The Subway Chronicles

A guy is playing slide guitar, real muddy delta stuff, no singing, just strings bending and wailing. Now this is Christmas music, something a guy nailed to the cross over the weekend and back to work three days later would understand. His tip jar overfloweth. Even crusty old me throws in a quarter.

Monday, December 20, 2004, Morning Commute, Manhattan-bound F

The train smells like ketchup. Some bit of McDonald’s left behind from that 'O God the world is spinning,
I’ve got to get something in my stomach' late night snack. Baby at home, I’ve almost forgot what that life was like. Don’t worry Wheaton’s got that beat.

PS. I will not be licking any portion of the train.

In those two stops between Seventh Avenue and Carroll Street, that the F train is elevated, a little girl is
standing, I’m not making this up, she is standing on her seat to get a view of the Statue of Liberty. Her
father is telling her to sit down because it’s dangerous. I say let her stand. Let her stand.

Thursday, December 9, 2004, Morning Commute, Manhattan-bound F

This bum is something out of Dante, a spirit tormented and goaded on to torment others. He is making a vile music with his change cup. Instead of rattling it, he is slamming the coins against the inside of the cup by thrusting out his arm. He makes the sound three or four times in a row and each time it seems more insistent. Shuffling from one end of the car to the other, he is getting closer to me. His skin is burnt dark and he smells. Dirty gray hair is spilling out from under his hood and his white beard is tucked into the front of his pants. He starts muttering at people as he goes by. At first I think it’s just nonsense syllables, a speaking in tongues for the Devil, but it resolves itself into Spanish as he gets closer. He pauses in the doorway at Jay Street and yells at us all for a moment before exiting.

Monday, December 6, 2004, Manhattan-bound F

I’m not paying attention to anything. My earphones are on (no music) and I’ve just read the sports page
without retaining a single word, when a voice cuts through my disconnectedness. Deep, mellow,
authoritative, a West Indies accent, I think it’s an announcement for a moment. But it’s preaching, less
crazy and repetitive than usual for a subway preacher. I have no idea why but this morning it’s mildly
pleasant as he rhythmically goes through a litany of sins that pass for fun on a Saturday night. Amen, the pills and the booze and the Ya-Ya-Ya partying never got me anywhere either. I take my earphones off to hear him a little better. Just when I think the Holy Ghost might have a shot, some one wants to argue. A woman I would have taken for mousy becomes the first person I have ever seen talk back to a subway preacher, “Not everyone believes what you believe. Some people don’t want to listen to this stuff.”

Ordinarily she would be my hero, but this morning I’m torn. Fierce but reasonable atheist or passionate
apostle? They argue a bit and finally he tells her that she doesn’t have to listen but that she could be
quiet until it’s over. But she doesn’t want to be quiet. When she persists, he begins speaking in
tongues at her. I don’t think I’ve heard that since moving north to the Blue State Capital. Of course,
that wins the argument.

Sunday, December 5, 2004, 11:30 am, F train

On the weekend, you see more kids and old folks on the train. Monday through Friday, those hours before nine and after five, we are the party of hunters and every other hour, the whole village rides the train.

Thursday, December 2, 2004, morning commute, Manhattan-bound F

Someone across from me is writing in her journal that someone across from her is writing in his journal. What are the possibilities? An assignment from her psychiatrist? Seems sane. An editorial for the company newsletter? A eulogy for someone she lost touch with years ago? The pen is moving too fast for her to be a poetess. She’s practical enough to wear the jogging shoes on the commute and keep the leather pumps shoved under her desk. Essayist? Fiction writer? The malevolent stranger watched her from across the car. After each glance he would write something in his notebook, making angry movements on the punctuation. Loretta thinks it’s obviously an assignment from his psychiatrist or some new-agey parole officer. She checks her skirt to make sure he can’t see too much. He won’t stop looking at my feet. Sexual deviant, I bet. Whatever floats your boat, Mister. You just stay over there and I’ll stay over here.

Wednesday, December 1, 2004, Morning commute, Manhattan-bound F

A homeless man has created a pocket of empty seats. Any experienced rider knows to approach these pockets very carefully. It passes the smell test, more or less, and he isn’t yelling at anyone yet. He has a
tremendous beard, the kind only an academic or a transient can get away with, not long, but bushy and
round like a bit of topiary. It makes the bit of scruff that I’ve been sporting as a guard against over
domestication look like the weak effort of teenager pretending he’s old enough to buy beer. He’s pulling
at it rhythmically but it springs back into shape.

There is a well-dressed man sitting in front of me wearing a yarmulke. He takes a box of Entenmanns’s
pastries out of his leather bag. It’s morning so I think it must be the mini muffins but it’s chocolate
chip cookies for breakfast. One-two-three-four-five cookies for breakfast and the box goes back into his
bag, ready for the next little emotional downturn that might be righted with a bit of sugar and chocolate.
What measures have I taken? None.

