The Pus Brothers

The day we saw the Pus Man and his brother was the day I briefly considered using other modes of transportation around New York City.

Judging from their accents, the two backpacking tourists were from the deep south. They were loud, large, fat and sweaty, wearing bottle-thick horn-rimmed glasses and undersized gimme hats. They were humping several pounds of what appeared to be filthy laundry and old junk food containers in their cammo backpacks. They also were seriously mentally impaired, though I could not determine if this was a chemically or genetically induced condition.

Needless to say, everyone in our subway car tensed when they boarded.

Although they were spectacularly repellent, arguing in a grating, nasally voices about if they should go uptown or downtown, they topped themselves when one complained about his blistered feet, then took off his worn boot and began peeling layers of filthy, gummy, stained athletic socks off his right foot.

Everyone got wild-eyed and started nervously shuffling like horses in a burning barn. Emily and I watched from across the aisle, transfixed as he peeled off sock after sock while loudly complaining to his brother in a nasally twang that he was pretty sure it was infected.

It was like the world’s worst magic show.

 

The Erupting Carbuncle

Finally he got to the foot. And he was right - the blisters were bad. As everyone could plainly see, the walnut-sized carbuncle ravaging his misshapen toe was especially menacing, oozing fresh pus and blood like a volcano ready to blow.

The businessmen on the seats nearby jumped to their feet and the crowd cleared as if the brothers were radioactive. Yet the two were oblivious to the Chernobyl-like anxiety they were inducing. The sitting brother glanced up and announced to his sibling that he had to “deal with it.”

Their worst fears realized, the crowd surged back. Under the watchful eye of his brother who was now munching on the squashed remains of a vending-machine PB&J sandwich, the suffering troll squeezed his big toe with all his strength until the yellow fluid ran like sticky magma down his doughy, sweaty foot.

People actually groaned aloud at the sight.

Emily and I never laughed so hard.

 

The Barf Prodigy

The truth is that Emily and I share an enjoyment of extremes and as a four year-old, she is shameless about what interests her. I still find it amusing when she does a postmortem of her bowel movements: “First a bunch of hard little pieces came out real real fast one after the other, then lots of air, then finally a really BIG one came out, but sloooow. Daddy, I had to push and push.”

Yes, she will learn when she cannot say such things and when to look away, but for now it’s all truth to be absorbed and shared.

So a few months ago when the kid sitting across from us on the F train gacked up some of his melted blue fruit-cicle into his open palm, then slurped it back up before his distracted mom noticed, Emily and I just looked at other with raised eyebrows, as is we just witnessed Ozzie Smith making a one-handed circus catch of a frozen rope line-drive. “Wow,” I thought as the kid surreptitiously re-ate his semi-digested snack of blue dye, sugar and corn syrup, “you can hang a star on that one!” Judging by her grin, Emily apparently felt the same way.

 

Train in Vain?

Perhaps I’m not being fair to my daughter by exposing her to such impressions. Hell, maybe it wasn't fair to expose her to New York. Her trips on the train have given her many opportunities to see what prolonged drug and alcohol addiction can do to its victims. She is familiar with the smell of urinated malt liquor and rotting junk food on wet concrete. She’s seen naked rage, insane rants and worse yet, despair.

And now she got to see a stranger's pus from across the aisle. Maybe a cab or car service would be in order for our next MOMA trip.

But then she'd miss the beautiful things.

 

When it Trains, She Pores

It's the isolated, mysterious images that gets me: the nervous, zit-faced teenage boy carrying a huge bouquet of flowers to some unknown person somewhere, his dreads carefully done up in a ponytail, the tiny woman in the formal black skirt navigating a cello case taller than her through the crowd as easily as if it were an extension of her body, the muscular, bald man in the stained white tank top staring lovingly at some small hidden pet moving around in the Louis Vuitton duffel bag between his feet.

Emily sees and sometimes she asks questions. But she is nowadays content to look because she has learned that I am rarely able to give her good answers. She has learned - I think perhaps with a subway rider’s instinct - that knowing would spoil the fun. The mysteries are not so great but speculation is limitless and Emily imagines and wonders only about the potential of joy.

One time the doors opened and a flood of people in shorts and t-shirts streamed into our empty car. They had just finished the New York Marathon and were wearing complimentary foil ponchos. Most still had their numbers attached. To Emily it was as if the aliens had landed and the questions came fast. I didn’t know what to explain first – the numbers pinned to them, the concept of running for fun (“I know they don’t look healthy…”), the definition of a marathon or why they all were wearing foil. I was tempted to use the all encompassing excuse of “They’re from France” but I knew that it could bite me in the ass if we ever made it back to Paris.

 

The Ghost of Emily Future

Then there are the moments of kismet, like the girl that got on the train in the car and sat across from Emily and me. She was a teenager with the tips of her hair dyed white and multi-buckled combat boots. She had a city-hard expression of blankness as her eyes focused on nothing: the subway rider's mask. But Emily leaned over to me, pointed at her with a straight arm and exclaimed, "That girl looks like me, only older!"

And she was right - there was a more than passing resemblance. They shared the same coloring, round face, almond eyes and straight black hair. The girl saw Emily pointing and to her own shock recognized her younger self. As she got up at her stop, she and Emily shared a small, knowing smile: past and future saying hello to each other in the present of an uptown local.

The subway is where everyone tries but can’t maintain their guard. A child brings out the best in people, but sometimes (okay, always) the best is better in New York. Like the old Italian lady who crossed the aisle to look at Emily with an expression of love that my parents would have had if they were still alive, and gushed, “What a beautiful child!” then looked at me and said, “May God Bless Her!” with such heartfelt earnestness that I didn’t think He could refuse. Whether one thinks so or not, it’s what every parent wants to hear. And for me it happened on the C train.

 

Lives Underground

It’s the way around the city that makes Emily say “whee!” when the train chugs forward and for a moment I remember that it really is kind of fun. It’s the beavers in Astor Place, the fossils on the platform at the Museum of Natural History, the men selling the light-up yo-yos by simply walking through the car spinning them, the serious, focused troupe of boys doing their well-rehearsed hip-hop and breakdancing moves as the train raced under the East River, banging their heads on the ceiling as they spun each other around. It’s the realization that no matter how hard things are, we don’t have it as bad as the rats living under the third rail. And then there’s always that moment of delightful disorientation that thrills Emily when we walk up the stairs and find ourselves in a different place.

The subway is also the place where, (I had read) when Emily’s beloved Mister Rogers got on one day, the riders spontaneously starting singing “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood” to him as they rode along.

Despite the piss, the pus, the urine, the crazies and the terrorism, I don’t think Emily and I will change our ritual of standing hand-in-hand in front of the MTA subway map, deciphering our journey ahead, planning our adventure, our getaway, our pilgrimage.

Emily knows that New York City is the place of everyday miracles. It’s our belief that more than a few happen underground.

 

Michael Ahn is a novelist and contributing writer for Parents Magazine.  He is completing is second novel and writes a blog about parenting in New York:  www.cluelessdad.com. He lives with his wife and young daughter in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn