Thursday, April 7, 2005, 12:15 a.m., 2 train, Times square to eastern parkway

There’s an old man sitting across from me, black leather jacket and brown golf pants. On his hand, in blue marker, a 1 and an M and what a swastika. A beige beret sits atop his black head.  

This makes little sense to me. Makes me want to crawl home and dose up on Tylenol PM (the poor man’s barbiturate) and say goodnight to an over-stimulated mind and an exhausted body. 

Guy two seats from me is explaining to a girl he just met about the butler-training classes he’s attending. 

Again, what the hell? 

Tonight, after bitching about the jazz show I saw—jazz in a box, jazz trapped in a classical setting, in amber, as something to study—I was told I have anger issues. 

And I was told I was hyper-emotional. Nice phrase, but the truth is, it takes all of an hour of talking to me to figure that under the blank stare one might see on the subway is the typical ball of neuroses necessary to get someone to pick up a pen and write. 

“I want to advance my knowledge of catering. Catering and real estate,” says Calvin the butler, explaining why he wants to move back to Philly. He’s using catering to further his real estate goals. 

“You can be from the hood, but not of the hood,” says Calvin. 

He’s seen Hillary Clinton at an event, describes her as “very, very gorgeous.” 

What the hell? I don’t know, but if I were a black man hitting on a black woman, I don’t know if I’d be going on about how gorgeous a white woman is—especially a white woman who by any objective standard isn’t gorgeous. 

This is my first subway ride in a very long while after having quite a few drinks. It’s all grating on me, the fluorescent lights, the pre-recorded voices, looming deadlines, the sad excuse for a courtship ritual going on beside me. It just screams futility. 

“We served about 550 guests tonight.” Apparently Calvin had traveled all the way to Boston for a catering gig at Harvard. “Three-course meal.” He reads part of the menu. “Yeah, it’s really nice.” He sounds and looks like the chubby black judge from American Idol. 

“Now you’re making me hungry,” she says. 

Sometimes the staff captains test Calvin on the menu to make sure he has the menu down cold. He’s holding a silver cork screw in his right hand, describing tonight’s dessert option. Rich almond chocolate something or other. (I’m not being tested). 

Calvin believes in the zodiac. He’s an Aries. I’m having a sinus attack, snot dribbling out of my nose. No doubt I look like a coke head, what with the suit and the bright green shirt and the out of control sniffling.  

I guess that after a month of iPod isolation and no booze, this is all a bit much for me. 

“I generally try not to get too much into the food end.” 

Calvin, Calvin, Calvin. 

“I can get by on making daiquiris.”  

Shut up, dude. Quit rambling about your catering gig, bragging about it, even. Let her talk. Ask some questions. “It was nice. It was nice,” he says. I think he’s talking about the last subway stop. He’s one of those people who can’t allow a single moment of silence. And did he just let slip that he, who can’t be a day under 35, lives at home with his mom?  

Now he’s explaining how to make mojitos—except he pronounces it mohituhs. Not only does he pronounce them wrong, but he makes them with vodka.  

He tells her he’s met “senators from around the world.” 

He catered an event at the Intrepid during the Republican Convention. “Calvin, you son of a bitch, you serve the best damn mohituhs in the world.” That’s from a Tennessee senator. 

“You gotta swallow your pride sometimes,” says Calvin. 

Okay. Now I’m hearing you, Calvin. Now I’m hearing you, dawg.

Saturday, April 2, 2005, 1:40 p.m., 2 train, 14th street to eastern parkway

The train just sits here. Sick passenger at Clark Street. So sick, in fact, that they’ve taken both 2/3 and 1/9 trains out of service. This is most excellent as the 4/5 is not running into Brooklyn either—but that service interruption is due to “construction,” not because they’re hauling drunks off the train or pulling a body off of the tracks.

 Or covering up an anthrax scare. 

The conductor suggest we take the L to Union Square then take the Q. I suggest the conductor go fuck himself. He’s an idiot. And I’m not just saying that. After 15 minutes, he decides to move us out of the station. It takes us half an hour to crawl to chambers. We start pulling out of Chambers and stop, half the train in the station, half the train out. We sit for 15 minutes, listening to the conductor and someone else give conflicting messages about what we’re doing—either backing the train up all the way into the station or moving on to Brooklyn. Neither of them has a clue.  

So I stick my earphones back in my head, listening to The Doves, trying to forget the fact that my transportation schedule, on any given day, is controlled by a band of clowns. 

I notice all heads in the car turn south. 

I turn. 

A white guy with platinum hair and a matching scarf, a long black coat and bug-eyed shades. He’s got head phones on, is watching himself in the door’s reflection as he dances.  

Fuck him. He’s an idiot, too. 

But I see my fellow passengers trying not to laugh. They all look like school kids who’ve just heard the teacher fart. 

I have the in-ear iPod buds, designed to absolutely, positively shut every other motherfucking sound out. So those have to come out 

“Una poca de gracia para mi para ti, Arriba, arriba.” 

Dude’s singing La Bamba, the crazy son of a bitch. Even I have to smile a little at that. By this point, some people are laughing out loud and our flamboyant entertainer turns around and does a little shimmy and shake for his audience. Under his black coat, he’s wearing sweats and a dirty white shirt. That’s more than a little disappointing. I was expecting, I don’t know, flair.

He turns back to the door to admire his reflection. The next bit of song he goes into is “Donna.” I’d bet fifty bucks he’s listening to the LaBamba soundtrack, to Los Lobos rather than Richie Valens. 

Fucking awesome.

Friday, March 25, 2005, 2/3 Eastern Parkway platform

Good Friday.

I'm standing on the Eastern Parkway/Brooklyn Museum platform waiting for the 2/3 train at 6 a.m. I'm hoping that because it's a holiday the train will be empty. But as the train pulls in I see the first car is full, the second car is full, the third. These folks out here in Brooklyn, I guess, are the people that make
the city run. And taking a day off of work because some guy went and got himself nailed to a tree by Romans 2000 years ago is not an option.

Ah, but the fourth car. It's half empty. Of course, I know that there's probably a really good reason for this. Still, I want to sit. So I stick my head cautiously into the car, checking for two things. The first is that I would be able to use the door at the end of the car to move to another should that need arise. The second thing I check for the eye-watering, nostril burning hint of bum stench.

But despite the fact that there's one homeless guy stretched out sleeping on the bench seat and another stretched out, belly up on the floor, there is no odor of month-old human steeping in a marinade of feces, urine and Thunderbird. I look at the guy on the floor for a few seconds just to make sure he's breathing. I don't want to be one of those people who ride around on a train for half an hour with a dead guy and never notice. If he's dead--I'll just get off. (I kid. I kid.)

So I sit down, turn the iPod up and settle into challenge my reading comprehension skills with the New York Post. Seems one of the circuit court judges in Florida who upheld the Schiavo decision is a Republican, a Southern Baptist, Brooklyn born and still managed to do his job. He even roomed, while at
Florida State, with one of the most overrated musicians and, ahem, poets of the 20th Century, that hack Jim Morrison. Interesting.

Then I notice that we're not moving at Hoyt Street. We've stopped. Passengers have exited. But we're not moving. Crap. A police officer walks into the train, a mountain of a black man, six-foot-six if he's a foot. A look of disgust on his face, he stands over the floor-sleeping bum and pulls on a pair of gloves. He bends allll the way down and, gently, pokes the guy in the shoulder.

No effect. He pokes, a little harder this time. Nothing. He's saying something, but I've got Kings of Leon's Aha Shake Heartbreak blaring in my ears (despised them at first, but have grown quite fond of them on subsequent listens) so I can't hear what he's saying. The second round of poking produces no results, so he spreads a big hand on the guy's chest and gives that sumbitch one hell of a shaking.

Nothing.

He stands up to full height, leans back a little as if stretching out, then bends down again. After grabbing a handful of shirt, he tugs.

Nothing.

Another cop walks in, pulling on a pair of gloves as he does so. This one looks like somewhat like the first one, and he's not smiling either. By this point, everyone on my half of the train is doing a very un-New Yorker thing and giving this their full attention. People even seem to be talking, so out come the
earphones. Yes, people are not only talking, they're laughing as well as the two cops bend down and lift the North American Floor Bum into a sitting position. Because of Floor Bum's original angle and his big belly and layers of clothes I hadn't got a good look at his face. He doesn't seem in the horrible shape that I've seen some guys. He undoubtedly is homeless, but it's possible he could be just some white or Hispanic guy that happened to have way too much to drink and figured the subway floor was a good place to sleep it off.

So they lift him up and plop him in the seat. He slouches over and they prop him back up, almost gingerly, their hands making that "stay, stay" motion, before they turn to the other guy. The passengers laugh.

The other guy wakes up easily and this seems to anger the cops for some reason. "Let's go," they both say and drag him to his feet and out the car, the toes of his shoes squeaking along the floor and his jacket falling off.

At this point, the automatic announcement comes on: "Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, the train is being temporarily held at this station because of a sick passenger on the train. We apologize for the unavoidable delay."

The passengers really laugh this time.

John and Ponch come back in and whisk the other guy off.

"Please stand clear of the closing doors," says the fake announcer.

And off we go.

"Dem people is just pure garbage," says the Jamaican woman sitting across from me. She's got maroon eyebrows painted onto her forehead. "Trash."
 

Wednesday, February, 16, 2005, 4 train- union square to nevins, 2 train -nevins to eastern parkway

I’m zoned out, lost in a bad mood and a Walkman, staring at the pair of shoes across from me. when I notice the male half of the happy couple squirming a bit more than would seem necessary. They got on the train with me--a late-20s, early 30s white couple who sort of look alike. All they’re doing is talking. She’s got her head on his shoulders. But he’s shifting. Something about the movement seems reminiscent. I’ve been there, done that, I think, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. My eyes go back to the floor, to the spot near his shoes. His legs cross, then uncross. I start to look up again, when I notice him slyly tug at his pants leg and then it hits me.  

He’s trying to hide a boner!

That’s where I recognize that fidgeting from, that half miserable look on his face. From grade school. From math class. From the bus right before it drops you off. I look up at their faces, to see if maybe she’s whispering or sticking her tongue in his ear, but nothing. Head still on his shoulder, looking off into space, saying something every now and then. I guess it’s just one of those nights when he knows he’s going to get some. Maybe they’re still new to the relationship. Maybe she’s got something special planned for him and she’s told him about it. 

Whatever the case, we pull into Nevins and, for a second, I think I may have misjudged the whole thing. I get up to transfer. She gets up to transfer. He remains sitting. Could they possibly be parting? Without a hug or a kiss?  

Ah, but no, he lets her go first, waits ten seconds, then pulls the classic stand up, yank down on the jacket and move your bag in front of your midsection. 

I’d feel sorry for him, but hey, he’s getting laid tonight.

Monday, February 14, 2005, 4 train, grand central to nevns

9:00 a.m.

Running down the steps to the platform, I found my hand clutching my keys—as if I were running down to the garage to start my car and hurry off to work. I have neither a car nor a garage. I think I’m wanting to escape the city and I don’t know if Coney Island is going to keep doing the trick.

5:20 p.m.

A rainy day, too dark too soon, and I’m on my way to a Valentine’s Night spent alone. I’m also seven days sober and I’m listening to The O.C. soundtrack, because it’s all I had in my bag. The O.C., mind you, was one of the albums of The M. Time (see the essay M. Trains if you find this at all confusing).

So, to recap: dark, rainy, Valentine’s Day, sober, alone. 

And I don’t feel like killing myself or even crying on the train. Which is doubly odd considering I spent a bulk of the weekend moping, overwhelmed perhaps by too much mental clarity and not enough hangover.  

A great mood? No. But not awful. And, better yet, the train isn’t overly crowded. Damp, sure. But who cares about the damp when you snag a seat during rush hour on a Monday.

Saturday, February 12, 2005, Q train, Seventh Avenue to Coney island

I imagine this isn’t a recreational trip many would make in the middle of February. And it’s not like I don’t spend enough time alone that what I need now is a walk on a cold, deserted beach. But living in the city, there’s only so much you can do when you need a change of scenery and, yesterday, while on my lunch break, I decided I needed a change of scenery. I was walking back to the office from a Chinese restaurant when I caught a glimpse of cloudless blue sky over the East River. Part of me has been clamoring to go to the beach since then. It’s as simple as that.

There are other things I should be doing now, things I’ve been putting off: house cleaning, laundry, phone calls, writing that memoir, rewriting that novel, getting my head on straight. Yet, here I am on the Q Train, cutting through the odd canyons the MTA long ago carved into the Brooklyn bedrock. Graffiti-covered walls rise up on either side, some leading directly to apartment buildings, others ending at backyard borders, where, in the summer, you can see old men playing cards and dominoes on cheap plastic lawn tables, seemingly oblivious to the trains clattering by below them.

The train car was three-quarters full when I stepped on. It’ll be interesting to see how many are still on here at the end of the ride. I suspect the large, middle-aged women across from me, with their heavy coats, may be on an excursion as well—perhaps to Brighton. 

Wrong on that account. They’re both off well before Brighton.  

And as we pull into Stillwell, there are only two other souls sharing the car with me.

Thursday, February 3, 2005, Grand central to bowling green

Already I’m in a bad mood when my coworker and Sheila sit down in the two and a half empty adjoining seats on the train. It’s after 8 on a Thursday and we’ve just gotten out of work. This train is going only to Bowling Green, requiring an extra transfer to a 4 Train. I’m trying to maintain small talk with Sheila without getting too pissed off at the world, at myself and the million little annoyances in life, when I feel a hand on my shoulder. The Mexican kid next to me, he can’t be more than 15, has let his hand fall onto my shoulder, like he’s some kid doing the sneak-around grab at the movies. I turn and look at him and the hand slinks back to the window sill.

I turn back to the conversation with Sheila. The hand falls down again. I’m at a stage in the evening where I’m looking for an excuse to beat the hell out of someone and I think I just might have it. The kid’s being a punk. And his punk-ass friend is passed out across the car. I don’t think I’d have a problem with him. I turn to the kid. 

“Dude.” I say. It’s a universal word. 

