make a scene? No. Did I move away as much as I could and place my elbow in front of his gut so that if he pressed forward it would jab him? Yes. By the time I got off the train was my body in an utterly unnatural position and my elbow buried deep in the front of his jacket? Yes. Did I still somehow doubt my own senses? Yes.

Maybe Daniel's got the right idea. A violent attack would have been just the thing.

Wednesday, March 17, 6:00 p.m., "L" platform at Sixth Avenue

As I descend the stairs to the "L" platform on my way home from work, I can hear a guy playing the bongo drums and chanting along in a loud, hypnotic sing-song. Though I'm not especially paying attention and can't really understand much of what he's saying, as I sit on the bench to wait for the train it gradually penetrates my consciousness that these are not exactly gay-friendly lyrics he's singing. "A man and a man, they never make no children," he sings. "A woman and a woman..."

I can't quite make out what it is a woman and a woman can't do, but then the guy goes from singing to monologue, more of a diatribe, even, ranting about how white people went to Africa and tried to turn everybody gay. I know good material when it hits me in the face, so I pull out my notebook and start scribbling as fast as I can to keep up.

"Everybody know you came to Africa and tried to turn all the Africans into faggots! The white people be bringing over that freaky shit, turning the black people into punks!" He goes on like this for a while. The guy sitting next to me is cracking up in his seat. The bongo man finishes up triumphantly: "So don't talk to me about voodoo, motherfucker!"

I'm just trying to get it all down, when out of the corner of my eye I see bongo man running my way, drums still strapped to his waist, dreadlocks bouncing in their topknot. Suddenly he's standing right in front of me, leaning down so that his face is inches from mine. "What are you writing?" he asks, turning his neck to get a look at my notebook. "You writing for The New York Times?"

"No," I say, sizing him up. It's so weird to get caught like this, my invisible observer cover totally blown.

"You with Homeland Security?" He's not being belligerent, just enjoying messing with me, so I tell him, "Yeah."

"Yeah, that's all right," he says, and darts back to his post by the stairs, where he starts singing Bob Marley's "One Love." Ah, the irony.

Tuesday, March 16, 9:15 a.m., "L" train, Bedford to Sixth Avenue - "F" train, Sixth Avenue to Rock Center

So I've spent the night at his place a couple of times now, and there's something about taking the subway into work together in the morning that makes me feel happy. He buys us coffee at the deli on our way to the Nassau Avenue station, where we get on the "G" (which to my surprise runs rather reliably during the morning rush), and then we switch to the "F" at Court Sq. to get to Rock. Center, where we work around the corner from each other. I peel back the plastic lid on my coffee and drink the hot liquid while we wait for the train, then hold it shut as we hurry to make the transfer, all the cells in my body starting to wake up from the caffeine.

I used to work at his office, which is how we know each other, and I wonder when one of my other former coworkers is going to walk by just as we are kissing goodbye at the top of the subway steps outside the building. This is a brand new thing we have started, so I don't think anyone there really knows yet, other than one good friend of his. I'm kind of looking forward to the news hitting the gossip circuit, to be honest, already relishing people's reactions.

Last night he stayed over at my place, brought overnight things so he wouldn't have to go back up to Greenpoint in the morning like last time; I thought he'd have to go up to feed the cat at least, but he said he just dumped a lot of food in the dish last night. This morning we were both somehow showered and dressed and out of the house significantly earlier than I usually manage on my own, so there was time to buy our cups of coffee at the bakery I pass every day. We had an unhurried walk up Bedford to the "L" stop, and then we crammed ourselves into the crowded car, bleary from not enough sleep but in very good spirits. It's funny how only a few weeks ago I was looking at couples waiting for the train like they were an alien species, and now here we are riding into work together, with every indication that we are starting a new routine, a set of traditions and casual intimacies, that cup of coffee, that kiss goodbye. "Glorious," he pronounces as we come up from underground and behold the utterly gloomy gray day, and I laugh all the way across the street.

