Train (14th Street)
I stand and watch the faces of the people as the train goes by. The train, not exactly heading for Auschwitz (but to some other less exalted work camp) seems as though it is, judging from the miens. It’s heading uptown and most of the people on it are white. Because it's so late in the evening it’s not
crowded. But the pale light that is thrown on their pale faces—faces wracked with some kind of internal pain, discomfort, worry, only illuminates their suffering. It never fails to amaze me how I never see laughing, smiling faces; most everyone is deep in a pit of gloom, alone, lost; they look down. As the train speeds up and leaves the station, I see the (separate) spacing of the people, and car after car of misery. I try to pull a face out of that strange paleness—they are viewed as if in a film and now as the train is leaving a certain poignancy overtakes me because I’ll never see these people again.

I don’t know why, but these are people I care about. When I get on my train (more densely packed and hence more miserable), I try not to assume the expression that one feels when getting onto this
train, --disgust again and again--for a long, noisy, dirty commute home.

I see faces everywhere I turn though I don’t look at them. Sometimes, however one cannot help but be the discerning eye. One records, one sees, but one does not reach out.

Station  (Astor Place)
Sad-draped figures of people lean against green-painted iron beams while some cool jazz music plays. Desolate and dimly lit, with loud echoing everywhere, the train’s loud silver sounds consume one as it approaches from a distance, with people’s voices, footsteps coming from behind. The masses come and go in the tunnels, lemmings with a time schedule. When the train pulls in, people all step out of the
cars in unison. The bald guy with headphones, the dark skinned dude reading the Daily News, not all admittedly looking unhappy on this train. Suddenly my eyes are cameras and my fingers civil servants, busy recording.

West 4th Street
It is night, it is cold. Going down the stairway to the subway I see in front of me a person of indeterminate sex, race: black—standing one step above a junk-filled shopping cart, spilling over with dirty plastic bags stuffed with god knows what, though probably empty bottles and soda cans. The
cart evidently weighs a ton as witness to the painfully slow progress this person is making. I gaze for a moment wanting to offer my assistance; someone is right behind me, a white guy. Your guess is as good as mine how the person will make it into the train station.

Man Banging on Plastic Pails (42nd Street)
A man was playing in the subway, the sleaziest, busiest station, 42nd Street, Port Authority where you can catch the N, R, A, C, E, 1, 2, 3...among other trains.

It was freezing cold, people were dashing about madly. Suddenly I heard a racket, it sounded like John Cage, except the musician was black, sitting low to the ground, with empty buckets (large, white, plastic, maybe they once held relish or mayonnaise), upturned, hitting them in turn along with
something metallic--a rectangular suitcase-like thing. This was no ordinary drumming.

People stopped, as if in shock to stare, mostly African-Americans, some holding large packages. It was obvious this guy was a phenomenon, but when he glanced up, his crazy face, with an evil glint in the eye confirmed to the viewer that indeed this guy was mad, if not gifted. It was amazing that he could create the kind of sounds he did on those simple, improvised objects. Doubly so in the impersonal, drafty, ill-lit basement atmosphere of this subterranean space called a train station.

Two Rude People on Train (Euclid Ave.- Jay Street Borough Hall)
In a pre-Bloomberg world the everyday infractions oft committed such as jaywalking, smoking a cigarette in a restaurant/bar, or taking up two seats on a train would occur almost naturally. But doing this these days (e.g. feeding the pigeons in the park, sitting on a milk carton, etc.) could land you in a lot of trouble.Such was not the case on the train in which I sat.

The lawbreakers were a home girl and her ‘homie’, she done up in ‘Fubu’ gear; he wearing a brightly colored if overlarge hooded raincoat (brightly colored). Upon entering the train they commenced to putting their feet up on the seat and displaying their shoes and shins to each other and the public. I
was initially the sole recipient of this ‘nose thumbing’; a bad habit wherein one dirties the seat on which a dirty commuter will no doubt soon be dirtying his ass. The home girl wiggled her feet wildly in my direction who knows maybe to rile me but I was too transfixed by an article ‘Actress Sculpts Herself to Death’, about a one-time actress who starved herself to death. New York Magazine.

When the train doors would open, the would-be lawbreakers would waggle their feet fastidiously thereby discouraging passengers from taking the empty seat. Eventually, a lumbering older man with a cane plopped down beside me forcing the end to what in a Bloomberg world had obviously been a crime carrying a harsh penalty. The foot was removed and ignorant passengers surged in to dirty their asses. Unfortunately their was no corrections officer to get a Bloomberg point across; a sentiment I was certain was shared by more than myself.

Chambers Street
The woman on the train keeps touching her nose and other people are forced to do the same. We are discharged at Chambers Street for some reason. There is general chaos. Eventually, I arrive at Washington Square.

Crazy Jamaican Lady Screaming on a Crowded Train
You couldn’t see her because the train was so packed with people. The expressions on the people’s faces could clearly be seen, however; one man’s face had raised eyebrows, other faces were filled with doubt; annoyance.