And he turns upon me a pair of the most bloodshot eyes I’ve ever seen. He squints at me, then looks at his hand as if it’s something beyond his control. Then he laughs. “Sorry, man,” he says, laughing some more. 

And I look at Sheila and she starts to laugh. “Shit,” I think to myself and laugh, too. The kid laughs some more and then, of all things, starts rubbing my back a little and calls over to his friend in word unintelligible in any language except Stoner. His friend peels one eye open and the kid laughs again, rubs my back again. 

Looks like I finally found true love on the subway.

Monday, January 31, 2005, 9:30 am, 4 train, nevins to grand central

Sometimes you go weeks on the subway system without seeing anything of note. (Of course, “of note” acquires new definitions the longer you ride the trains.) 

When he stepped into the car, it was like something from an old Western, when the bad guy walks in through the swinging saloon doors. All heads swiveled in his direction, all eyes went immediately to his feet, then started up. He was wearing the shiniest black alligator shoes ever known to man. How he managed to make his way through slushy city streets without picking up salt and mud is a question that only occurs to me now and will bug me for the rest of the day. Black pants, he wore, with a knife-like crease and perfect pleats. A shiny silver tie drew the eyes up through the field of a silk black shirt, which itself was packaged in a black fur coat that Joan Collins would have killed for. Above all this, rested a clean-shaven face hiding behind a pair of dark, bug-eyed sunglasses and covered by black fedora. An oversized silver watch and a silver cap on one tooth completed the package.  

He entered at one end of the car and strutted, like black men once did in movies from the 1970s, to the other end, where he took his position against the door, and folded his hands neatly in front of him. We watched him the entire way.  

I went  back to my book, back to my music. Then I noticed the guy sitting down and to my right—I was standing—speaking toward the door, nodding his head. 

I turned the music off in time to hear him say, “I respect what you do, man. I respect what you do. You gotta do it for the ladies.” 

There was a moment of silence before Slick answered: “No man, you don’t understand. You don’t do it for the ladies. You don’t do it for anyone else. The minute you start doing it for someone other than yourself, well …” He let his voice trailed off and shook his head a little, confident that the point was so obvious that the blank would fill itself.

Thursday, January 13, 2005, 6 train, 23rd Street platform

I’m touched by this morning’s subway singer (no, not literally, you fools, touched as in sentimentally speaking). He’s standing there with his meager belongings spread out before him on a beat-up shirt, a broken-down boombox behind him. At first, I think he’s just a beggar. He doesn’t look like a performer. But the tape starts playing and he starts singing. He’s got no stage presence. He starts off at low volume. His shoulders are hunched and he seems to be moving his eyes back and forth along the yellow warning stripe at the edge of the platform. What he looks like is a school boy who’s been forced into a recital … or a dog that’s been kicked one too many times.  

But his volume picks up. He’s singing “Sitting on the Dock of the Bay.” And his voice is good. It’s sweet, but slightly plaintive and quivers a bit. It’s heartbreaking is what it is. 

Yeesh. 

Tuesday, January 11, 2005, 2 Train, Eastern Parkway to 14^th Street

6:05 a.m.

I don’t think God hisownself wakes up this early. Not unless he’s going duck hunting or fishing for blues. Or he’s really, really behind on the smiting. 

My first day back on the 5:30 wakeup, split commute that is going to karate. New Years. Feeling flat and sluggish. Getting in shape so’s I can kick sand in the faces of other wee men this summer. That whole thing. Of course, I’m almost two weeks late with this resolution behavior, but I have plenty of excuses I don’t need to get into at this moment. 

There isn’t a great deal going on on the subway at six in the morning. The collective realization that your soul and spirit are being ground down slowly, day by day, doesn’t usually look very dramatic. This morning, I didn’t have to wait very long for the train. I even managed to grab the last seat available. And no one is wearing anything that makes me want to point and laugh. I don’t even see any tacky, over-the-top manicures—which is sort of a minor miracle, I guess. 

6:00 p.m.

It’s a crime, I tell ya. After work and I’m standing in Grand Central on the UPTOWN platform, waiting for an UPTOWN train to take me farther away from my Brooklyn home. Oh, the inhumanity of it all. 

And all these bitches, crowding in, spectin’ me to move outta my spot? Puhleeze. I’m about to go to war on some muthafuckas. 

That sounded convincing, didn’t it? 

Well, I am heading into the Upper East Side. Those fools don’t know the difference. 

Saturday, January 8, 2005, 5:40 p.m., 4 Train, Nevins to Union Square

What a lousy train ride. Here it is Saturday—the day no man should have to take the subway—and ‘m on my way into Manhattan, to yet another industry party. Then, after that, back on the train and back to Brooklyn for a real party within walking distance from my home.  

It’s early. I’ve got a long night ahead of me and, already, I feel like ass. 

There’s a thug wannabe down at the end of the train, a dark hooded sweat pulled over a red and gray ball cap. He’s got red and gray sweat pants, with pistol decals stitched above the legend, “Welcome to the hood.” (You know, because nothing says tough like a matching sweatsuit that looks like it was made by your great aunt.) His skin is that sickly yellow color of Hispanic people who’ve been living too long in a cold climate and away from the sun. He’s got a unibrow perched over unintelligent eyes. An adolescent’s attempt at a mustache crawls above a scowl that makes him look more like a confused dullard than a threatening tough.  

A woman sitting across from me, young and pretty, has her head down in her hands, her eyes closed, as if the day’s already been too long and too hard and there’s still too much more of the same ahead of her. 

Family next to me. White woman, Chinese man and an incredibly cute daughter in a stroller. A button of a thing who can’t stand to let “Papa” hide his face behind his Chinese language newspaper. The mother’s all business, nose buried in her appointment book, scribbling notes—in general looking like an unloving bitch. But the father, in good spirits, is more than happy to entertain his child. 

Two minutes later, the mom, proving me completely wrong, puts away her appointment book, runs her hand through her husband's hair and kisses him on the cheek. She pulls a children’s book from her bag and pulls the stroller closer to her. The daughter doesn’t mind the trade off. She says “Mama!” with glee and lets Papa go back to his paper. Mama begins to read from the book. “F is for flag. F is for flower.” 

“Flower!” the daughter answers.

Friday, January 7, 2005, "4" Train, Franklin Avenue to Grand Central

I wonder how my fellow passengers, deep into morning-commute stupor, would react if I stood up and started howling along to my music, which happens to be Ray Charles' The Night Time is the Right Time.

And I don't mean doing a Ray impersonation. Oh no. I mean doing the Cosby Show re-enactment of the song, a "gift" the Huxtables performed for the grandparents way back in the third episode of season two in 1985. And I'd skip Bill Cosby's mugging. The best role in that particular episode went to Rudy, all dolled up in that little dress, grabbing her heart and twisting her face in perfect time to Margie Hendrix's shouts of "Baby" and "Squeeze me" and her wailing "Oh baby take my hand, I don't need no other man." 

The scene puts a smile on my face to be sure, but it also tugs at the place in my heart where the memory of my long-departed grandmother lives. I'd been toying about working on a separate project about Mawmaw, and this song is helping quite a bit. 

Because I remember clearly sitting in her house on (I'm assuming) a Thursday evening when that episode first came on. I was 11, closing in on 12. I can't remember if anyone else was with us. It would have been extremely odd to have been alone with her. But I remember Mawmaw. Mawmaw, who now lives in memory mostly as cook, caregiver and disciplinarian (with a long switch and a strong right arm), started giggling when the song started, but completely and totally lost it when Rudy started singing. She laughed so hard I thought she'd flop onto the floor and die right there (which was actually an ongoing concern of mine). 

I hadn't thought about that memory in quite some time, hadn't heard the song in forever. But my mom got me the "Ray" soundtrack for Christmas and it's been on almost constant rotation because Ray ... well, Ray will make you want to shake your ass and cry into your beer all at the same time (consider that tucked into a sexy tune like Night Time are the lyrics "You know my mother had to die and my father broke down and cried").  

At any rate, this particular song, every single time I listen to it, kickstarts a smile, a tear and so many memories that I'm pretty sure I have an entire book on my hands.

Wednesday, January 5, 2005

9:30 p.m. - It’s a miserable Wednesday night. I’ve walked the million miles from an industry party on 26^th and 11^th Ave, through the snow and rain, to the 23^rd St. 1/9 stop where I wait for a train and connection back to Brooklyn. Of course, an express goes whizzing by on the center track, mocking my decision not to continue walking to 14^th Street—which I’d considered, because walking alone on a miserable evening does lend itself a certain melancholy romanticism. You half expect to bump into your latest crush or get a reconciliatory phone call from an ex on nights like tonight. 

But for once, I realized that for the fool’s gold (emphasis on fool) that it really is and ducked into the closest terminal. Now I squat here, leaning against an I-beam and stare into my gift bag from Everyday Food, thinking of poor Martha Stewart in a West Virginia prison, while her company marches bravely on. 

And yet another fucking express train goes by. 

Of course, when I get to the 14^th Street stop, I’ll have to wait there six fucking hours for a train. (See how quickly romanticism turns into bitterness underground?) 

9:50 p.m. - Here I am at the 14^th Street station. Let’s see how long I have to wait before delivery to Brooklyn.

9:51 p.m. - A local train goes by. God bless the efficiency retards at the MTA.

A dour looking woman with small feet, thin ankles and a white knit cap stands on the orange do-not-cross line. Attached to her backpack is a bright yellow button that reads “Stop the war on Iraq.” ON Iraq, mind you. 

Instead of pushing her onto the tracks, I will take inventory of my Everyday Food gift bag—which, by the way, threatens my masculinity.

9:56 p.m. -  Well, I’llllllll be. A train. But back to my gift bag.  

One CourtTV umbrella, swag from a previous party that has come in handy tonight. I shoved it in the bag because I had nowhere else to put it.

One name tag reading “Ken Wheaton Advertising Age.” Affixed to it is a little blue sticker indicating the food demonstration station at which I was supposed to stand.

One press packet detailing the launch of Everyday Food’s television series on PBS, complete with pertinent bios of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and WETA executives, as well as those of the on-air talent.

One copy of the January/February issue of Everyday Food. (Issue #19)

One magnet-backed Everyday Food notepad/shopping list.

And, finally,

One multicolored and quite handsome Everyday Food apron. 

Thus are the contents of my bag. 

I remember I have my walkman with me. I think, rather than write a lengthy description of the tool sitting across from me--the guy with the fingerless gloves reading American Scream--I’ll listen to Miles Davis’ Birth of the Cool.  

There’s a couple across from me, sharing a walkman (tonight’s train car is 100% iPod free). She’s falling asleep on his shoulders.  

Suddenly, I wish I had some death metal. But, for now, wishing I was half of that couple or, perhaps, Miles Davis will have to do.

Thursday, December 16, 2004, 7:20 p.m., "4" train, Grand Central to nevins

Six rather large teenage black guys are taking up the seats on the left side of the train. They’re not using their inside voices and seem to be having the time of their lives, making fun of each other and laughing loudly. At some point, the group leader turns his attention to another teenager across the aisle and a battle of insults starts. It’s mostly about fashion and name brands and such, but the black kid has a leg up because a) he’s with friends, b) he’s smarter (or at least better with insults) and c) he’s not afraid to play the race card, pointing out all the shortcomings of his opponent’s Puerto Rican heritage—from skin color to sorry-ass moustache to unfortunate choice in shoes. 

The white folks on the train are getting nervous. Of course they find this funny. It’s just they’re not quite sure if they should laugh at this sort of exchange. But try not to laugh, or at least break a smile, when you’ve got an insult-war going down and six teenagers stomping their feet and clapping their hands and just having fun. 

The Puerto Rican kid, though, can’t really see his enemy through the people in the middle of the train, so he is forced into a grave tactical mistake. He gives up his seat and stands in front of and over his opponent. His already lame jokes are sounding even worse now that he’s standing in front of the six other kids and looking to them after he delivers a line, as if they’d give him support at the cost of their friend. 

“Why you lookin’ at them, son? Why you lookin’ at them after you say something. They ain’t gonna laugh.” 

Then: “Go on. Stand up with your hands on the bar, lookin’ stupid, son. Keep tryin, son.” 

And: “And you gave up your seat. You ain’t gonna get it back. They ain’t gonna give back to you. Even if you look like one of them light-skinned demons, son.” 

Yeah. He actually said “light-skinned demons.” I expected, for a moment, Elijah Muhammad to come walking out of a corner. 

Ultimately, it’s a route. And the Puerto Rican kid exits the train at Borough Hall, after shaking hands with the guy, exchanging “all goods” and, the sorriest sight of all, he requested “Yo, son. Just don’t call me honky, aight? I don’t like that.” 

3 Train, Grand Army Plaza to Nevins, 9:15 a.m.

It’s field trip day. Pre-teens—or as the marketing forces have dubbed the demographic, tweens. They’re loud and giggly and, for the most part, still innocent. None of the boys, at any rate, have exchanged their fresh-faced look for one of the two expressions that will be available to them in the upcoming year: the sexual predator look or the hopelessly confused by it all face.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004, "4" train, Grand Central to nevins

I’m seething, which is never a good thing to be on the subway. I’m cracking at the moment under various stresses being applied from various sources. It’s something I like to keep bottled up: I’ve got that cool, calm, collected, laid-back vibe I like to cultivate. Bitter? Sure. Cranky? Yeah. But never let them see me sweat. Not in my writing. Not on the job. 

Then that proverbial last straw falls into place and I find myself at a steady boil, standing on the 4 train, daring someone to bump into me. But people keep clear for some reason. Maybe steam is coming out of my ears. And I find the voice of the preaching woman on the platform coming back to me. The tone and rhythm and the implied message more than the words. And despite my atheism, I play that loop in my head and find myself agreeing with her. Yes. All these sonsabitches should burn in hell. They should roast. They should fry. They should boil. They should simmer, percolate, bake and sauté. Even the woman with the mole, that hairy mountain of a growth, who gets off at Fulton, leaving me a seat. 

And what do I do with my seat? I sit in it and glare at my notebook for a bit. I’m sure I look more than a little off in the head, taking breaks from scribbling (in red ink, no less) to put my head down on my bag, eyes closed, breathing heavily through my nose and clenching and unclenching my fists. 