Wednesday, March 10, 7:00 a.m., "A" train at Broadway Junction

I am standing on the platform waiting for the "A" to take me to JFK; I'm on my way to Florida for five days to visit my grandma and get some much-needed sun. The sign above the platform is a little confusing--I've never taken the subway to JFK before, and the "A" splits along the way.

I'm standing behind a couple of girls squinting at the sign after looking at the subway map, standing closer to them than I ordinarily would, and I see them looking at me out of the corners of their eyes. I'm not eavesdropping on your conversation, just trying to figure out which train to get on, I want to defend myself, but then one of them takes in the red carry-on and laptop slung across my shoulders with a single glance and says, "You want the one that says 'To JFK'." I grin a little self-consciously and thank her, walk a little ways away to wait.

When an "A" train thunders into the station, I pick up my bags, then see that it says 'Lefferts Blvd.' on the side - not my train, right? I look over my shoulder at the girls, who are watching me carefully. "Uh-uh, not that one," they call out, shaking their fingers at me. "Thanks," I yell back.

Bonus: Jet Blue, Flight 19, 8:20 a.m., JFK to Ft. Lauderdale

On the plane, to introduce the flight attendants, the pilot announces, "At the front of the plane, my ex-wife, Stella; my future ex-wife, Gabriella; at the back of the plane, my mistress, Aliki, and my divorce lawyer, Ivan. Ivan might be looking for new work by the end of the day." Jet Blue has won me over.

Friday, March 5, 2004, 9:30 p.m., Downtown "6" train, Union Square to Bleecker

I love watching people read scripture while they travel underground. The guy sitting across from me is reading what appears to be a Christian bible, palm-sized, bound in green, but the practice isn't limited to Christians. I see plenty of people reading little books in Hebrew and Arabic as well, on the bus as well as the subway. It's as if they're trying to protect themselves from the spiritual perils of mass transit. I guess maybe I'm the same way with my notebook, my headphones, but I'm pretty sure that none of it's going to save me from anything other than my own boredom.

Thursday, March 4,2004, Evening rush hour, Brooklyn-bound "L" train to Bedford Ave

My friend Kierin is standing next to a couple of girls who are discussing the extensive cosmetic surgery a mutual acquaintance of theirs has had. Apparently he spent a thousand dollars on his teeth but they can't tell the difference. Also he just had some sort of growth on his forehead lanced, and one of the girls says she's been telling him to get it taken off since she met him, but it's so much bigger now that he's going to have a bag of empty skin hanging off him, like a sock. Kierin figures that they would probably remove any extra skin, but she doesn't say anything, even though she (and, she expects, every other passenger in the car) feels like a part of the conversation, that's how loud the girls are.

Tuesday, March 2, 2004, 6:00 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "L" train to Bedford Ave.

"AAAAHHHH," yells a small woman as the doors open and people start to pour out of the car at Bedford Ave. "My glasses!" For a second it looks like her glasses must have fallen down onto the tracks between the train and the platform, but then someone reaches down to the floor and hands her a pair of dark frames, which she quickly crams back onto her face. I see her run to catch up with a pair of men and figure she was traveling with them, but then I hear her yell at one of them, "You knocked off my glasses!" Her voice is still tinged with panic, and I don't really blame her for being so angry - suddenly blind on the subway is not a state you want to be in. I bet she reads those ads for LASIK surgery with a little more interest now.

A side note: if you're having a crisis of faith about humanity, drop something important on the subway or the bus and see how many people's first instinct is to get it back to you. I had a woman run after me last Saturday after I got off the bus at North 7th and Bedford and hand me my wallet; it had dropped from my lap when I got up for my stop, completely distracted, talking on the phone. Whoever you are, lady, you earned my eternal gratitude and hopefully racked up some good karma points to boot. I had the chance to return the favor a few days later when a woman dropped her PATH card in the lobby of the building where I work, so I ran after her to return it.

