October 28, 2004

The days are relentless and stalk me even in the blue mild autumn when the still green leaves converse in Queens. The subway at 100 is, as all geriatrics, demented and ornery. Last night all trains through Queensboro Plaza were killed by a signal failure so I walked down Second Avenue finding, first, unfortunate and then more fortunate places to get stinking drunk. When I finally relented, after the eclipse and the Red Sox, at midnight, and descended to a 7 at Grand Central, the westbound train was
conveniently running on the eastbound tracks. In Keatsian "LaBelle Dame Sans Merci" cadences, "And no signs told."

The more fortunate stinking drunkenness arrived, appropriately enough, at the Recession Cafe on Second and Thirty-Fourth, with a motley assortment of multiply pigmented down-heeled real people including a garment-district worker on disability with nervous breakdowns following her "nine one one" layoffs; a wild-haired tooth-gapped Astorian; a white-scarved black-capped leather-jacketed downtown 1970s Mean Streets New York Harlemesque man who looked like Wilt Chamberlain and talked like Barry White; and a classic five-foot Negress stunner with braided hair extensions as long as she was,
who looked no older than 35 but had a 23-year-old daughter and an infant granddaughter.

The boroughs are forefinger-and-thumb close at rush hour. The boroughs are long haul antipodal 747-flights after six beers in the too lengthened late night. And moneymoneymoney moneymoneymoney. When I hate New York I hate New York the way Henry Miller hated New York. I am mean and bitter and scowl a lot and pray that the great War on Stupidity has not yet been lost, that I can go home in this America, that I can think of this country, and thus regard myself, this voter, this example, exemplar, this
peoplepoweredpersonindividual I, without contempt. Just for a little while. Just for a little. Lonely as a crowd.

Small moments though. A lumbering giganta-rat mother on the 6 this morning, a triumphant failure, was unable to deaden her daughter's monkeyism. She was four at most, but had deep circles under her moppetlike silver-dollar-sized eyes -- like one of the wizened little people in anime, in Akira or in
Spirited Away: old-souled and yelpingly alive. I raised an eyebrow and gave her the faintest of grins. She fully cocked a single eyebrow and gave me the most precociously saucy grin I've ever seen, like she knew the entire game already, this whole people-ponged life game, and was just waiting to be old
enough for a purse, a gun, a pair of stockings and a Secret Agent Decoder Ring. Had me beaming all the way to work through a shaft of light illuminating a single tree stalk, blown bright yellow in the sky.

and the iron cars/ shunting on forever/ into death and darkness

January 25, 2005

Just goes to show you don't have to be a West Side straphanger to get the underground runaround these days.

After work we went for Paul's Burgers in the Village. My girlfriend decided to scope out the tomes in St. Mark's Books, and I was to rush home to write 1,500 blind words on Nagoya and Aichi-ken.

The fates really like plugging the shiv into my dorsals.

Loping top-heavy from a half-pound jalapeno burger, I took the 6 Train (a.k.a. the green spine of the East Side) up from Astor Place to Union Square, and then logically slouched through that iron warren to the N Train. It took its fine time to arrive, though I didn't mind since there was a dead good '70s-vintage jazz quartet forcing a cool melancholy funk through the grates, and the platform took on a cinematic hue (yes, if this were the movie of my life, that would be the soundtrack, yes, yes) and I merely stood, eye-glazed, thinking blandly, imagining a camera on my face, recording all the infinitesimal changes of expression that actors create to signify subtly evolving thoughts and their attendant emotions as the music arcs above and shoehorns down.

The train arrives and, for a couple of stops, I note the cute girl on the left, and the Chris Farley clone across from me, who's talking very loudly to his neck-tied co-worker about Princeton and The Rule of Four.

The doors open. They don't close again. There is an R Train ahead with mechanical problems. Five minutes later, there's a mechanical failure at 59th Street. The entire line is blocked like a broken cork in a wine bottle. A second R Train pulls up on the opposite side of the platform, and announces that it will be taking the F Train route into Queens. I get on it, and resign myself to hoofing it home from that massively inconvenient stop at 36th St. -- which curves through about a mile of desolate Queens
warehouses and weed-grown lots. I get out, note the lap dancing establishment on Northern Boulevard, and -- always discombobulated -- promptly start walking in the opposite direction of the intended destination. I'm walking underneath the N elevated tracks, see two trains sweep by without a moment's
hesitation, and think: fine, you fuckers, I'll just crunch it up to Queensboro Plaza since, thanks, you sonsabitches, the N Train's running now. Halfway there, after negotiating a swamp of snowdrifts, muddy slushpuddles, and six-point intersections, I resign myself to a cab and hail one.

"[My address.]"
"Where's that?"
"[My address.]"
"How do you get there from here?"
"I kinda thought, being a driver, you would tell me. You know, screw it --
I'll take the train."
cue doorslam.

Twenty minutes later I'm at Queensboro Plaza waiting with about a hundred other people while the last of the Kennedy Fried Chicken grease wafts upward onto the platform. First train arrives; we crush on it. I keep trying to get a look at this one chick dressed like one of Mick Jagger's groupies circa 1972 -- heroin physique, jeans, pleather-and-faux fur jacket, dirty feathered wilting hair, and a sneering, hardened Bronx-like face that emanated "Yeah, I know I'm not pretty, but I'm fucking dirty, and I'll make you beg for it, you nasty little worm."

The doors remain open. There's an announcement -- this train's running express, bypassing my stop. Since this happens all the time at Queensborough Plaza, I resignedly resign my seat and replay the wait. The next train comes: now, due to a "signal malfunction" at the end of the line, all Queensbound trains are going express: thus rendering moot the entire half-hour slushfilled march I'd just accomplished.

At this point I just laugh, then drop in for an expensive beer at one of the strip joints, and watch the only other punter in the lonely place watch some orotund-bellied skanks writhe distractedly to Lyle Lovett songs. Finally, I find a cab, am sufficiently oriented to direct him how to get me home, and
pay him $8 for the privilege.

We left Paul's just before 7. It was 9:30 when I arrived home, freezing, exhausted and wilting. Poured myself a whisky soda, and sang along while Schoolhouse Rock's "Three is a Magic Number" went psychedelic on me. 

And now, Wednesday's barreled upon me like a loose cannon.

David Schneider is a freelance writer and critic with previous contributions to Newcity Chicago, Bridge Online, and New York's Asian Food Journal. He received his B.A. in English literature from Oxford University, currently works in marketing for an international educational cruise company, wears black, and likes house music.