Too bad there’s not another diarist on the train to describe it. 

Nevins Street. 9:30 a.m.

I was three steps into the cross-platform dash from the 2 train to the 5 when I just pulled up short and said, “Ahhhhh, fuck it.” It was standing room only and I didn’t feel like going along with the crowd. Besides, I’m in no hurry to get to work. (Fellow diarist Jason isn’t the only one picky about trains.) 

And what did it get me? Well, now I have a perfectly good seat on a 4 train—an end seat next to the railing and an empty seat to my right. Just the way I like it. 

The girl sitting across from me is knitting. KNITTING!?! And she’s wearing a knitted cap and a knitted scarf. 

Something about knitting immediately turns me off. I don’t know if it’s the vision of me (because, yes, it’s all about me) being forced to wear poorly knitted and multicolored mittens, scarves and hats. I don’t know if it’s that retro-chic bordering on hipster vibe that knitting gives off. Or that hint of the controlling Martha Stewart type combined with a budding cat-lady.  

Knitting just strikes me as one of those sad things women start doing as they get older. Like a book club, but for loners.

Wednesday, September 29, 2004, "4" Train, Nevins Street to Grand Central

At the Wall Street stop, the train suddenly gets crowded and I’ve got a wall of crotch staring me in the face. A woman in a cute skirt and cute shoes keeps bumping her knee into mine. Accidentally, no doubt, but it’s enough to get certain areas of the imagination fired up. Namely the areas that used to enjoy the letters to Penthouse and Hustler.  

I don’t want to make the obvious move of looking up to see what she looks like. I guess at this point in a Penthouse letter, I’d just stick my hand up her skirt, but that sort of behavior is frowned upon on the "4" Train on the morning commute. Much better to save it for three in the morning on the "F" Train out to Coney. Those Coney Island chicks are just FREAKS!

Back in the real world, I notice the woman has nice hands. The slender fingers of her right hand hold a red Saks Fifth Avenue bag. Those on her left are ring-free. She’s got a wasp waist and slim ankles, but not overly skinny, nothing that would make me want to force feed her pork chops to beef her up a bit.

And here I sit, like one of those mewling, overly sensitive poetic jerks, scribbling in my notebook.

It would be even more poetic if she slipped out of the train and I never saw more of her than her fingers and ankles and waist. If I really WERE an overly poetic jerk-type, I’d lie about it and write some sort of poem about the beauty of mystery and yar-yar-yar. And if this were a Penthouse letter, she’d grab my hand on the way out the train and drag me into some nook or cranny of a subway station, where I’d find she has long blonde hair and breasts the size of watermelons and, by the way, she’s already dripping with anticipation.

But as she exits the train, without my hand in hers, I look up to get a full view. Her wasp-like waist gives way to sensible and realistic (and quite charming) breasts, a cute face and short hair. No mystery. No porn. Just a good-looking girl on her way to work.

***

I see a Police Academy Cadet holding his hands, like a bad cliché, a bag from Dunkin' Donuts.

Tuesday, September 28, 2004, "Q Train, Union Square to Seventh Avenue, Brooklyn

10 p.m. Still raining. I’m soaked. Everyone’s soaked. A sax player belts out a sloppy “Favorite Things” on the tenor and the rest of us just stand here like sullen wet cats. We’re dealing with the remnants of Hurricane Jeanne and so is the MTA: “Queens-bound "R" Trains are terminating because of massive flooding conditions.” 

Earlier today, I had the distinct displeasure of riding the 5:30 p.m. shuttle train from Grand Central to Times Square. It’s a miserable enough train to begin with but doubly so when all the folks who would usually walk that distance are driven underground by the weather. 

The floor of the "Q" Train is soaked except for one spot, where I must plant my big red bag of death. This, of course, forces me to plant my ass in a seat right next to a woman, despite quite a few open seats elsewhere. No doubt she thinks I’m a stalker. 

A couple enters the train. “My back hurts from that fall,” the girl is saying. “I feel pretty silly. That’ll teach me to think that I can learn new tricks at this age.” 

As a fiction writer, I would never have written that line. It sounds wooden, like something out of a stage play. But there she is, a youngish woman, speaking like that. 

Her companion, a man, perhaps a co-worker, starts to talk. XML. Compatible. HTML. Code this. Code that. Dynamically create blah blah blah. 

Ahh, computer folk. That explains it. 

“That’d be cool,” she says. “I’d like to see it.” 

Ahh, better. Computer folk foreplay. At least someone’s getting some—or trying to—tonight.

Oh, no. They’ve stalled. They don’t quite know what to do next. Their feet almost touch. They’re staring at the floor. Booze would make all of this … Oh, wait. She just brushed his hair back from his face. They’re actually a couple. How could I mistake after-work subway exhaustion for first-date awkwardness? Must be that pound and a half of steak I just ate at Knickerbocker.

***

Guy just walked buy, a gray shopping bag wrapped around his right Converse Chuck Taylor, an orange bag wrapped around the left. 

Tuesday, September 28, 2004, "2" Train, Grand Army Plaza to 14^th Street

This is a crime against humanity, this commute. This early in the morning and the train is as hot and wet as a just-used-towel at a Russian bath house.

And there’s no seating, either.

My fellow standing passengers have that look on their faces that says they can’t quite believe they woke up at 5:30 or earlier to get ready, then walked through the rain, only to find themselves in a damp car trying not to fall asleep while leaning against the pole.

I see an ad for a Nickelodeon show: “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.” I caught a minute or two of it a week or so ago. Another too-loud badly drawn cartoon. Our hero plays host, it seems, to a gaggle of figments—perhaps discarded by other children, normal children, I don’t know. Foster, obviously, is mentally deranged, his head crammed with five or six competing voices, each more neurotic than the next.

But hey, it’s okay, right? There’s a cartoon about it. If you’re a kid hearing voices in your head, no big deal. Voices in the head. Perfectly normal. Especially the dog and clown voices. 

I don’t know. Shouldn’t there be one or two cartoons about conformity on the airwaves, rather than a round-the-clock festival of nerds-turned-adult-now-I-have-a-cartoon-job-and-I’m-going-to-turn-all-my-revenge-fantasies-into-something-for-kids-just-like-me shows.

No wonder kids are always screaming and kicking and running around and otherwise asking for beatings in public places.

Dang.

***

There’s a guy to my right who is sporting a mighty fine hair collar. Literally. A ring of thick, tightly curled hair circles his neck. He’s shaved above it and there doesn’t seem to be much chest hair below it. It gives him the appearance of a ring-necked bird of some sort.

Friday, September 24, 2004

5:30 P.M., "Q" Train, Union Square to Seventh Avenue

There is a woman on the train reading a book called Homo Thug. I can’t even begin to guess what that’s about. “Black Print Publishing Presents,” reads the line atop the cover. And the cover? A photo of two thuggish looking youths. Are they homo thugs? I’ll have to remember to look this up on the web.  

[Note: The book is by Asante Kahari. Amazon reviews indicate that it’s a poorly edited account of one young man’s journey through the prison system. And Black Print’s Web site… well, it looks like a cross between pulp fiction and harlequin for the keepin' it real set. Here’s a synopsis from the Black Print site: 

“Serving a five to fifteen sentence for a robbery-homicide, it is behind those walls that Mike finds a love that surpasses all understanding; it was an unconditional love that could only be shared under the shadow of night and the cloak of darkness. How do you share love with another man when it would mean your life to just express those uncarnal desires in the most inhumane of places? How do you convince yourself that this unnatural love is the most natural thing that could be expressed by two people? You do it by picking up your dagger and assuming the life of a thug, but you’re no ordinary thug, you desire the forbidden fruit even though conventional wisdom says that is the opposite of what a thug is supposed to be.”] 

Interesting, no? 

Just caught a girl checking me out. Pretty face. But too young. Clothes are too tight. And she’s got claws instead of nails. 

The young kids next to me are talking banking. The boy, spiky of hair and wearing a Polo Sport t-shirt, has overdrawn his account at Washington Mutual. His friend, a foul-mouthed little Brooklynite, has never heard of such a thing, doesn’t understand the word or the concept. Not that he has a very clear grasp of how to go about fixing the situation. 

7:30 P.M., "3" Train, Grand Army to Nevins

Noticed a new ad on the subway. 

Bottles of wine reserved for guests: 4

Bottles of water reserved for emergencies: 0 

Your emergency supply kit should always include 3 gallons of drinking water for every person.  

Ready New York. NYC Office of Emergency Management.

7:45 P.M., "5" Train, Nevins to Union Square

This train car smells vaguely like vagina. I’m not quite sure how to feel about that. Confused to say the least. Should I lick something? I don’t know. 

Thursday, September 16, 2004, "3" Train, 9:30 a.m.

I can do better than this. The subway’s going to have to start picking up its game. It just hasn’t been offering me enough recently. 

First thing I notice on the train this morning is the woman with brick-red yarn in place of her hair. 

I like it. 

She’s an average-looking black woman with a so-so top, slightly hip jeans, nails still recognizable as nails rather than zebra-striped diamond-studded talons. So the hair doesn’t come across as just one more piece in a way-too-much pie. 

And hey, if you’re going to go with extensions, with fake hair, why the hell not go with something obviously fake and colorful. Most of her head is covered in her natural hair, but it sweeps back towards a bun that sprouts into the yarn that goes up for half an inch before cascading down to her shoulders then ends in frayed tufts. Almost like window treatments. 

The shade of red works very well. Any brighter and she’d look like Raggedy Ann and I’d be mocking her. 

I wonder if I’d take the same approach if I went bald. Why walk around with a dead rat on my head? Or why go through the trouble of shaving my scalp, suffering through razor rash and sun burns? 

Everyone knows your bald. Go with the yarn. Maybe I’ll start a business.

Tuesday, September 14, 2004, "4" Train, 9:40 a.m.

Having Walkman issues. This is, in fact, one of the reasons I don’t listen to music more often on the commute -- I mean aside from a pressing desire to eavesdrop and a neurotic need to listen for announcements in the highly unlikely case that the speakers will be working when the anthrax comes.

But really. Where to put the damn Walkman. Don’t want to hold it in my hand. It’s too big for my pockets (and spare me the iPod lectures). So then what? Chuck it in my bag and have the ear piece wires get hung up around my neck when I try to take the bag off? Have the player jostle around – earphones jack gets knocked out, repeat button gets hit, etc.?

I thought THIS particular bag might do the trick, with its special compartment in an outer pouch and a slit through which to run the earphones. But there’s still the problem of volume. Where a six will do out on the street, I need at least a minimum of eight once down on the platform or on the train.  

So of course, when I go to open the outside pouch, where, incidentally, I put practically everything else, it goes without saying that everything else comes tumbling out onto the train floor.  

Stupid music.

Friday, September 10, 2004, "2" Train, Grand Army Plaza to Nevins/"4" Train, Nevins to Grand Central

My eyes are closed, my jaw clenched tight. I’ve got one mission this morning. Don’t puke on the train. Don’t wretch. Don’t hurl. Don’t spew.  

Not that there’s anything in there judging by this morning’s dry run. But I don’t want to be that guy to hold up the morning commute. I don’t want to be the sick passenger in the “Because of a sick passenger” announcement.

Keep it together Ken. Try to sleep. The cool air, the bright light. It’s almost like being on the bathroom floor.

Oddly enough, there’s a little miniature version of me in the back right corner of my head. He’s standing there in a black suit on a little black box, pointing at the rest of me.

 “The wages of sin is death,” he bellows over and over again. “The wages of sin is death!”

Wednesday, September 8, 2004

Oh, it’s a red-letter day for commuting, ain’t it? Two hours it took me to get to work this morning. Two. Hours.

Why? Not because of terrorism. Not because of bombs or bodies or abandoned bags.

Oh no.

Because of rain. Maybe a little lack of foresight on someone’s part there?

“Hey, McManus. This, uh, subway thingie we’re building, it’s underground right?”

“Yup.”

“Uhh, what happens when it rains?”

“Whadya mean what happens when it rains. It’s gonna have a roof. No problem.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

And this evening, now that I’m heading home. Fire trucks, their lights swishing back and forth, parked outside of Grand Central.

“That better not be fucking subway related,” are my exact words to coworker Sheila.

Down the stairs, through the turnstile and there are eight of New York’s Bravest, helmets, jackets and axes.

Sheila starts laughing at the misery of it all. “That can’t be a good sign,” she says.

Tuesday, September 7, 2004, Grand Army to Grand Central, morning commute

There are at least three different ways, depending on the status of the guy, of checking out women on the subway. 

1)   Single guy. The easiest to explain. You’ll check out anything and everything. Too young to too old. Too skinny to too fat. Too ugly to well beyond your earthly dreams, bucko. Note that on the subway, everything is relative. Average girls suddenly become lookers if there’s no one else on the train. And “average” and “looker,” in turn, depend heavily on how much you’ve been drinking, what time of day it is, what stop you’re at. These factors, too, determine whether or not you sneak a peak, cast numerous glances, whip out that copy of “No Exit” you keep on hand to impress chicks in just such a situation, stare in her direction mentally willing her to look at you, make eye contact, or, God forbid, start talking to her. 

2) The coupled guy. Mostly the same as above, except you just don’t tell your girlfriend about it.

3) The recently dumped guy. Suddenly you’re behaving like the coupled guy claims to behave. You’ve got eyes for no one. It’s not that the subway girls seem unattractive. Oh no. It’s that they seem lethal. You’re sharing your commute with a hundred sources of danger. You’re reminded of what a duplicitous, untrustworthy, fickle lot they are—this even if the breakup was “amicable” (whatever that means) and involved no duplicity or breaches of trust. The mere site of women, especially pretty women looking in your direction, raises the hair on the back of your neck and it’s all you can do not to hiss like a pissed off cat. 

Note 1: As far as the guy who’s just dumped someone else, see No. 1 above

Note 2: Of course, I could just be projecting. 

Tuesday, August 31, 2004, "4" Train, Grand Central to Nevins

How’s this for a joy ride? It’s a Tuesday afternoon and you’ve just watched your nine-month relationship go the way of the Anasazi.