Sunday, February 29, 2004, 4:45 p.m., Uptown "F" platform at Sixth avenue

One of the benches on the platform has been taken over by two homeless men. They have installed themselves there, wrapped in filthy blankets, along with their possessions: bags, carts, a long walking stick, a pair of shoes on newspaper, all in a towering mountain of stuff so that it looks like they have made an encampment. All they need is a fire and maybe a dog.

There are two other men walking by the bench just ahead of me, and as he passes, one of them pulls his scarf up over his nose and mouth with a broad gesture of distaste. He's right - it smells terrible, the stink of misery and horrible human stench and waste, the worst body odor imaginable, rancid, almost palpable. But he is obnoxious and loud in his comments.

"No breathing zone," he yells to his companion. "Can't they find somewhere else to go, a shelter or something?"

"They don't always let them in," explains the other man.

"Still they could at least go there and take a shower," complains the first man,. "They stink."

The friend doesn't respond to this, just says, "Do you know last Thursday a homeless woman was pushed onto the tracks of the "N" train, right near Bloomingdale's? That's just one stop from where I get out every morning."

"Maybe she said something to someone," says the obnoxious guy, relentless.

"She didn't say anything," says the friend disgustedly. I wonder why he even bothers.

Monday, February 23, 2004, 9:15 a.m., uptown "N/R/W" at Union Square

My friend Kierin recently told me about a girl who dropped her new 80-dollar cell phone onto the "F" tracks and climbed down to retrieve it. The train came into the station around a blind curve and didn't have time to stop, and the girl was ripped from the hands of her rescuers. It was in the news.

My friend Chris dropped his minidisk recorder onto the tracks a few months ago, and he jumped down to get it. And my friend Greg told me the other night that his friend Lissi lost a high-heeled shoe down there one time and went down after it, hauled herself back up all covered in subway grime. Can you imagine, jumping down there like it's nothing, and then the subway comes? Just think about the power of a train as it thunders in, the tons of crushing steel along the tracks, the sheer force of it.

As I wait for the "N/R/W" train (now just the "N/R," I think - the new route changes are still confusing me, especially since the "N" is running on both sides of the track, local and express) at Union Square this morning, all the way back at the end of the platform by the steps to the "L," the train rushing in shocks me a little with its size and speed and unstoppable might, the way it fills the tunnel from edge to edge, how there isn't anything between it and the fragile bodies of the people waiting to board it--no guardrail, no protective barrier, nothing. It's like what we have instead of nature, here in the city, a huge unstoppable thing you have to treat with a healthy respect even as it contributes to your survival.

Sunday, February 22, 10:30 p.m., "L" platform at Sixth Avenue

There is an enormous, I mean gigantic, rat on the platform, and there is clearly something wrong with it. Probably not a congenital disorder, I'm thinking, because of the sheer size of the thing - it must have taken it some time to get that big: at least a foot from nose to tip of tail, I swear to God, so big it looks more like a rat puppet than a real rat. Either it ingested rat poison, though I don't know what the stages of rat poisoning look like, or it's been injured somehow, or else it contracted some kind of degenerative rat disease because its rear legs don't seem to be working all that well and every so often as it lumbers across the platform, stumbling like a drunk and totally oblivious to the people all around, its back end just sort of falls over.

There is a small group of people watching the rats progress, warily, though with interest. The Rat Show is the best thing on at the moment. One girl takes some pictures. The rat is near the foot of some stairs, and as most people come down them they either see the rat and freeze for a minute before either continuing down and giving the rat a very wide berth, or else they do a 180 and retreat to find another way down. This is interesting, but not as interesting as the people who don't notice the rat at all and come perilously close to it as they walk by. Those of us watching watch especially closely then, hoping for something exciting to happen, for someone to step on it, maybe, or for the rat to attack someone's foot. Instead the rat waddles up against the wall and tries to walk into it, bumping up against it again and again--definitely something wrong with this rat, a neurological thing, maybe? Maybe all the rats in the subway suffer chronic health problems?