Due to some kind of police action at 51st Street all IRT trains had been delayed, thus the shortage of trains. The woman was going on and on about Jesus, of all people, in a Jamaican accent, lecturing to this car of sardines; it was difficult to catch her words though the voice was sing-songy. I’d heard the voice before; she’d been screaming aggressively that day; today it was more solicitous which was understandable since she was obviously packed in tight with all of us. I only had the pleasure to
listen to her for one train stop.

"Jesus will listen...Jesus is a’waitin’ for you..."

Hers was the only voice that could be heard in the entire train.

Woman Working on a Tacky Crossword Puzzle
A woman sits near me on the train steadfastly focusing on one of those "find the words" puzzles which features rows of letters. The letters are large and she has circled a good amount of words. Her mouth is set in a grim ictus, her hair permed. She puts the magazine away before I can glean a word. She’s middle aged, wearing baggy dark blue denim, a plastic water bottle in its own case hanging from her side. she is covered in a voluminous kimono-like denim.

People always look so serious on the train when they’re reading trash novels - paperback blocks with tattered, yellow pages missing the front cover. You’d think they were reading Proust the way they sit there, concentrating, lips downturned, legs crossed, properly dressed and entirely tuned out from the world, without raising their head for a moment, steadfastly turning pages.

Dancing to Capitalism (West 4th)
In the tunnel leading to the train a poster of a scantily clad Latina with headphones on pulling her scanty t-shirt up over her full breasts. One of her teeth is blacked out with black marker and she is otherwise defaced. "Dancing to Capitalism" is written in large black letters next to her. The rest of the ad says, "Vic Latino and David Waxman present Ultra Dance 05--2x CD in Stores Now!"

Imprecations, 42nd Street Escalators, Port Authority
A black lady ahead of me wearing flip flops is muttering to herself, she has dirty feet, wears a house dress and a fake reddish looking wig. Suddenly she screams out to a guy going down the down escalator on the other side, "What the FUCK happened to your face?" I turn and see a guy with a face like out of the movie Mask, a vastly deformed face that is too large for its body, with black hair and brown eyes. There is a heated exchange of words between the two as curses fly in what can only be described as insane. The woman is doing most of the yelling and keeps repeating, "Get some
surgery." As they drift further apart it peters out, but not without him yelling, "I like your wig."

I try not to stare at her dirty heels while waiting to overtake her on the escalator on the way to the trains, pretending I didn’t see the pathetic exchange, which should never have happened. She was wearing a kind of fake plastic pink tiara on her head as well. At the top of the escalator stairs I see a large grey fly seemingly stuck at that point where the metal meshes with the top of the disappearing
stairs.

On the train, there are always a hundred details you could pay attention to - particularly for some reason, the ravaged faces which usually make you sick but also prove oddly fascinating. Inside a small box one tries not to look too closely at the insides. On trains, one is bound to find ravaged faces-- a white-haired old man reading a newspaper, a woman in a white blouse & sheer stockings, sandals, black skirt, with an incredibly unbalanced, unfriendly face. The unhappiness of people just sits there, making them appear vulnerable. When I see their unhappiness I always question its source. The entire world is a vast canvas that dares you to look.

Guy at Bottom of Subway Stairs
There is a guy who asks for handouts at the West 4th Street subway station.

A light skinned African American man of middle age he tries to make contact with you as you pass by. He sits on a dirty step with a cardboard sign that says something that’s probably untrue. I can’t remember what it says. In the spring or summer he always has black and white kittens with him, small
things which he sits on his knee, to elicit a favorable response from the many young women passing by. A while passes, maybe a year and a half and when I see him again he looks much worse for the wear -thinner, with really bad skin. It dawns on me that he's a junky. I know that he lived in Brooklyn because he got on the train I was on once, yelled at people and got off in Brooklyn. Of course the kittens are there, same color, same diminutive size, obviously different.

I never give him any money. He doesn’t elicit my sympathy. There is something phony about him.
 

E Train (34th Street)
Two women get on the train reeking of alcohol. The one doing the talking has an Irish brogue. The other one touches me on the knee accidentally. It is late evening and several other women are talking loudly nearby. The train is noisy, but they are noisier. The way they’re talking you know they’ve had a
few. The way she blindly grasps for the leather strap of her knapsack things are connected and they are open to the sounds, the brashness of the moment.

His Vida Loco (Van Siclen Avenue-Nostrand Avenue)
Some guy on the train was going nuts over the music on his headphones, singing plaintively at the top of his lungs, Spanish love ballads, whose beats one can  pick up from some distance away - syncopated Caribbean beats.

He's tall, well tanned & of a pale cinnamon color, wearing red polyester soccer clothes and in his early 20’s. As the train progresses along its route his singing becomes louder, then he lapses into long periods of silence. The train remains silent. All I can make out are the words por favor repeated countless times. When he gets up to leave at Nostrand Avenue he continues to swing his head back and forth, letting it hang in a sort of pathos, not in this world, but out out of it.


Van Scott hails from New York. His publishing credits include Modern Words, Harrington Gay Men's Fiction Quarterly, VelvetMafia.com, Friction, Volume 7: Best Gay Erotic Fiction, OpenWideMagazine.co.uk, 3AM Magazine.com, GonzoBeats.com, and 400 Words.