While at work.

Over Instant Messenger. (No shame there. Perhaps it’s fitting considering the relationship began online.)

So now you have to make the 40-minute ride home without engaging in a) male crying or, worse, b) public male crying. (You’re no fan of male crying yourself, but it distresses you some that there is even less room for it in a population so Paxiled to the gills that it hasn’t experienced a truly intense emotion in five years.)

Even on a slightly off day, the rogue’s gallery of humanity that is the subway is enough to make you want to weep. But this? This is something else entirely. Devastation. Desperation. Despair. Depression. Dejection. (Wow, so many d-words.) 

But you’re a trooper. You keep the upper lip stiff despite the bright fluorescent lights glaring down on your defeat, despite you imagining that every person on the train represents a friend or family member to whom you’ll have to explain the breakup. You figure “read the blog” won’t cut it this time. Besides, SHE reads the blog—or used to—and you don’t want to be petty (not in a public forum) and you don’t want your friends piling on in the comments section (either with harsh words for her or, worse, “comforting” words for you.) 

So this little cavalcade of crap is clattering around in your cranium when, with five merciless minutes left before your transfer, HE walks in. 

“EXCUSE ME LADIES & GENTLEMEN. PARDON ME FOR THE INTERRUPTION.” 

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  

Son. Of. A. Bitch. 

A United Homeless Organization “worker.” And not just any UHO guy. Oh no. It’s the guy with that condition, the one that makes it impossible to modulate the voice. Flat bass tone, with the volume set at 11. 

“WE ARE AN ORGANIZATION THAT CLOTHES AND FEEDS THE HOMELESS.” 

And you’ve never wanted to jump out of a moving train so badly. You’ve never wanted to kill an innocent stranger with your bare hands. You start up a little chant in your head. 

“Sonofabitch. Motherfucker. Keep it together.”

“Sonofabitch. Motherfucker. Keep it together.”  

And it works. The rhythm. The profanity. It calms you a bit. 

And, somewhere, in that little humorous part of you that’s going to drag you out of this tar pit eventually, you realize that if you started chanting this out loud—especially if you coupled it with the urge to hug yourself and rock back and forth—the UHO guy might take pity on you and give you one of the stale sandwiches in his bag. 

Epilogue:

And you make it home without humiliating yourself. Then you cry like a little bitch.

Thursday, July 29, 2004 1/9 Lincoln Center to 42^nd Street

10:30 p.m.

Celebrity on the train. Celebrity on the train! It’s Adam Duritz, lead singer of the Counting Crows. He’s with a group of kids, probably some sort of Big Brother thing. I don’t know. Call me an oversensitive white boy but just about every song on August and Everything After was sweet, sweet misery to my melancholic college heart. Still, I will not be asking for an autograph.

10:50 p.m.

Now I’m on the 2/3 to Grand Army Plaza. Guy next to me whips out a huge … copy of Guinness World Records 2004. Amped up kids are playing with Princess Fiona dolls and making entirely too much noise.

11:00 p.m.

Just before Nevins Street, people to my right suddenly vacate their seats and move to the other end of the train. I look over. A young girl, shoulders hunched, blue tank top and matching blue shorts. She’s alone and looks lonely. Her family sits across from her.  

She’s wet herself.  

And there is now a stream of urine trickling the length of the bench. Her rowdy cousins sitting across from me delight in her misery.  

“She NASTY!” 

That’s pretty big talk from a ten-year-old boy playing with a doll and sucking his thumb.

Tuesday, July 27, 2004, 9:20 a.m. Grand Army Plaza

Rio Metro this isn’t. But at least this summer is a mild one so far and sitting on the platform this morning isn’t going to cause me to lose five pounds in water weight. If that were the case, I’d have to worry about the girl standing next to me. She can’t afford to lose any weight. If a train blows by at too high a speed, she’ll go sailing into the air like a piece of tissue. She doesn’t have an anorexic look about her. Rather, she’s got that “just a slip of a thing” going, that scrawniness that one associates with wet cats or long-legged and not particularly graceful birds. She’s got a vaguely librarian appearance about her and the conservative white shirt and gray skirt add to it. And the big old hickey? I don’t know about that. 

Either way, someone should hold her down and force feed her a couple of pork chops before she blows away. 

6:15 p.m. 4 Train Grand Central to Nevins

“Excuse me ladies and gentlemen” Ahhh, shit. Here we go. I’m on the tail-end of a particularly foul mood, a two day rage, so let’s see how high the hackles go up at this sales pitch.

“I’m NOT selling candy to raise money for a basketball team or football team…” 

Hey. THERE’S a twist. Always wondered what kind of basketball team needed new uniforms in July, September, December AND March. And what kind of schools send kids out in the middle of the school day for fundraisers, anyway? 

“I’m unemployed and trying to make some money.” 

Well, I’m sold. Hell, he may have stolen the candy (I can’t imagine he went to Costco just to procure boxes of candy to sell on the subway), but he changed things up. I’ll gladly pay for that.

Week of July 12, 2004 - Rio de Janeiro Subway

Linha 1

M. and I ended up taking the Metro in Rio three times. The first was from the Carioca stop—in the vicinity of the Petrobras building, the Catedral Metroploitana and right next to the Convento de Santo Antonio—back to the Siqueira Campos stop in Copacabana. The second was from Arcoverde stop in Copa to the Carioca stop, then the return trip from Carioca to Siqueira Campos. A one-way trip on the Rio Metro? Forty-five cents.

 Not exactly my daily trek from Grand Army Plaza to Grand Central Station, to be sure. 

Apparently, forty-five cents may seem like nothing to your typical American used to the prices in New York, but it’s still plenty of money to keep the less fortunate out of the subway system. Therefore, subway “stops” are more like actual train stations, big affairs with concessions and art hanging on the walls. The system seems clean and quiet, free from panhandlers and people who’ve been stewing in their own filth in their own seat for a six or seven hours. Music is actually piped in over loudspeakers at the stops. What all of this means, of course, is that nothing really exciting happens on the Metro. Hell, it’s only open until 11 p.m. and it’s closed on Sundays. And you’d think that a subway system that follows Rio’s default open-container law might have a little more of the rough and rowdy sort. But apparently only tourists take advantage and drink on the train. Indeed, the only two people I saw with open cans of Skol beer were … wait for it … Irish. And even they, a young couple, were much more intent on flirting than on making noise. 

For New York riders, the trains seem to be the same exterior build as our wider trains, like the F and A, but with a different seat arrangement and more poles and crossbars for the standing passengers. M. tells me that old people get the priority on the Rio system, regardless of gender. I watched as one woman tried to give her seat to an older man who couldn’t have been a day over 55. He didn’t seem to need it and quite obviously didn’t want it and, from where I was sitting, you could see that little sting to the pride. I guess if you’re a Brazilian man and young women start offering you seats on the subway… that’s telling you something that you might not want to hear. 

Each time we took the subway, we were tired. In the first instance, tired from walking all over the place. In the second instance, M., who lives near Sao Paulo and who speaks fluent Portuguese, had about reached her limit with fighting with Rio’s cab drivers, some of whom seemed intent on taking us for a ride and who had to be watched closely. Cabbies are the same everywhere, I guess. Regardless, being a young couple, tired on the train, standing or sitting, we found ways to lean on one another.  

Any regular reader knows that my typical subway diary entries are from the point of view of a solitary and snarly dog. I might at times be mean and nasty, and other times I might be funny, but traveling New York’s crowded subways in work mode, in utilitarian mode, in alone mode, lends itself to a certain perspective. 

But being with M., being on vacation, being in clean train cars, it’s a world apart. Hell, since the only noise on the trains was the muted Portuguese conversations going on around me (which I can’t understand) I was even free of the distractions of noticing exactly what kind of jerks were surrounding me … To go even further, and this might shock the pants right off of some of you, it didn’t even occur to me that my fellow passengers might be jerks. 

I wish I could offer more, like Samba schools crashing through the cars, or capoeira guys kicking and spinning off the walls, maybe a simple Brazilian homeless man trying to scrape up a living on the train. But nothing of the sort happened. And while I guess I could have studied my fellow passengers a little more closely to see if rush-hour Cariocas had that same defeated look that New Yorkers get after work, I don’t get to see M. nearly as much as I’d like to, so almost all of my attention was elsewhere. 

By the way, here’s a link to the map, if interested: http://www.urbanrail.net/am/rioj/rio-de-janeiro.htm

Tuesday, June 15, 2004, Grand Army Plaza platform

I’ve taken the advice of all the enemies I’ve ever made in life and finally gone to hell. Hell starts with an h. Three of them. Heat. Humidity. Hangover. And I’ll tell you where hell is. It’s the Grand Army Plaza platform, wearing a long-sleeve shirt and wool slacks, a tie wrapped around your throat. It’s running down the stairs at breakneck speed, the boiling contents of your gut sloshing around, coating everything from the back of your throat down to your sphincter with burning acids, making it a hard choice between puking and … 

Well, you get the idea. 

Two days before this I was stuck on a Continental Boeing 737 for six hours while it sat on the tarmac in Houston, waiting for the weather to clear—only to be turned around and sent back to the gate. No food. No water. No freedom to move about the cabin. I think it’s saying something that I’d rather be there right now.  

Even my walk to the platform had an extra touch of misery this morning. Upon opening my door, I found my neighbor standing right in front of the elevator. A nice woman, sure. But even on a good day who among us enjoys a forced march of small talk from door to turnstile? My neighbor’s just lucky we found an interesting topic this morning—namely, me. Otherwise, this time of day and with the hangover, I would have had to smack her. And while I pride myself on being Ken Wheaton: American Badass, I suspect that pimp-slapping a cancer survivor in public--okay, anywhere--might be crossing a line. But yak-yak-yak. Each word a little spike in the eyeball. At least her husband has the good god-damned sense to walk sixteen times faster than me when we run into each other. With him, a grunted hello is all that’s needed before he puts some distance between us. 

I finally managed to ditch the neighbor at the Metrocard machine. Two out of four machines were down. On top of this, I realized I’d be traveling again in less than a month, so I stood there stupidly trying to decide the best alternative to the unlimited monthly. The unlimited weekly? Some sort of random cash equivalent? Should I use debit or credit? 

Oh dear lord, I turned into one of those morons who stands there staring at the machine, my indecisiveness holding up the line. I hate those people. The only thing worse is that woman who gets all the way to the turnstile before reaching into her 30-gallon-handbag-o-useless-crap to find her Metrocard. That woman should be shoved to the ground and trampled under foot for her sins. 

And what did I get for my sins? I got to hear the damn 3 train rolling in to the platform while I’m making up my mind and waiting for the card to come out and I can make it if … if …  

No luck. As has been established previously, I missed the damn thing. I bet that train was empty, too. And it probably had a bum-free, fresh spring scent. 

So I fell to the bench, where I currently sit, sweat pouring off my upper lip, shirt already sticking to my back. There’s enough moisture on my body to start life on Mars … as long as it is a life form with a high tolerance for large concentrations of Jack Daniels. 

And the people start coming. The shuffling feet, the rustling bags, the sighs of exasperation—all of which put me in mind of a colony of insects. All those sexy bra-less girls in the tank tops and white pants and too-short skirts. And I’m sitting her almost too miserable to notice. Almost. But I do notice the creepy white guy in slacks and short-sleeve dress shirt and tie and white sneakers standing at the platform’s edge. He’s staring in my direction. He’s got a dead, dull stare. It’s sort of like that freaky thing that cats do when they pick an empty spot in a room, usually a dark corner, and just stare at it, convincing  you that there’s a spook or something watching The Simpsons with you. And I guess, if this guy’s the staring cat, that makes me the ghost. This guy has to be a serial killer. He’s figuring out my commuting pattern so he can slay me one night when my drunk ass is stumbling home from the subway. I just know it. And how do I know it? Because he’s wearing a short-sleeve dress shirt and a tie and white sneakers. That’s not natural. And it should be illegal. 

But it dawns on me. He’s not a serial killer. He’s Satan his ownself. He’s mocking me for my sins and welcoming me to hell at the same time.  

Dear Lord Jesus, I don’t believe in you, but if you showed up right now with an air-conditioner, a couple of aspirin and a bottle of Revive Vitamin Water, I swear that I’ll hop on the next plain to go missionizing amongst the heathens in the jungles of South America. And if they strap me to a cross and send me over the falls like they did in that movie The Mission? Well, so be it. It’d probably be better than sitting down here. 

Hey, look. I know it could be worse. Grand Army Plaza is only the second circle of hell. It’s for minor sinners. Real bastards, like that woman with the big purse who blocks the turnstile or those jerks who preach on the train, they go the West Fourth Street stop in Manhattan with their hangovers. Or better yet, the dank sweltering hole of the Port Authority 7 platform. On those platforms, Satan isn’t a creepy serial killer type. He’s a shrieking, mumbling bum who’s been fouling himself and his clothes for weeks and it’s all worked itself up into a pungent bouquet that will lodge itself into your nostrils for all eternity. 

Which is exactly the sort of thing I need to be thinking about with a hangover of this magnitude. Hell, maybe if I’m lucky, today I can turn into one of those mysterious sick passengers, the clowns who vomit on the train and bring entire subway lines to a halt. 

The kicker to all this is that even though I sit here, bleary-eyed, sweaty and shaky of hands, I’m thinking about the two work-related parties I’ll be going to tonight. Ohh, the agony. Ohh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth. 

I’m not fooling anyone. Neither of those parties is mandatory, but I’m not one to pass up gift-bags and rubbing elbows with C-list celebrities. Or, more important, unlimited free booze. 

That first drink is going to hurt a little, but the second will make everything right again. And the third?  

Well, I’ll forget all about my little layover in hell today. Until tomorrow morning finds me right back here, on the Grand Army Plaza platform, shaking and sweating and cursing and wondering what I did to deserve this. 