But then a guy walks really close to the rat, closer than anyone else has, and we all hold our breath. He is literally just a few inches from the thing, standing right up next to the same part of the wall the rat is walking into. And then the guy faces the wall and starts getting very interested in it, tracing the brick outlines, writing invisible initials with his fingertip, drawing imaginary graffiti. It's hard to tell what he thinks he's doing, but he is completely captivated. So then I'm thinking: maybe it's the wall. Maybe it's emitting some kind of brain-damaging fumes. Like radon, maybe. I don't have time to test this theory though because the train finally comes to take us all home to Brooklyn.

Sunday, February 22, 2004, 1:00 p.m., "N/W" train, Queensboro Plaza to Ditmars Park

I'm on my way to visit friends in Astoria and the day feels like an adventure; I've never traveled this way before. The "N/W" is elevated at Queensboro Plaza into a long curving double-decker track, and it is beautiful - a beautiful day, the sky clear and blue, the air warm enough for my leather jacket; my winter coat can go to hell. Walking from the bus to this station with a heavy backpack on, I feel like a tourist in another country, this territory unfamiliar and exciting.

And can we take a moment to sing the praises of the B61 bus? There's really no better way to survey the neighborhood, you ride in style high up along Bedford Ave., through the visibly gentrifying south side, past the hipster mecca near the "L" stop at North Seventh, up past the park, into Greenpoint. There are bright shops crowded together on narrow Manhattan Ave., people walking up the street in a hurry, the B61 bus gives you a lingering glimpse, then takes you over the bridge into Queens.

The train comes around the curve in the tracks and there is something gorgeous about the way it looks as it comes in, something about the peaked metal roof over the platform, maybe, or the steel zigzag struts supporting it. The two levels of track remind me of the decks of a steamboat, or an old-fashioned roller coaster, one of the ones still made of wood. Riding through Queens among the high and low buildings, I remember how big this city is, how much larger than I usually realize. As we move I can see the ground below, and for a second I have the delicious gut-dropping illusion that my legs are just dangling above the drop. 

Thursday, February 19, 2004, Morning rush hour, Manhattan-bound "Q" train, Ditmars Park, Queens.

My friend Louisa is talking to her 61-year-old train conductor, whom she likes to refer to as Joe Pesci II (because he has the same voice), about her morning routine. "My boyfriend leaves before I do, because I have trouble getting out of bed," she tells him.

"Me, I like to get up at 4 every morning," he says. "You have a good complexion, but it would never work out between us."

Wednesday, February 18, 2004, 9:15 a.m., "L" train, Bedford Avenue to Union Square

Today I overhear two guys talking next to me in Spanish . "Yo la tengo," says one, but somehow I don't think they're talking about indie rock, even if this is the "L" train.

Tuesday, February 17, 2004, 7:00 p.m. , "L" train to Eighth Avenue

Exiting the station, as I go up the stairs I see, first: an empty gauze bandage wrapper; second: a red-soaked paper towel; third: a pool--literally, a pool--of blood on several steps. Evidence! Here is my reconstruction of events. As best as I can figure, someone who was bleeding profusely (possibly a gunshot wound? knife injury?) stumbled down the steps into the subway while in the process of self-administering first aid. Direct pressure with towels, check. Sterile bandage, check. They must have done a good job, too, because there wasn't a trace of blood beyond the package of gauze.

Monday, February 16, 2004, 6:45 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "L" train

Overheard:
He: "Well, she probably knows you better on a personal level than I do."
She: "No, let's keep it true. Where was she when I got my hair all tied up in knots?"

Thursday, February 12, 1:30 pm, downtown "F" train, 63rd and Lex. to Rockefeller Center

On my way back to work from the dentist, still experimentally touching my tongue to my new filling (No Novocain; I am so tough), I step into the car and start heading for one of the two empty orange seats in a row of three at the end of the car, until I see that what at first glance was red spray paint on the seat is in fact a streaked pool of red liquid. Instead I sit across from it, and am idly speculating on its composition - it looks like blood, but there's such an awful lot of it - when a girl starts sitting down in it.