My somewhat empty car suddenly becomes crowded at Carroll Street, but I have a seat so I watch their plight with bemusement. Any human situation immediately stratifies into varying grades of have and have not. Have a good seat (me this morning), an okay seat, a seat wedged in between two large people not honoring the clearly denoted boundaries of the plastic butt grooves. Have no seat at all but a grip on the center pole, a grip on the rails above the seats, one finger curled around the rail as you reach over a few belligerents, a desperate hand pancaked to the roof, and finally the lowest of low, no grip on anything at all and wondering if you fall whether they will help you up or trample you to death on their way off the train. If I let myself I could feel very superior having this seat. Obviously I was rewarded by my foresight in getting on the train at an earlier stop and moving towards the un-crowded center of the platform. Luck? Sure if you want to call luck a positive attitude and a willingness to seize the moment. Yes, it could be very tempting.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004, Homebound C-A-F Spring Street Station

There is some bit of indigestion, a minor rumbling in the system. The C train is too crowded for me to get on. Most New Yorkers would have gotten on but I’m finicky. I let another C and A pass by before I
finally take an A that’s no more crowded than usual. Of course I haven’t escaped anything. Three stops
later at Broadway Nassau, the platform is full of people, not finicky like me, who couldn’t physically
push their way onto the last three trains. By this time I have made it to the relatively calm center of
the train.

In general, people are courteous enough to move towards the center as the train fills up. However,
tolerable personal space limits will only collapse so far. By the doors, it’s like a rugby scrum with people
pushing into one another and reaching over each other for hand holds. It is the most open space but with few places to hold on. As you travel towards the area between the two doors, the space narrows with seats along the sidewalls and poles in the center. Not faced with the open combat in front of the doors, people in the narrows will only move as close to the next person as what they personally consider sane. With each stop, they might, depending on their general feelings on humanity, move in a grudging inch or two just to show the poor bastards by the doors that they care. The half-heartedness of the gesture is perfectly obvious to the people by the doors. Only once, have I ever heard anyone protest the order of things. At Carroll Street, a woman had had enough and addressed the whole car
loudly in a voice that was a whisper below a shout: WILL THE PEOPLE IN THE MIDDLE PLEASE MOVE IN. Most of the people shrugged and a few moved in another inch.

Tuesday, November 30, 2004, "F" Train

Monday, November 29, 2004, Manhattan-bound "F" train

The train is nearly empty again. At first this seems like good fortune, but we are held at Seventh Avenue because of an unseen train some unspecified distance in front of us. Our train is moving too fast and we've almost caught up to the next one. Somewhere in the Batcave, an alarm is going off--- TRAIN MOVING TOO FAST. The guys in the white lab coats are probably yelling at each other, "My God, Primm might make it to work on time. What should we do?" and the calm guy, the one in charge, says "Give the order to MEANDER." And now we are meandering. The difference is slight. The train moves a few miles per hour slower, from a rattle to a hum, and at each station it pauses for a beat or two longer. The announcements change from a seal barking to a kind old uncle giving advice. It's working. I'm being lulled. I don't care how long the ride lasts or when I get to work. At the last moment I notice the C train across the platform at Jay Street. A semi-rare conjunction of A/C over Jay. GO, GO, GO. Walkman wires flapping, back pack hanging open, journal in hand, incoming riders (excuse me excuse me excuse me), and I make it. Nice try, MTA.

Wednesday, November 24, 2004, Manhattan-bound "F" Train

This morning it's Steely Dan on the earphones, a cocoon of angular irony. I'm untouchable, People! The mood on the train is subdued. Almost everyone has a seat. It's the day before Thanksgiving and everyone knows their work will be quieter. If you get 100 emails a day, you might get ten today. And the big bosses, you know, the ones that you don't see on the subway, they left town yesterday. A few people are fake subway sleeping. On a normal morning, the fake sleepers seem to have slammed their faces shut like doors and you can see the strain as they struggle to keep them closed. This morning it's a look of peace, like they are meditating.

Tuesday, November 23, 2004, Manhattan-bound "F" train

Morning, already fifteen minutes late for work but I'll worry about that when the train stops in Manhattan. A thin stream of coffee is making its way across the floor of the subway car. The cup is lying on its side, rolling back and forth over the same two feet as the train rattles on. Two kids are on the train, one about five and the other three. They haven't joined our grim pact of silence and babble back and forth, very important business.

Jay Street, and if I were more ambitious, I would change to the A/C line, cut a few stops, and get to work five minutes sooner. But I have a seat and a newspaper so I stay. Besides that would be a different Jason altogether. Maybe that Jason would be wearing a suit with shined up shoes, carrying an Italian leather briefcase and working on a Blackberry. Of course that Jason wouldn't have majored in English, poor sweater-wearing bastard.

Instead, I will ride the F to West Fourth, one stop past my stop and back track. Occasionally my friends and I argue about which train to take and when to switch. Out of pure cussedness, I argue that this backtracking is somehow quicker. The thin stream of coffee has spread out so there is no avoiding it. My feet are right in the middle of it. Wake up feet.

Wednesday, December 23, 2004, F train platform at 15th Street/prospect park