May 21, 2004 General morning commute rant

May 21, 2004  Grand Army Plaza Platform

May 15, 2004,  Q Train, Seventh Avenue to Union Square

Thursday, May 13, 2004, 9:00 a.m. Grand Army Plaza platform

Dude peeling some blues off an electric guitar down on the platform. He's good, too, not like that block full of crap that passes for blues these days over on Bleecker Street. I don't want to look closely at they guy. I focus on the tracks, on the girls in sun dresses. Just want to groove a bit before I look up and find it's some polished college kid. When the guy slides into something with a bit more of a jazz lilt to it, I decide to check him out.

And...

It's a skinny black cat, sitting on a milk crate, his head bent low over his instrument and a beat-up ball cap crammed down tightly, obscuring his face. He could be 28, he could be 62. Only things moving are his hands and his right foot. This, of course, pleases my aesthetic sensibilities.

Then I realize what he's playing, or rather what it is that's threading through this song, a familiar refrain that pops up every now and then. You may have heard it on a car horn near you. It's the theme from The Godfather.

Now I'm on the "4" train heading into work. There's a hit going down. A 40-something black guy in Roca Wear hat, Roca Wear T and Roca Wear baggy denim shorts. What, did mommy dress him in a new outfit this morning? But he's about to make his move on a woman. Morning commute, mind you, and playah already playing. I can't hear the undoubtedly smoove words coming out of his mouth but after about a minute, I can clearly hear her.

"You're stepping over the line."

He mumbles something, perhaps an apology.

"You're stepping over the line." Then. "Stop talking to me. Stop. Talking. To. Me. I said stop talking to me."

Takes him a while to get the point, but he stops. He then begins playing with his cellphone, perhaps wishing he hadn't given up his seat to that old lady fifteen minutes ago.

Guess that's the bad ting about being rejected on the subway. Not only can everyone hear and see you go down in flames, but you can't very well slink off into a dark corner of the bar and wash away the humiliation with a drink. Nope. You have to stand there confronted with it until one of you reaches your destination.

Not that this guy exhibits any shame. When the woman exits the train at Wall Street, he's sure to give her his best stare and dawg smile, and then sticks his head completely out the car to watch her go.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 7:10 p.m., "4" Train, Grand Central to Union Square

I'm in a foul enough mood already when Little Lady Who Lies a Lot steps into the car to beg for change. Healthy-looking white woman. She's 34, she says. She's a widow, she says, has two kids but can't find a job.

I'm not buying that. Not for a second. Can't find a job at all? I know a raft of businesses that would snap up a presentable woman who would have the sack to sell this line of shit with a straight face.

I'm a habitual change giver, believe it or not - if the person is deranged, unemployable, in obvious need of help and I haven't seen him or her on the same train giving the same schpiel 700 fucking times. And you can call me a race traitor or call what I do reverse racism, but when a well-spoken, apparently sane white woman, who's obviously had a shower recently, who isn't foaming at the mouth, and who's been on this train over and over again tries to tell me she can't work, I ain't buying it.

And apparently, neither is anyone else.

Which really pisses off our humble hand-out seeker. So she changes her approach.

"I'm sorry you can't bring my husband back from the dead. She's got that angry Long Island mother tone to her voice. I'm sorry you cant make corporations hire me. I'm sorry you cant make my family help me out."

Yeah, well I feel a damn site sorrier for the couple sitting right in front of me, going through their bills, which are literally in a loose pile at the bottom of plastic shopping bag. The wife pulls one out and hands it to the husband, who looks at it and hands it back. Ah, yes. The "which one gets paid this month" lottery. I recognize the game and I recognize the look in the wife's eyes, the look that asks, "What the fuck we gonna do this month?"

I don't know the answer to that, but you can bet your ass it doesn't involve begging on the train...even if that would knock out a couple of those bills with a week's worth of cup-rattling.

Wednesday, May 12, 2004, 9:45 a.m. "2/4" Trains, Grand Army Plaza to Grand Central Terminal

Today it begins. Subway sweat. Sure, there may have been a couple of times of mild discomfort lately on an afternoon commute, but here it is on a morning commute and the upper lip starts to bead with sweat, the shirt starts to droop, its starch powerless against the humidity - just like my hair, which I can hear curling up.

It isn't even all that hot above ground yet. But it's getting there. Last year, the heat didn't come until the first week of July. June was a rainy, chilly affair - salt on the wound of a long, ugly winter. This year I'm thinking we're in for it. I'm thinking a repeat of 1999. I hope I'm wrong.

Wednesday, April 28, 2004, 6 Train, Grand Central to Bleecker 

It's 6:30 p.m. on April 28 and I'm on the 6 Train from Grand Central to Bleecker. I'm sitting here, reading my book, minding my own business, when a woman walks in at 23rd Street and sits near me.

She flips her hair with a dramatic movement and I look up.

Uh-oh. Eye contact.

She asks me a question. She's a low-talker so I ask her to repeat herself.

"How do you get to Brooklyn?" she asks.

"Where at in Brooklyn?" I ask. I should have said something New Yorkish, cleverish, something circa 1948. "Brooklyn's a big place, lady." Something like that. But I figure a woman in need of direction doesn't need any sass-mouth from me.

”Montrose Ave. L Train,” she says.

Well, that's the next stop. And it strikes me as odd that if she knows the stop, and she knows the line ... Still, let's keep Sir Ego in check here. So I give her the information she needs, she thanks me, I say "you're welcome," and turn back to my book when she blurts out:

"You look familiar."

Whuh-hoooaaaaaa, Nellie! Did I just get hit with one of the lamest of lame pick-up lines? And how does one respond to that anyway? Because clearly she's waiting for a response.

"Why, yes. You've perhaps seen my work. I'm Antonio. Antonio Banderas. But you can call me Tony. Or Bandy. Whichever you please."

or

"Well, people tell me I look like Ted from Queer Eye, you know the cooking guy, but that's only when I'm wearing my glasses, which I'm obviously not today. But they're these little black Armani things. Cute? Girl, let me tell you."

or

"Guess them FBI pictures up at the Post Office are working."

But Captain Smooth here goes with the slack-jawed stare, which I think is appropriate. For my own reasons, I don't want to encourage her. Of course, I'd like to report, just for the sake of my ego, that this is a supermodel I'm about to fend off, but no. She's older than me by a number of years and she's sporting big ear rings and bigger hair.

But she's a trooper. After the "you look familiar" line doesn't work--even with her helpfully waving her hand in front of her face and saying, "You know, right in here"--she goes after my book.

"Whatcha reading?"

"The Collected Stories of Richard Yates," I say, sort of embarrassed because suddenly I feel like a literary snob.

"What's it about?"

Ugh. This is one of the questions in life I hate the most. What's it about? It's about people who get their tongues cut out for asking me "What's that book about," that's what it's about.

"Well, it's just a bunch of different short stories," I say.

"I mean. What are they. Mysteries, thriller? You know? What?"

How do you explain something like Yates in two seconds (mind you, this whole exchange is happening in the time it takes to go from 23rd to 14th)? "Well, you see, it's about urban and suburban characters in New York, some of whom see their dreams crushed under every day life, but many more of whom decided never to dream in the first place." I'm sure that will go over well.

"Well, the story I'm reading right now is about a bunch of veterans stuck in a TB ward shortly after WWII," I explain.

A confused cloud moves over her face, but she soldiers on. "You like to read that stuff?"

This is actually a perfectly legitimate question. I'm almost done with the book and I'm asking myself why the hell I'm reading it. The stories are great, the writing terrific, but I feel like I might have to cut open a vein or two by the time I'm done with the lot of them.

"Yeah, sure," I say.

"Well, what else do you like to read?"

By this point, we've pulled into Union Square/14th Street. She shows no signs of getting ready to leave the train or of caring where we are. But I'm calling her bluff.

"Oh," I say in sudden mock surprise. "This is your stop."

She looks up, realizes where we are and says, "Oh, that's too bad" and looks for a second like she'll decide to stay.

I pray she doesn't. And, thankfully, she leaves, giving me a sort of wistful little wave as she leaves the train. "It was nice meeting you," she says.

And, believe it or not, the last thing I want is to get mean with someone, who while almost certainly crazy (she's hitting on me, after all), also gave me a nice after-work ego boost (she's hitting on me, after all). 

Thursday, April 22, 2004, "2/3" platform, Grand Army Plaza

I'm scribbling away on something else when a noise moves from background to annoyance. It's the ripping of newspaper. I look up and there, by the garbage can, is an old man in a suit. By his side is a small silver luggage carrier, a dolly of sorts. On it sits a battered Dasani box. On top of that sits a disheveled New York Times. Apparently, the old man is going through the paper, section by section, and ripping out the pages he doesn't intend to read. He shoves the discards into the trash.

Then he folds up the remaining pages and moves to a position at the edge of the platform, ready to board the next train.

I can't tell if he's disturbed or overly practical. I wonder if the Dasani box is crammed full of newspaper articles he's found fascinating.

Wednesday, April 21, 2004, 6:30 p.m., "4/5" Grand Central to Nevins

He has that absent-minded professor look going for him. A frumpy old white man with red plastic-framed glasses nesting in his mussed white hair, a windbreaker crammed clumsily over a baggy wrinkled shirt. His legs, wrapped in too-tight gray slacks, terminate in a nest of bags on the subway floor, two filled with papers, one with food, the other...I don't know.

He puts me in mind of the English Prof. At University of Louisiana at Lafayette who served as the physical model for John Kennedy Toole's Ignatius Reilly in Confederacy of Dunces. All that's missing is the hat with flaps and an obviously bad attitude.

Taking a break from his reading material (Behind Closed Doors in White South Africa), he reaches into the food bag and pulls out a plastic bottle of what appears to be organic whole milk. Something unsettling about an old man chugging away at a milk bottle on the train.

The milk, thankfully, goes back into the bag, and he spends a few moments setting himself and his things to rights. He opens up his book, but just as quickly closes it, as if remembering something. From a pocket come a few sheets of folded and crumpled paper. In the one blank spot not covered by his mad scrawl, he writes:

CALL MOTHER

Tuesday, April 20, 2004, 8:05 a.m., "2/3" Grand Army Plaza to Nevins, "4/5" Nevins to Grand Central

I rarely board in Brooklyn at this time, so it's a bit of a shock to see all the school kids pouring off the train, heading for another day of productive learning and psychological build-up - especially those Catholic school kids.

I'm on my way to the dentist and trying not to have a fainting spell about the whole thing.

Regular readers may remember I silently mocked a weeping girl, a fellow commuter, for being a left-wing type. Apparently that sort of thing makes the Baby Jesus cry and he's punishing me with mouth woes. Worse still is my choice of dentist. Because of its proximity to work and because it honors my insurance, I'm going to U.N. Plaza Dentists. The U.N.! Much scorn have I heaped upon that nest of vipers, those appeasement-happy, dictator-coddling, genocide-watching, Israel-blaming, oil-swindling, double-parking, no-fine-paying jerks.

See? There I go again.

I bet Kofi's going to be hiding in a back room. The minute they have me in a chair, he's going to come out with a tartar hook in one hand and a drill in the other. And he won't be wearing his protective gloves!

"Mr. Wheaton. The Security Council has passed a resolution to partition your mouth."

NOOOOOOOOO!!!

Ok. This isn't helping stress levels any.

Thursday, April 15, 2004, "4" Train, Nevins Street to Grand Central Terminal

I notice quite a few adult women on the subway carry word-find puzzle books to pass the time on the train. I approve of this (I'm sure this helps these women sleep at night). I always preferred word-finds to crossword puzzles. In a word-find, all the letters are there, somewhere, and you know exactly what it is you're looking for. If monkey is on the list, somewhere in that big grid of letters, whether it be diagonally, vertically or horizontally, upside down or backwards, those six letters are lined up in the correct order to spell monkey.

Crossword puzzles, though? Ehhn. Always made me feel like a kid being teased, like a guy insecure about his education trying to get along in a room full of Ivy League PhDs. The numbers, the space restrictions - it always seemed a little too close to math for my liking. And crossword editors always seem a little to clever for their own good.

Either that or they're women. Guys might understand this feeling. You're having a discussion or an argument with a woman, then next thing you know, you're in code land. Every three- or four-word grouping she utters means something else entirely, something you're supposed to infer but you have no idea what it is. You have all the clues. They're in relatively plain English. But all you see before you are empty boxes.

So why is it mostly women I see doing word-find puzzles on the train? Why aren't they doing crossword puzzles? I don't know. I'm sure I could find it in my heart to go on making rash gender generalizations (women don't like each other) and completely unsupportable claims all day long, but I think I've done enough for one entry.

Instead, I'll close with some random observations. 1) I'm not a big fan of the orange wall tiles (running in a direction perpendicular to normal tile placement) at the Bowling Green stop. 2) People need to choose their under-lip piercings a little more carefully. Silver is good. Gold is great. Pearlescent? Not so good. Looks like a cancerous growth of some sort. 3) This train car makes an odd noise when it rocks from side to side. It's sort of a twhoik-uh-thwoik-uh-thwoik sound. Highly annoying.

Tuesday, April 13, 2004, Nevins Street Platform

9:20 a.m. There's smoke at the end of the platform. A guy with a scarred face, a hospital bracelet and a limp shuffles by me, heading quickly away from the smoky area. That doesn't do much for my peace of mind, but what does it say that I'm more worried about my morning commute being screwed up? It says that I'm a selfish bastard of the worst sort, the type of person I typically rail against in my writing.

Of course, this should come as a shock only to the naïve among you.

Friday, April 9, 2004, "4/5" Grand Army to Nevins Street, "2/3" Nevins Street to Grand Central

It's 9:40 a.m. and I'm just getting to the Grand Army Plaza platform. Can I possibly make it to work by 10? Absolutely not. The next train won't pull in for another five minutes. And even if it was the fastest ride ever, I still need to saunter over to the coffee guy for my morning fix, then stop off at the Hallmark Store for some cards. Do I care if I make it to work by 10? Absolutely not.

Note to Hollywood: All those trite lessons about never letting your work come first before everything else in life?

Well, this guy was listening.

I'll say this much. This has got to be one of the most boring-ass "3" trains I've ever been on. Who the hell are these people? They're just sitting there, either reading or blinking. No one's snoring, no one's saying anything outlandish, no one's making out on the train. It's a sad day when Jennifer Aniston's photo on The Post's Page Six is the most exciting game going.