"Hold on!" yells the woman next to me, who until this moment has been absolutely carved in immobility like a statue.

"Don't sit down!" shouts the woman across from me.

I belatedly hear myself utter, "Wait!"

The girl looks up, bewildered, and we point at the seat. "Wow, thanks. I totally didn't see it," she says, peering closer. "I'm not wearing my glasses."

The statue fishes in her purse and produces an immaculate paper towel, folded, which she hands to the girl. "You got some on your coat," she says. The girl twists around, trying to see the hem of her coat, and dabs at it with the towel.

"What do you think that is?" I ask, fascinated in spite of myself. "Is it blood?"

The statue shrugs. "Juice, maybe."

Thursday, February 12, 9:30 a.m. (running late again), uptown "Q" train, Union Square to 42nd street

There was a smell today in the last car: an industrial-strength cleaning product chemical odor, underneath which was a slightly less strong human shit odor, best not to think about the source. I could feel the expression on my face curl into one of distaste as I switched over to mouth-breathing, but I didn't notice anyone else experiencing similar discomfort. Did it only smell bad right by where I was sitting? This seemed unlikely, as the smell had a diffuse, pervasive quality to it, no doubt reinforced by whatever air recirculation method is used on subway cars. (Stop for a moment to consider the air on subway cars, the air in the tunnels, the wind that blows god knows what kind of filthy particles into your face when you lean out over the track to get a glimpse of those cockeyed headlights coming in). Perhaps my nose is more delicate, my sense of smell more highly tuned - entirely possible. Yesterday riding the "F" uptown from Rock Center to Columbus Circle, I was almost overpowered by a smell that seemed to be coming from a cake in a plastic box on the seat next to me, one of those supermarket cakes covered with that cloying, artificially sweet white frosting.

Saturday, February 7, 4:30 pm, Manhattan-bound "M" train, Hewes St. to Essex/Delancey

The "L" is not running this weekend, so I am taking the "M" into Manhattan. It's funny to see all of the bewildered Williamsburg hipsters waiting at the Hewes St. station (Marcy Manhattan-bound is closed till June); many of the people I know in the neighborhood never venture southside. I actually really like the "J/M/Z" train. It's not as high-tech or nice as the "L", but it works reliably, and since it's elevated you get to see everything go by beneath you -the unfamiliar faces of buildings you know, the streets running more crooked than you expect. There's always someone standing in the front window of the front car, and this time it's two little kids - their faces pressed against the glass to see the track opening up before them. I like going over the Williamsburg Bridge, seeing the East River calmly reflecting the late afternoon light, the orange color in the sky behind the other bridges to the south. It's a lovely day for the elevated track - even possible to believe spring might be coming someday soon.

Wednesday, February 4, Morning rush hour, Manhattan-bound "L" train, Bedford Ave to Union Square

The morning "L" train is not generally remarkable for anything other than its jam-packed crowd condition--I am periodically reminded of a friend's description of the subways in Tokyo, where as a kid he could actually lift both feet off the ground and be supported, there was such a press, and where there were people whose job it was to shove as many people as possible into the cars. (We do fine on our own here in New York, thanks.)

This morning is no different than usual; people close their eyes if they are lucky enough to be sitting, or stare blankly if they are not, crammed in shoulder to shoulder. But I know that when I look at the "missed connections" page on Craigslist later in the day when I am bored at work, there will be about a thousand postings that read "I saw you on the "L" train. Our eyes met, but I was too shy/it was too crowded to talk to you." There is a secret life occurring on this train, however hidden; there is raw longing pulsing through the car underneath the collective glassy stare, the surly frustration, the stoic endurance, the general morning misery and exhaustion. I look around and try to see it, all the people searching for love but afraid to risk it.

