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On the Brink
by Mikita Brottman
When I was living in London a few years ago, a friend called
to tell me he'd be late for our meeting; there'd been a suicide on the subway.
As the train was pulling into the station at Bethnal Green, an otherwise
inconspicuous woman had apparently run forward and hurled herself off the edge
of the platform and under the wheels of the oncoming train, horrifying the crowd
of early afternoon passengers.
The train remained in the station, an announcement was made,
and the platform was evacuated. On his way up the escalator, my friend saw
the emergency team arriving with medical equipment and crime-scene tape. The
other passengers, being British, muttered a few laconic complaints about the
woman's selfishness and their missed appointments, but this was clearly a
nervous and defensive response to the terrifying scene that had just invaded
their afternoon. My friend and I were naturally curious about this woman and the
combination of circumstances that had led her to this sudden, desperate act.
Checking the local newspapers the following day, however, we found no mention of
the incident.
Similar things happen in the New York subway system, where
suicide is a regular hazard, more common than in most major cities.
Disturbingly, however, the New York Transit Authority does not release any
suicide figures, and most cases of subway suicide fail to make the news.
In some ways, it doesn't surprise me that some people elect
to end their lives in the subway, especially in a city like New York; much of
the subway here seems so depressing. In summer weather the heat can be quite
suffocating, and in certain stations late at night the stench of urine and ripe
garbage is inescapable. With its ill-lit platforms, stifling air, junk-strewn
stairwells, and fat-bellied rats clambering among the rails, it's hard to
imagine a more dispiriting place for those already at the end of their tether.
Indeed, how many of us haven't had the experience, at least once,
when standing close to the edge of the tracks, of thinking how easy it would be
to take that extra step off the edge of the platform? I've known people
for whom this temptation is so real they can't bring themselves use the subway.
This is one of those peculiar and destructive impulses best described by Edgar
Allan Poe, in an essay of the same name, as the “Imp of the Perverse.” “We
stand on the brink of a precipice,” writes Poe. “And
because our reason violently deters us from the brink, therefore do we most
impetuously approach it. There is no passion so demoniacally impatient as that
of him who, shuddering upon the edge of a precipice, thus mediates a plunge.”
It is curious that in this post-Kevorkian era, with plenty of
advice available from groups like the Hemlock Society and books like Final Exit,
people still choose to commit suicide on the subway. With the easy availability
of many different kinds of fatal drugs, throwing yourself under a subway train
seems an unnecessarily cruel and unpleasant means of ending your life. In fact,
most of the people whose lives end this way are homeless and dispossessed, often
alcoholics or psychiatric outpatients – people already inclined to
self-destruction, and perhaps with little access to more “civilized” methods of
suicide. The New York Transit System -- the largest subway system in the world –
is pleased to release plenty of impressive statistics about its 468 stations and
656 miles of track. But should we not be informed of its other, less triumphant
statistics as well? Of the many deaths that occur every year on the New
York subway, no one knows for sure how many are suicides, except – on some
occasions – the driver of the oncoming train, who is often the last person
to see the suicide before death. Those who hide behind pillars and leap in front
of trains at the last second are obviously suicidal, as are those who walk as
far as they can down subway tunnels, or lie down on the tracks and wait, or
deliberately touch the third rail. Some people have been known to wink at the
train driver, or tip their hat just before being hit. In other cases, unless a
note is discovered it's difficult to tell whether the death is a suicide or an
accident. Many
subway deaths are filed away as “undetermined,” which is one of the reasons why
suicide rates for many subway systems are never made public.
Most subway suicides are successful, and the
trauma can extend to those who happen to witness such incidents. Simply being
present during an event of this kind can lead people to need counseling or
therapy; they may suffer from nightmares, anxiety, and a dread of using the
subway in the future. More often, however, the worst sufferers in such
situations are neither fellow passengers nor innocent bystanders, but the train
drivers, who are often haunted not by what they see – the victim disappears from
view some distance before impact – but by the sound that comes a second later.
Subway drivers report that this sound is completely distinctive and impossible
to get out of their heads. A certain station, platform, or suicide hot-spot may
carry horrifying memories for a long time afterward. With such frightening
repercussions for those uninvolved in the case, there is a compelling
argument to be made for releasing information about suicide statistics.
On the other hand, since statistics are now
out of reach, is it possible that stories about subway suicides have come
to function as urban legends – incidents which, while not unheard of, are far
more common in rumor and anecdote than in real life? Brooklyn-based author
Ryn Gargulinski,who has made a study of the occupational folklore of New York
subway workers, discovered that the same tales of suicides, severed heads, and
smoldering corpses were circulated among different groups over many years, with
certain recurrent themes and variations.
They include the story of the passenger who
becomes trapped between the platform and the train, sometimes by accident,
sometimes as a result of a suicide attempt gone horribly wrong. In most versions
of the story, the victim's body gets twisted around like taffy by the moving
train, while the head protrudes above the platform and the person remains quite
conscious,
sometimes unaware of the gravity of the situation. As soon as the weight of the
train is removed, however, the victim's body will immediately unwind, leading to
certain death. In most versions of this story, emergency workers offer the
victim a final beer or cigarette, sometimes even going so far as to bring a
priest or members of the victim's family to the scene so they can share a few
last words. This story has become quite common since it appeared in the media; a
version was told by an emergency worker to a cab driver on HBO's Taxicab
Confessions, and it later formed the substance of perhaps the best-known episode
of the television series Homicide: Life on the Street.
Gory, dramatic events like this may indeed
be witnessed from time to time, but according to Gargulinski, not as often as
the cautionary stories that are told about them. The function of such tales is
partly to encourage safety by reinforcing the importance of remaining alert and
careful on the subway, and partly to warn people of the general dangers of urban
life, with its sinister stalkers and slayers. Horror stories like these are
shaped, told, reshaped, and passed along from subway worker to passenger, from
friend to friend, sometimes with slight variations, but always with certain
internal patterns and motifs intact, like the threat of anonymous lurkers on the
platform, or the horrible retribution in store for those who come too close to
the third rail.
For people who spend a lot of time on the subway,
suicide hot-spots are familiar, and sometimes even haunted by stains on the
tracks – sites of bloody tragedies, the very spot where someone's life has come
to an untimely end. These places, like the stories that are told about them,
have become part of the traditional folklore of an urban community, evoking
powers that are almost supernatural. Like depression, alcoholism, and mental
illness, subway trains can be brutal and fatal, no matter how carefully we
regulate their comings and goings. And in the same way, these stories tell us,
the human bodies we so carefully discipline are liable to betray us
at any moment -- to slip, to fall, to push, to get trapped – or to
experience perverse compulsions completely beyond our control.
Mikita Brottman is a professor of humanities at the Maryland Institute College of Art and candidate at the Washington Square Institute for Psychoanalysis and Mental Health. She is also a freelance writer and journalist, and lives in New York and Baltimore.