I want my two dollars back.

And, now, I'm getting a seat on the "5," so I find myself in the position to bitch about getting a seat and thus not having anything to bitch about. I was even able to move down to a new seat to get more leg room.

Guy sitting next to me has an iPod. Ooohhh, look at me. I have an iPod. I'm both special and fancy. And unique, too! Jerk.

Guy across from me has an iPod, too. But his is hooked into a set off those big-ass headphones that look like earmuffs. You just KNOW what kind of tool he is: scrawny little white boy, bobbing his head and fumbling with his pack of Newports. Wonder if he drinks Colt 45, not because he likes it, but because he thinks he's keeping it real. Punk.

And there's an almost cute, sort of prissy looking girl who won't stop rubbing her hands and looking at her fingers. What's the matter? Got a subway germ on your precious skin?

And don't even get me started on the woman across from me reading the Bible. Pfffft. The Bible. Yeah, how's that been working out for you, lady?

(The above comments brought to you by Sir Cranky Pants).

Monday, April 5, 2004, "L" Bedford to 14^th Street/Sixth Ave.

Sitting on the "L," next to M. She's got her head on my shoulder and we're just sort of zoned out as we head to the Village Vanguard to check out the big band. There are a couple of skin-head ska types sitting directly across from us. They're either extremely fucked up or half brain-dead from being too fucked up for too long.

The one on my right is the talker in this pair, the other the choir, the guy that just throws in a grace note every now and then: "Yeah." "Right." "Uhuh." Etc. I'm not sure what they're talking about, but from out of the blue, comes this flash of conversation:

"Suck my cock and call it God."

Hallelujah!

Thankfully, the guys get off at the next stop, allowing M. and me to discuss the pure, unadulterated genius of what we've just heard. We didn't really pick up the context (which I'm sure only would have ruined the phrase), but we both agree that these words are important and understand that this will become a catch phrase, so help us God. (Note: I'm trade-marking, copyrighting, registering it, whatever, right now!)

Go forth and spread the word. T-shirts will be available shortly.

Friday, April 2, 2004, "4/5" Grand Central Terminal to Nevins

Train speed is relative to your condition. You know what I'm talking about. If you're not late for work, have no desire to get to work, and are in the middle of a good book, the train breaks all current land-speed records and lickety split, you've arrived.

If, on the other hand, it's a Friday night at 8 p.m., you've been at work all day, are still suffering from last night's excesses, and just want to get home, you'll be stuck on a train that feels like its being driven by Special Ed; you'll notice snails and slugs on the tunnel walls passing you by. Or it feels like it's moving at a normal speed, but no matter how fast the damn thing goes, the tunnel stretches out before it like the hallway in Poltergeist, the next platform always just out of reach.

*
Here's a glimpse into honest Ken's diary: Those four college-age kids across from me need to shut the hell up, especially girl with the horrific extensions. How bad are they? Well, if I can tell they're bad... Anyway, there's no need at all for that kind of noise on the train. Shit.

Wednesday, March 30, 2004, "2/3" Grand Army Plaza to 14^th Street

6:30 a.m. I wonder if I'd get my ass jumped if anyone in this car knew I was carrying nine hundred bucks in cash in my jacket pocket.

Tuesday, March 29, 2004, "2/3" Wall Street to Grand Army Plaza

6 p.m.
I'm on the train with one of my roommates when this scrawny girl walks in sporting a look that can only be described as a cross between Flash Dance and punk rock. Hard to pin-point her age. High school? College? But she's got that hangdog look that kids that age get when they're convinced all the world's problems are unique to them, that they're the only human on the entire planet who suffers pain in such an exquisite manner. NOBODY UNDERSTANDS WHAT IT'S LIKE!!!

I'd toss in the fact that she's wearing a Les Miserables t-shirt, but that would make it seem like I'm making this stuff up.

Then she starts crying.

Dear lord.

She's not bawling. Or sobbing. Rather, she's quietly weeping. The water works in both eyes and nose are running pretty well and she's attending to the flow with the heel of her palm.

I wonder if some sort of personal misfortune has befallen her or if she's just a super-sensitive artsy type being moved by whatever music it is she's listening to. Maybe she, like me, can't get through Journey's "Open Arms" without completely breaking down.

I start to feel bad for her. I'm a chump for a crying girl, which does not bode well if ever I have a daughter.

I distractedly listen to my roommate babbling away - have I ever seen HER cry?- while all my caregiver and super-hero endorphins rush about my brain. A grave injustice has been done to this waif and I must set it right.

But next thing you know, we're at Grand Army Plaza and it's time to step off the train. And so does the crying child. No. I can't take any more.

Then I see it, the back of her gray zip-up jacket. She's scrawled something on the back with a black marker: "Say no to military recruiting at high schools."

Well, to hell with her, then. There goes all of my sympathy. She's probably crying about Ralph Nader's chances at winning this year. Or crying because some bully called her a commie for being a member of International ANSWER and she doesn't know which is worse, that a Web search proved the bully correct or that she's discovered she has, like, a total crush on the bully. And he's a jock! And he's a Young Republican! God. Life is so unfair! Why meeeee?!?! Sniffle, sniffle. Wanh. Wanh.

Friday, March 26, 2004, "2/3" Platform, Grand Army Plaza

I'm only jinxing myself by saying this, but this morning I'm thankful for the subway - this despite yet another rerouting incident on the train yesterday. It seems Thursday is becoming sick or injured passenger day. Yesterday morning, the passenger was injured. Perhaps he started out sick and a fellow commuter decided to teach him a little lesson for interrupting the morning's commute.

So what brings me to this bit of mass transit gratitude? Jesus told me to improve my attitude.

No, really, I was listening to the radio this morning and learned from the traffic report that a heating-oil fuel truck overturned, caught on fire and ruined a big chunk of I-95. Yup. A fair portion of a major artery in a major metropolitan area rendered impassable. Miles worth of commuters sitting in a bumper-to-bumper river of metal, frozen still on a spring morning. Some of them are going to be late. Some of them are already late. Some of them are noticing they forgot to fill up the tank earlier this week and that little red empty light is glowing angrier and angrier.

Now all of them have to figure out a route over "surface streets" (as opposed to those that float in air or run merrily under water), streets never intended for entire cities worth of road-raging people trying to drive on them all at the same time.

And here I sit, waiting for an underground train to whisk me away to work. I start to get all moony, as I sometimes will, about the modern technological marvels. But I quickly realize there's very little modern about the subway. The New York City system just turned 100 years old.

Hell, the fact that I'm listening to the Rolling Stones while riding the train involves about one million times the technology as the train ride itself. Consider: I'm listening to "Sticky Fingers," a 33-year-old album that I transferred from a CD (lasers!) to a tiny chip inside a plastic card using a computer - a computer that's no bigger than a breadbox but can store over 100 gigs on its hard drive. Also consider the Stones CD arrived in my mailbox via something called Amazon after an Instant Messenger conversation with a friend revealed a woeful lack of Rolling Stones in my music collection. Without any trouble at all, the friend - all the way in Brazilclicks a few buttons and a few days later, a CD arrives at my home.

A subway? Wheels, engine, tracks. A subway is impressive, yes, but at the same time, its old school. Hell, a lot of the tunnels weren't even bored out underground. They simply dug huge ditches, slapped the tracks down there, then covered it all back up. It's old school. And while the system is no doubt all wired up now, there wasn't a single damn computer involved with its invention.

That's pretty damn impressive in itself.

* * *
My reverie on technology comes to a halt when I see someone else writing in a notebook, looking around, taking it all in. Has a fellow diarist encroached upon my territory? Will there have to be a bloody show of violence to establish my dominance? Why did I pick today to leave my antlers at home? I'll show him. I'll write about him: He's wearing black jeans, white sneakers, a baby blue sweater with black stripes, a black puffy vest. It looks a little too much like an outfit if you ask me, either something his girlfriend, boyfriend or mom picked out or something he copied directly from a model in a men's fashion magazine. Still, it looks sharp. He's a little baldy but has hidden it well enough by closely cropping his blondish hair. He looks like a Swedish version of Joey Pants. He's sporting silver metal-frame glasses. He's holding a CD walkman that makes his left foot tap. He's writing in an old-school marble composition book. His handwriting is much worse than mine.

Thursday, March 18, 2004, "3" Train, Nevins to...

Of course, after praising the platform puker last week, this would happen to me. For once in my life I get out of work early on a Thursday and...I get to Atlantic, after taking the "4" down from Grand Central, after making a successful transfer, and this is what I hear: "Attention, ladies and gentlemen, because of a sick passenger one station ahead, this train will be taken out of service...Attention, ladies and gentlemen, because of a passenger in distress..." Distress?!?! What the hell does distress mean? Who isn't in distress by the end of their afternoon commute!? Son of a bitch, if I catch up to this person, he better be having a stroke, because if he isn't, I'll teach him new meanings of the word distress. Distress, my ass. Now, I'm in distress, gotta hump it all the way from Atlantic to Grand Army Plaza, and here it is cold and I'm hungry and tired. Distress.

And you just know that this morning I had the commute all screwed up because of another sick damn passenger held up, rerouted during morning rush, because of a sick passenger.

See if I ever sing the praises of a platform puker again. They can all choke.

Wednesday, March 17, 2004, "3" Train, Grand Army Plaza to 14^th Street

6:00 a.m.
I walk down to the platform and find it empty. On one of the benches sits a shrink-wrapped package of pierogies.

6:30 a.m.
At Clark Street a blind man taps his way into the train. Moments later, a short man with '70s hair and mustache, bundled in a puffy coat, steps in. He's reading The Village Voice. Damn hippies.

6:32 a.m. Fulton Street
I notice a young man at the end of the train pulling a book out of his bag. It's a GRE test-prep book. He opens it. His eyebrows arch as if to say, "Ahhhh, shit. What am I getting myself into?"

Tuesday, March 16, 2004, "2" Train, Grand Army Plaza to 14^th Street

6:00 a.m.
Dr. Nona or Dr. Nuna is a tall old Jew with a white bushy beard marching forth from either side of his hat. There is some confusion about his name because the handwriting on the outside of his small leather briefcase isn't clear on the subject. (A subsequent Google search tells me that Nona is a Russian-Jewish name; Nuna seems of Spanish derivation. No, Nona it is.) Neither name sounds very Jewish to me, but the other signs are obvious. The hate, the beard, the long black coat, the dark suit that's seen better days, the comfortable shoes that don't quite match the rest (insert Lesbian joke here). The wardrobe looks like something worn by a man forced into a suit by his trade, but also a man who doesn't care what women think of his appearance.

Dr. Nona also seems to have the bad eyesight associated with a community, because it is closed to outsiders, that doesn't have the deepest gene pool.

Yet he doesn't quite fit the normal model of serious-looking Orthodox man barely tolerating the Goy on his morning ride in. No. The first thing I notice is that his hat is different. It looks like something Afghanistan's president would wear. And his white hair gives him a lighter feel, especially when combined with his tall, lanky build and his long, angular face.

And he's smiling to himself. He stands next to me and every so often, he squints his eyes as if a pleasant thought has occurred to him and a little smile, almost a smirk, appears on his face. (No, my less charitable readers, he's not breaking wind.)

A seat opens up and Dr. Nona takes it. He reaches into the briefcase, more of a satchel really, and out comes the prayer book and a think pair of glasses in clunky black frames. (Now, here is something that fits the stereotype.) Dr. Nona starts to read, to mumble softly, much to the consternation of the older black woman-no doubt a Christian-seated to his right. As he reads, Dr. Nona's head travels back and forth like the carriage on an Underwood (except his carriage moves in the opposite direction) and his fingers trace his progress. Those hands! What fine long hands, with slender tapered fingers the hands, it would seem, of a jeweler.

But Dr. Nona is, well, a Dr. Or so his bag says. Maybe his fingers poke and prod the ailing bodies of other Orthodox Jews.

I wonder.

Wednesday, March 10, 2004, Nevins Street "2/3/4/5" Platform

This deserves it's own separate entry. This is about one woman, one woman who did what was right and benefited all mankind - well, okay, all mankind on the evening commute. We pulled into Nevins on the "4" train and I start getting a little shovey-like, but she's in the way. She stops, she goes, she stops, she goes. I start to think unkind thoughts about her.

Then she steps off the train, steps well clear of it, and pukes all over the platform. Bright yellow, like the congealed grease in canned chicken noodle soup.

Those of you who don't live in NYC are probably saying, "Puking on the platform, that's gross. So what? Big deal?"

Those of us who've been stuck on a train for thirty minutes because of a sick passenger know what the big deal is. Those of us who've sat there cursing the idiot who couldn't drag his or her sorry ass off of the train before bringing up his or her lunch - we know what the big deal is.

Nevins obviously wasn't this woman's stop. I could tell because she didn't really want to get off the train. But she did get off the train. She took one for the team.

Subway puker, I salute you.

Wednesday, March 10, 2004, "4" Train, Grand Central Terminal to Nevins

It's 6:25 p.m. and there's a kid hanging on to the pole right in front of me. A boy, ten or eleven, maybe even twelve. He can't make up his mind between giving me the stink eye for jacking this seat or the puppy-dog eyes in hope that hell guilt me into giving it up.

I don't think so, scrappy. I'm made of tougher stuff than that, and you're almost a man now so you better get used to being shafted on your evening commute.

Maybe if you were a girl. Maybe if you were attached to a super fine momz. But you're flying solo, chum, and standing you shall remain.

Monday, March 8, 2004, "2" Train, Grand Army Plaza to 14^th Street

Most boring subway diary entry ever. It's 10 a.m. and there are ten other people in this car with me, none of whom are insane or fermenting in their own filth. Some are reading. Some are sleeping. Some are just staring off into space. The only law-breaking going on is the white girl across from me: She's eating a muffin or a bagel. But some lawbreaker she is - she's eating over a bag so as not to get crumbs on the floor.