Sunday, February 1, 9:30 p.m., Brooklyn-bound "L" train, Union Square to Bedford Ave

As the train pulls to a halt at the platform where I'm waiting, I board the second-to-last car instead of my usual last because there is a guy sitting by the door with a little dog zipped into his jacket, and I like this. The dog looks like a fat fox with an intelligent expressive face and the guy obviously adores it--he's got his arms around it over his jacket and his face pressed against its head, and every so often he gives it a little squeeze or nuzzles it, like a kid with a beloved stuffed animal. This guy looks like his dog could be the only thing keeping him from feeling utterly alone in the universe.

There is a girl sitting next to him who keeps stealing glances at the two of them and smiling to herself like she's trying to suppress it but just can't help it. She has a warm expression and a generous mouth and when it quirks up at the corners her whole face looks secretly happy. Once her eyes meet his eyes and she smiles at him, but he immediately drops his gaze back down to the dog, gives it a squeeze and kisses the top of its head. When my stop arrives I stand to go, and the girl and I make eye contact for a second. We both smile as our eyes flick to the guy and his dog, and this time her smile is wide and happy; I can see the little gaps between her teeth.

Saturday, January 31, 2004, late night (technically Sunday morning), Downtown "F" at 42nd Street

It's after 2 a.m. but there are plenty of people waiting for the downtown "F" train at 42nd Street. I am there with friends Keith and Stephanie after a long night working at the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus across the street, and we are all tired and ready to go home. When a train finally pulls into the station, we are relieved to see it until we hear somebody scream: an older homeless man has fallen on the platform. He is passed out on the ground, right up against the train, and is so quiet and so unresisting as the train comes to a stop that he looks more like a fabric dummy than a person, like there isn't really a person inside that quilted coat. But of course there is.

Everyone seems to suck in a collective breath of 'oh my God' for this weird instant of suspension, and then there is a rush to see what has happened, what is happening. Did he fall in front of the train or into it? And, Jesus, I think, where is his head?

But there is his head, lolling to one side; the ledge under the doors hit it a few times says Stephanie.

It seems that he fell once the train had already started coming in. The real question is where is his arm: it is somehow hanging down in the narrow gap between the train and the platform, is it crushed? I don't know if this is about to be awful and start preparing myself for shock, but there is no blood, no obvious trauma, and Stephanie takes off running to tell the guy in the booth upstairs what's happened while I dash down the platform to call 9-1-1 from the payphone there.

It is my first 9-1-1 call, and in the middle of everything I am glad to note that I am a good 9-1-1 caller, calm and clear and cool-headed. The same, unfortunately, can't be said of the woman on the other end of the line; after I have told her "the downtown "F" platform at 42nd Street" at least three times, she asks me AGAIN what borough I am in. I mean, these are the people handling our emergency system?

Finally the MTA police show up with a bad attitude: "I heard there was a man down on the tracks," one says to another as they walk by. "This is nothing." The passengers on the stopped train are likewise generally unsympathetic; when the conductor announces that the train is being discharged due to an injured passenger I hear one guy complain that there's nothing wrong with the train; can't they just discharge the passenger? But other people surround the man with concern, including an off-duty EMT who tends him until the paramedics arrive. He is conscious and able to move both arms, and when they wheel him off in a chair there doesn't seem to be a scratch on him.

"God bless him," says Stephanie, watching him pass. "I don't know if he's a fool or an angel."

 

Ellia Bisker has worked at a children's publishing house and a museum, as well as a great number of strange odd jobs. Currently she is a graduate student in New York City, where she also works with a small circus www.bindlestiff.org, proofreads teen novels, and writes and performs songs on the ukulele. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Pif magazine www.pifmagazine.com, McSweeney's www.mcsweeneys.net, ReadyMade, and Nat Creole magazine www.natcreole.com. She easily spends two hours a day on the subway. Visit her website at www.elliabisker.com.

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