The only other laws being broken are fashion laws. Like the woman in the white and brown rabbit-fur coat. I haven't seen a coat that ugly since those mangy things my cousins used to wear back in the '70s. But worse is the guy wearing brown pants, a gray suit jacket, a paisley shirt, an olive tie with horizontal stripes, all topped with a black leather coat. That, my friends, is the loudest thing on the train.

Friday, March 5, 2004, "6" Train, 23^rd Street Station

The turnstile monster has apparently set up shop at the 22^nd Street entrance. A slightly angry young man is pacing in front of the nearest turnstile. He's just been dealt the "Swipe again," "Swipe again," "This card has just been used" hand and now has to wait ten minutes before he can use it again.

I get one "Swipe again" and decided to try the other turnstile.

"Oh, don't do that," the frustrated guy offers. "I wouldn't do that. That one's worse than the other one."

Sure enough, there are two people lined up behind a third who is swiping her card over and over again. Someone gets through on my turnstile and I decided to dance with who brung me, so to speak. I can see by the read-out that this successful commuter has $18 left on his card.

I try mine. "Swipe again." Shit.

I back off and let another person through. First try meets with success. She has $12 left.

I see now. Turnstile monster hates unlimited ride Metrocards. He wants only cash-equivalent. But I've paid my $70 for the month and he's going to take this Metrocard if I have to shove it down his throat.

"Swipe again." Damn. Now I'm posed with a problem. You only get so many "Swipe again" messages before the dreaded "Swipe again at this turnstile," which inevitably leads to "Card just used." And whereas at any other station I could just hop the turnstile, here at the 22^nd Street entrance, I'm faced with the full-body height, revolving door model. There's no getting through that.

I back off and let someone else through. I watch the motion of her wrist. She slips her card through the slot a little slower than usual and "GO" flashes her forward.

I step up, take a deep breath and frustrated guy's watching closely. I slide the card just so and shpladow! "GO." I'm through.

Take that turnstile monster.

Friday, March 5, 2004, Grand Army Plaza, waiting on "2/3" train

It's 6:05 a.m. and I'm sitting here waiting for the train, keeping my fingers crossed that there won't be a repeat of yesterday's passenger splattering which will hold up subway traffic. Turns out yesterday's accident at Fulton Street delayed the jury deliberation in the Martha Stewart trial because four jurors were stuck on various trains. It also delayed my roommate, who happened to be riding on the instrument of torture (the victim lost his arm). They were stuck in the tunnel for 30 minutes, then it took another 30 minutes to exit the train.

I wasn't horribly inconvenienced. In fact, I had the chance to do my good deed for the day. I overheard a foreign man struggling to ask the woman next to me for directions. He needed to get to Grand Central, but found himself on the right train going down the wrong track. She tried to explain to him that he needed to go to Times Square, then take the Shuttle over to Grand Central, but the language barrier seemed a bit much.

Since that was the route I was taking, I told the gentleman to follow me. And so he did without protest and only a few words. He did allow that Grand Central was confusing as I dragged him in front of about 1,863 exits to the Lexington Street exit across from the Chrysler Building. I wonder if at any time he thought I was going to drag him down some utility hallway, steal all his money and then hack him to little pieces with a knife.

Hey, it's New York, after all.

He also spoke when I asked him from which country he hailed.

"Ecuador," he said.

"Ah," I said.

And that's all I gotta say about that.

Thursday, March 4, 2004, "4" Train, Grand Central to Nevins

The train pulls in as I walk down the stairs. I grab a seat. The doors remain open for some reason and some clown with a gravelly voice is doing a circus barker routine. "Get the express train here. Right here. Hurry up and get the express train."

But he's not doing it just to be cute. He starts complimenting folks as they enter the train. "Oh ladies, you look nice, but y'all probably too expensive for me." So you know he's just buttering folks up. He seems in good spirits and he has a big, fat Santa gut.

The doors close.

"Ladies and gentlemen, pardon the interruption. I'm a homeless person. I am a homeless person, but I am an honest person. I do not rob and I do not steal."

"Excuse me sir, but that's redundant," I say. Ha. I kid, I kid. I didn't say anything.

"Hallelujah," he says. "Hey, that's a nice hat, fella. I know it's expensive to live in this city, but any change you could spare. Can I get a Hallelujah?"

And so it begins.

March 4, 2004, Grand Army Plaza

Of course it would happen just like this. I wake up with the alarm but decide to skip karate and sleep in. Then I wake up a full hour ahead of schedule, yet end up running late anyway because I decided to waste time blogging about how I'd screwed up my schedule for the day.

Self-fulfilling prophecy.

When I get to the Grand Army Plaza station and hear the train the pulling in, I'm greeted with an "Insufficient fare" message from the dreaded turnstile monster.

No big deal. No big deal. Take it in stride. I'll sit on a bench, perhaps write and wait and think how totally awesome last night's episode of "The O.C." was.

But then the notices start coming in over the loudspeaker.

"Wanh-wanh, wuh wanh-wanh, at Fulton Street*. Wanh-wanh-wanh. "5" trains will run over the Seventh Avenue line. "4" trains will be turned back to Utica Avenue."

Son. Of. A. Bitch.

The first "5" to come through my "2/3" stop is packed. To hell with that. The second, thankfully, has seating. And today, for this morning at any rate, chivalrous Ken is dead. Find your own damn seats ladies. Catch up to me later, after the commute, and I'll open a door or two for you.

So now I guess I'll just sit on this "5" to Times Square and then take the Shuttle over to Grand Central, that long damn walk through the Grand Central tunnel. Oh, well. If nothing else, I'll be treated to two or three different musical acts along the way.

*Translation: "Because of a person on the tracks at Fulton Street."

What a pleasant little detail, one of those subtle post-9/11 changes. After that date, riders were no longer satisfied with the pre-9/11 "Because of an incident" excuse.

Incident?!? What kind of incident! Suicide bomber? Crazed gunman?!? Anthrax attack!?! What?!? Holy Mary Mother of God, were all going to die. The incident is going to kill us!

So yes, while a person on the track might seem a little too specific, we're all happy for the detail. Besides, it's not like the announcement said, "Whoa. Some dude just go totally waxed down at Fulton Street. It's going to be a while before they scoop up his pieces, hose the blood off the tracks and chase away the rats."

Friday, February, 27, 2004, "2" Train, Grand Army Plaza to 14^th Street

I didn't notice the seven empty seats on the car until I stepped in. But there they are. I'm at one end and they're all the way at the other end.

As I've said before, if there are that many empty seats at this time of day, something ain't right.

And that something is perched down at the other end, guarding the empty seats. Really, he's stretched across four of them. I can practically see the stink waves coming off of him. Mercifully, I'm a little stopped up and can't smell him. Or it could be someone's spraying perfume. Because that I can smell. Someone's spraying a lot of it and I can see a group of older women farther down the car waving their hands in front of their faces and laughing. But at six in the morning, you just don't give up a seat because of a little human stench - especially if you're armed with a bottle of perfume.

This guy is drunk and/or cracked up to the gills. He's swaying like a seasick man on a boat in stormy seas. He's talking to himself, and his hands alternate between fluttering through the air and tunneling into the darkest regions of his pants. He's crazier than the craziest crazy on the crazy train. And suddenly I remember my dream from last night - which starred me being stabbed to death.

The couple in front of me, Caribbean immigrants and apparently casual acquaintances, can smell him.

"Man, it's getting bad," says the gentleman.

"There's no excuse for something like that in this country," the woman says. I expect her to say something vaguely socialist, about the horrors of the capitalist system. But no. "Even if you don't like staying in the shelters, you shouldn't go around looking like that. You can find a shower somewhere."

Day-um.

Not even I would say something like that.

February, 26, 2004, "3" Train, Grand Army Plaza to 14^th Street

I'm standing in the door and look down to see a young woman studying a text-book. Looks like a college text book. The subhead I see says "Why people do drugs."

Now, I don't do drugs. I'm a drunk, myself. But the first thought that pops immediately into mind is: because the shit feels good. My second is, the same reason some people read: for escape.

But we must remember. This is a textbook, quite possibly aimed at someone in the health services or social services sector, so getting right to the point is not the way things are done. ROOT CAUSES PEOPLE. I scan the paragraphs. Basically, according to this text, middle class, mostly white suburban kids and adults do drugs for the risk, for the danger, because they're bored sitting up there in those big houses with nothing to do but count their money. And lower class, mostly black kids and adults do drugs because they're poor and they're sad and they're angry.

Now, of course, that's all fine and good, and for many people those reasons might be right on. But I didn't see word one about that physical buzz people like, about the fact that some people just like to get all kinds of high.

Just an observation while reading over someone's shoulder - something, by the way, that pisses me off when it's done to me.

February, 25, 2004, Grand Army Plaza station

It's cold again. Why, damnit, why? That's as far as I got in Subway Diary writing before switching over to another notebook to write to a friend in Brazil. But I remember the scene well enough, partly because I wrote some of it in the letter. A Hispanic man was playing guitar and singing. He was quite good. But my head was down in my notebook until I heard the delighted squeal of a young girl. I turned around and saw a grown man with shortish dreads doing the silliest dance in the world with his daughter. Right there on the platform. Then they did a bit of salsa. Right there on the platform. Good stuff.

February 24, 2004, "3" Train, Grand Army Plaza to Nevins/ "4 "Train, Nevins to Grand Central Terminal

Happy Damn Mardi Gras! It's 9 a.m. and all of my old friends back in Louisiana are still in bed sleeping off last night's debauch, resting up for the last day of what is usually a five-day drinking marathon. It started on Friday afternoon, continued through the weekend, and many of them dont have to work on Monday and Tuesday.

And here I sit, sober as a deacon.

I am, at least, wearing beads, one strand purple, one strand gold, one strand green - justice, money and luck or some such. It says something about New York that a guy wearing somber business casual (all gray and black, sort of like the weather) and three strands of garish party beads doesn't get so much as a glance.

February 20, 2004, "3" Train, Grand Army to Nevins, "4" Nevins to Grand Central

My roommate has an expression: "That's crap! That's crap in a bucket!"

And that's exactly what this commute is, crap in a bucket. Here it is, 9:30 a.m. and the "3" Train is so packed, I can't move.

And now I'm on the "4" and it's standing room only, with me pressing my notebook up against my bag and scribbling sideways. These sonsabitches should be at work already, not taking up space on my train. I don't even have a pole to lean against. (Yes, I'm a pole-leaner.)

A seat opens up in front of me and for whatever reason my chivalry bone kicks in and the more rational part of my mind screams out as I give it up to a woman who's neither infirm, pregnant, nor hot. But she does whip out a copy of Vibe that has a half-naked Alicia Keyes on the cover, so I'll consider that a fair trade.

* * *
Uh-oh. We've got a subway princess on board, a scrawny, uppity looking white woman with a scowl where her mouth should be and given to that 'Excuse me' tone that says, "Get the fuck out of my way, prole." Even her hair-do looks bitchy. After shoving a few people to the side, she sees a half inch of blue seat showing that will accommodate her bony ass if she makes the other folks on the bench squish into one another. So she parks it, then commences the sighing and eye-rolling common to this sort whenever someone else dares to rub against them.

February 19, 2004, Evening, Bowling Green Stop

On Thursday and Friday nights, I curse the "4/5" Line. I escape work at 8:30, wanting only to get back to Brooklyn. Without fail, the first train to come trundling along is a Bowling Green-bound "5". But the impulse to flee Midtown, to put distance between work and me, is so strong that I just have to take this pathetic non-Brooklyn-bound train down to Bowling Green, where I have to wait, wait, and wait some more, for a "4" Train to come along.

February 19, 2004, Morning, Grand Army Plaza

Standing on the Grand Army Plaza platform, looking down at the tracks while my mind does the mental equivalent of a copy machine warming up, I notice them - long stretches of disconnected rail. Is the track broken? Is a "2" Train going to come barrel-assing through, only to fling itself off the track and onto the platform, killing us all? And if so, which papers going to write the more hysterical headline, The News or The Post?

No, of course its not broken. The disconnected rails are in between the functioning set of tracks, right there in the middle. The tips of the sections in front of me are painted red; I assume the paint indicates which end goes with which. I look left, then right and spare rails march as far as the eye can see.

Son of a bitch!

This means construction. This means, at the best, every other weekend with no Manhattan-bound service at this stop. And we just had nine months of this crap last year.

Yet another reason not to leave Brooklyn on the weekends.

February 18, 2004, Evening, "4" Train, Grand Central Terminal to Nevins

I notice a teenager wearing a cap that is hunter safety orange. Has she ever heard that phrase. Maybe when she found the perfect hat to match her white Nike's with the orange trim, she read the tag "Hunter Safety Orange" and wondered what the hell that was all about, not aware that during the colder months of the year, thousands of men across America - most of them white, some of them bona fide Crackers, Hill Billies, Rednecks and Cajuns - arm themselves with rifles and shotguns and take to the woods. There, they shoot at Bambi, Tom Turkey, Daffy Duck, Rocky the Squirrel. And they're all wearing that same orange cap.

February 18, 2004, Morning, "3" Train, Grand Army Plaza to 14^th Street

Ha! This morning I vanquished the turnstile demons. Swipe THIS again, bitch! I got to the train just before the doors closed shut. The train, she's an old one, but she's half empty so I get a seat, whip out the note book and pen and...

And nothing.

Nothing exciting. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing to keenly observe.

Even the pan handler who comes in at Bergen is off her game this morning, can't remember her lines.

"Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen," she starts.

The heads and shoulders of those who are awake scrunch up a little in defense.

"Ummm," she continues. Yes, she actually says, "Ummm."

Then she pauses.

I don't look up, partly because I'm scribbling but mostly because of that overwhelming human urge to deny the fact of human suffering. I wonder how instinctual it is, how long it takes the average non-city dweller to stop looking up on the subway when they hear that "Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen" refrain. One? Two times? Before he says to himself, "Man, I don't need this kind of downer." Four or five times before its just another piece of the scenery as un-noteworthy as that black robot-looking garbage can on the platform. Perhaps our hypothetical stranger doesn't even realize that even when it comes to the regular panhandlers on his route, he'd never be able to pick one out of a lineup, that he couldn't even tell you with certainty what race or nationality the regular panhandlers are because most of the time the mix of mental illness, booze, hunger and numbing pain turns all accents and dialects into the same toneless plea.

"Excuse me ladies and gentlemen," she says again.

And no, I don't look up. Not today.

"Um," she says again, pauses again.

"I don't have no income."

She stops, as if she's lost her place in a prepared speech. Maybe she's one of those weird ones who think public speaking is more frightening than death.

"I'm trying. But any change you could spare."

Another pause.

"Would be appreciated."

And that's it. Stilted, yes. But short and to the point and, judging by the hands reaching into pockets, effective.

February 13, 2004, Grand Army Plaza Station Platform

The Subway Diarist's Prayer

Please lord,
Let something interesting, exciting or funny
Happen on my commute today.

Or let something not-so-funny,
Possibly even horrible,
Befall a fellow passenger
While I bear witness.

But also, Lord, should you be so kind
As to provide divine inspiration,
I pray that it does not delay the train,
Make me late for work,
Involve bodily excretions of any sort,
Or seriously stink up the car.

Amen.

February 12, 2004, 9:25 a.m., Grand Army Plaza Station Platform

Oh no. Walking down the steps from street level, I'm hit by the sound: KIDS!

Lots of them.

Shit. Just what I don't need right now is a classroom's worth of third graders giggling, screaming and generally holding up the train because the teachers are terrified of losing of their charges. (Any suburbanite readers should think of the nightmare a city field trip must be. If you don't lose 'em on the train, they can always get lost in the park.)

These aren't third graders. Oh no. Not that. It's a Park Slope Breeder Brigade, a Stroller Squadron.

And it's loud.

Now comes the tricky part, positioning myself so that I'm not in the same car as they are. What's worse than twenty screaming kids? Being trapped in a moving tin box with them, their little bodies falling all over the place when the train lurches; their parents yelling at them. The biggest problem with other people's kids these days is you can't beat them.

I'll say this in favor of the subway, though. You can always move to another car - which is the primary reason I avoid the bus.

February 9, 2004, "2" Train, Grand Army Plaza to 14^th Street

An old clean-shaven, well scrubbed black gentleman sits alert and patient. He seems the sort a Hollywood exec would tap to play the part of Wise Old Black Man or a grandparent type on The Cosby Show. He's wearing a blue and yellow windbreaker with the words Essex House Engineering Dept. stitched on the left breast. He holds in his hand a severely worn Bible, its leather cover wrapped in tape, the tape covering the word Holy on the spine. I wonder if he was at all superstitious about applying tape to the good book, afraid perhaps of tampering with magic. Or did he see it as something more utilitarian, a tool? His favorite hammer is used to pound nails, the Bible's just there to pound sense into his head.

He departs at Atlantic and in walks another man with a uniform, this uniform a short-sleeved dark blue shirt on a hanger. There's a green-rimmed orange patch on the sleeve. In the middle of the patch is an apple. Snaking around the apple, the words N.Y.C. Board of Education School Food & Nutrition Services.

I see no other uniforms, no other Bibles. A woman across from me is reading a brochure about St. Jude, the woman next to her a slim leather-bound book with gold leaf. Maybe a prayer or inspirational book, but definitely not a Bible.

Everyone else is reading The Daily News. Actually no one is reading The Daily News. Instead, they're holding their copies like security blankets. Of the 25 people on this train, 12 are asleep.

February 7, 2004, "M" Train, Fulton Street to Marcy Avenue

I've never taken this train. First time in the subway going over the Williamsburg Bridge. The parks on the Manhattan side and this part of Brooklyn seem totally alien to me. I'm frightened, soooooo frightened. I see dead people. No, wait. He's just sleeping. Never mind.

February 6, 2004, 9:40 a.m., "4" Train, Nevins to Grand Central Terminal

Morning commute and everyone has that hang-dog look. They're wet, cranky, miserable. Outside, above ground, the clouds are dumping a lovely mix of sleet and rain. The look on these faces says, "Enough already. This is too much."

I wonder how they'd fare in South Dakota.

I wonder if they saw on the news this morning that a suicide bomber attacked the subway system in Moscow. At last count, 22 people were dead. Possibly Chechen rebels, but at this point who knows?

And these riders don't seem perturbed by it. Just goes to show how quickly Americans forget (or how resilient they are). There was a whole lot of talk, mostly by celebrities, after 9-11 about how polite New Yorkers had become. Well, that lasted all of two weeks on the subways. Then it was back to "Get the fuck out of my way" and the daily pushing and shoving. But celebrities wouldn't know about that, would they?

And two and a half years out, we all gladly pile onto the train without giving a second thought to ricin or anthrax. We all watch the Super Bowl and marvel at Janet Jackson's boob, without considering what it took to be able to jam 90,000 people into an enclosed space in a major American city and not have anything go wrong. (Well, except for that streaker.)

In fact, things are so swell, many even argue in favor of presidential candidates who want to go back to treating terrorism like its little more than organized crime with a funny beard. They run the only serious-minded Dem-Lieberman-out of the primary because, they say, presidential politics is about charisma (oh, and he's not angry enough for us). Now, they're going to nominate John Kerry, who has all the charm and one quarter of the principles of Bob Dole.

Well, such is life. Personally, I think presidential candidates should spend a week doing rush hour commute on the subways, see how well they handle it. A bare minimum of security. Perhaps do the candidate up in special effects makeup to render him/her unrecognizable. Of course, we'd tape the entire thing to see how well they handle the people.

Here are my predictions:

George W. Bush: He'd do fine the first few days. But things go wrong on the fourth day when he leans over to Karl Rove (disguised as an old woman in a house dress) and describes some guy on the train as a major-league asshole. Result: butt-whipping.

John Kerry: Wouldn't even make it onto a train. Wouldn't even make it beyond the turnstile. Caught in the a line to get through the turnstile, Kerry cuts in front of six people, saying "Don't you know who I am?" Result: Kerry gets cut. With a cardboard cutter.

Howard Dean: I'd give him five minutes before he goes berserk, whipping out a scalpel and administering some righteous subway justice on some foul-mouthed teenage turd who not only refused to give up his seat for an older lady, but sassed her. Well, that's Howard's story and hes sticking to it.

Wesley Clark: Gets off at Christopher Street and is never heard from again.

John Edwards: Mugged as he's admiring the subway advertisements for various ambulance-chasing lawyers, lost in dreams of the endless class-action lawsuits he could drum up in the time it takes to commute from one end of Manhattan to the other.

Al Sharpton: I give him two days before hes corralled all the United Homeless Organization panhandlers into a federation that funnels 60% of their take to the Reverend.

February 5, 2004, 6:05 a.m., 2 Train, Grand Army Plaza

(major-league profanity follows)

The trains just pulled in.
Please swipe card again.
Shit.
Please swipe card again.
This is a Manhattan-bound 2 Train. The next stop is Bergen Street.
Please swipe card again at this turnstile.
Son. Of. A. Bitch.
Please swipe card again.
Please stand clear of the closing doors.
Please swipe card again at this turnstile.
Please suck my fucking cock, you god damn
Card just used
Oh. You god damn piece of shit you. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.

February 3, 2004, 3 Train to Nevins/ 4 to Grand Central Terminal

This morning I decided I wanted music for the commute. It's not something I do often. Eavesdropping is a favorite sport of mine and the paranoid country boy deep inside of me (okay, so maybe not THAT deep) doesn't like to be aurally detached from his surroundings. If a brick-wielding bum is going to brain me on the train, I want to hear him coming.

Yet this morning, I snatched up my MP3 player (no yuppie boom box iPod for me, thank you very much), thought about loading it with Lionel Hampton or Robert Johnson, but decided to go with my workout mix.

I'll say this much. "Satan," by Orbital and Kirk Hammet, from the Spawn soundtrack, is certainly a different way to start off the day. "Satan! Satan! Satan! Satan!" it starts off before diving into the metal/techno mix the soundtrack was known for. It's something with which you'd expect a Howard Dean supporter would kick off the day, not a humble little Dubya supporter like me.

Then again Dubya wouldn't expect that one of his three voters in Brooklyn wears earphones precisely to drown out bible beaters who think the morning commute is the time to yell at people about the saving powers of Christ. I'm grumpy enough as it is, pal, last thing I need is someone needling all that latent Catholic guilt I've been successfully repressing for all these years.

Luckily, though, after "Satan" and a Prodigy tune, I've cycled through to a Bjork song, "Violently Happy."

Yes, yes, yes. Again with the violence. But at least for the next minute or so it's an Icelandic happy sort of violence.

January 30, 2004, 11:45 p.m., Waiting for 2/3 at Nevins Street

I just saw the VakTrak! I just saw the VakTrak! It's like spotting Big Foot, really. Yes, there is a train that creeps along the subway lines at night, sucking up garbage like a big vacuum cleaner. No, I'm not making this up. I swear. I know it sounds ludicrous, but its true. In fact, this is the second time I've seen it. The first time I saw it was a couple years ago, waiting on the "4/5" somewhere downtown. It's yellow and black and big and tonight it creeps by across the station on the "2/3" line heading into Manhattan. I try to take a photo with my camera phone, but it's too dark and too far away. [You thought I was crazy, didn't you? Thought I was making it up. Well, VakTrak started service in 1997 and, go figure, something that's this big and sucks was built by the French. http://www.esemag.com/0997/vaktrak.html]

January 30, 2004, "2" Train, Grand Army Plaza to Fourteenth Street

I'm nodding in and out of sleep when I hear the low saw of a gentle snore. It's a pleasant, soothing sound, something you'd expect from a new girlfriend or boyfriend, something you'd find endearing, cute even. And while in bad times it might annoy you a little, it always makes you feel tender, protective.

I almost want to put my arm around my fellow traveler.

I look over.

Guy, naturally. A big guy. Hooded jacket, baggy Enyce jeans with red stitching. The type of guy who'd beat me silly just for imagining a cute girl sitting in his spot and leaning her head on my shoulder.

"You saying I'm a bitch?" he'd ask.

And I'd say, "No, no, no. It's not like that at all. What I was trying to get at was..."

"Cause I'm not a bitch," he'd say before punching the snot out of me.

There's so little room for romance on the subway.

January 29, 2004, "2" Train, Grand Army Plaza to Fourteenth Street

It's 5:55 a.m. If there were a Jesus and he really did love me, I'd be guaranteed a seat on the subway at this time of the morning.

But no such luck. This makes me uncharitable, to say the least. Makes me think things like:

1. Why aren't there any attractive people on the subway at this time of the morning? Do pretty people get to sleep late? Or does waking up this early make us all a little uglier?

2. Do these people swell up over-night, is that why they take up two or three seats?

3. I'm pretty sure that's not chocolate smeared all over that empty seat.

4. I'm glad they nailed his ass to a cross.

Luckily, lightning doesn't strike in the subway. And I'm sure many of my fellow riders, all with their butts planted firmly in seats, would be quick to point out to me that maybe I don't get a seat precisely because Jesus is real and he's tired of my lip.

January 26, 2004, "3" Train, Grand Army Plaza to Nevins, "4" Nevins to Grand Central

This isn't exactly my standard commuting time, 2:30 in the afternoon, and I'm hoping that maybe I'll get a dose of oddness, rather than standard, boring two-sugars-and-cream commute. But all I get is a scrawny kid, long ratty hair, pale white, 5'5", maybe weighs a buck-fifteen. He's dressed all in black, with enough chains, zippers and studs to re-employ all the garment workers who lost their jobs when those red pleather Michael Jackson jackets went out of style back in the 80s.

He's wearing a button that says "Frodo Lives," sipping from a can of Red Bull, while trying to figure out what to do with the can so that he can play his portable gaming device.

Seven years ago, that last sentence would have left you wondering: What the hell is Red Bull? Has the market for weird Chinese folk nostrums-tiger snot, monkeys paw, bull urine-crossed into the U.S. and become the in-thing for Tolkein-worshipping goth kids?

But we all know what Red Bull is. And the kid probably considers himself straight-edge. No booze, no drugs, no cigarettes. Slurping down hopped-up, over-caffeinated sugar water, though, that's okay. It's not a mind or body altering chemical. Well except it makes your teeth vibrate, your eyes squiggle, the little voices in your head clamor all at once like a bunch of kids who've just spied the ice cream man.

I'm on the "4" now. The one good thing about an off-hour commute is ample seating. When I first moved into Brooklyn, I worked a three-to-eleven shift in downtown Manhattan. That commute, an "F" to "A" to Nassau/Broadway commute, spoiled me. That time of day on the "F," your only concern is attracting the attention of the crazies that call the "F" their year-round residence.

A whole eight months of leisurely commutes, my only hassle the too-slow tourists clogging up Broadway and Wall Street. That commute was damn near civilized, and I wondered what the big hub-bub was about. Stressful train trips? Really? Of course, I KNEW what all the hub-bub was, and was only mildly annoyed by my first foray into nine-to-five land. Still, I do miss my "F" train crazies. My fellow working schmoes, snoozing on the "2/3" and "4/5" trains, simply wanting to get from here to there-they just seem so mundane compared to Sunny Payne and the Trumpet Man.

We've crossed into Manhattan and the train is getting crowded with school kids and their parents. A woman reeking of cigarette smoke sits down next to me. A young girl of six or seven, fresh out of school, bundled up like Randy from "A Christmas Story," is standing in front of me, holding on to the pole and falling asleep, falling over. Her mom shakes her, gently slaps the top of her head. "Stand UP, I said. Wake UP."

Nothing to do but quit writing and give up my seat.

Ken Wheaton was born and raised in Opelousas, Louisiana. He is a weekly gossip/humor columnist for national trade magazine Advertising Age. His short stories have appeared in Briar Cliff Review, Hampton Shorts, Southwestern Review and Proteus. His most recent short fiction, "Act of Contrition," was nominated by Briar Cliff Review for the Pushcart Prize. He currently lives in Brooklyn and is unsuccessfully marketing his first novel and writing his second novel. He also wastes a great deal of time on his blog, http://kenwheaton.blogspot.com.His first novel, Movement, is available on the web at http://aboutken.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_aboutken_archive.html#107636766229515032