Roller Coaster Ride

by Simone Rene

     Today I rode in the very first car of the train with my body plastered against the front window. I hadn’t done that since I was twelve years old. As the F train made its way out of the tunnel towards the Smith & 9^Th Street stop the beaming lights and vantage point from that window made old forgotten childhood memories resurface and join me on my journey. I must have looked a sight to those waiting on the platforms at the upcoming stations. 

     Growing up I lived in an area in Brooklyn known as Brownsville. My family had been there for generations. I was twelve when I began my daily commute into Manhattan. I had skipped from 6^th to 8^th grade and had been accepted into the 9^th grade at the High School of Fashion Industries in Manhattan. My mother received a lot of grief from her sisters for letting me commute alone at such a young age, but it was a better and safer option than having me attend the local high school. I needed to be inside the building by 7:30 for breakfast, so I had to leave my house by 5:30. Often it was still dark when I made my way to the Junius Street Station. The 2 line stops at that station today, but I think I took the 4 train back then. In my freshman year there weren’t many people taking the train at that time in the morning. I always held myself tight as I sprinted to the subway, my train pass clutched in my pocketed hand, exhaling a large sigh of relief when I finally made it safely to the elevated platform. Back then the platforms were still planks of wood. They had corroded with time and often there were holes in both the side enclosure and the floorings. They would be patched only to be vandalized again. Each time a train entered and left the station or passed through on the express line the whole structure would shake. The commuters would laugh and joke about how one day we were all going to tumble down onto the street below. The laughter was always uneasy because it was of real concern to us.

     In the late 70s and early 80s NYC’s subway system wasn’t known for its safety or its beauty. The lines were in various states of disarray, muggings and rapes weren’t uncommon and the presence of graffiti was a constant throughout the system. Brownsville, Brooklyn was the ghetto and wasn’t a top priority in the MTA’s budget. The disrepair of these stations has been addressed since then but when I was twelve traveling on the train was either a fool’s adventure or a person’s necessity.  For me it was a bit of both.

     I was centrally located between the L and the 4 lines. My L stop was the Livonia Street Station. Had I wanted a true fool’s adventure I would have taken the L line into Manhattan. I knew taking the L line to 14^th Street and transferring to the E train for one stop would have cut my commute in half, but the danger of walking the dark, shelled-out blocks to get to that stop would have cut my chance of being unharmed in half as well. Instead, I walked the opposite way to the Junius Street Station. I took that line to Atlantic Avenue, walked the tunnels to transfer to what was then the B line, which I took to West 4^th Street in order to connect to the E local to 23^rd Street.

     But there were times I took the shorter route home. I rode the E train to 14^th Street to transfer to the A train, which I took to the Broadway Junction stop. I then took the long escalator upstairs for the L train transfer to the Livonia Street Station. I always stayed in the first car of both the A and L trains. My face almost always pressed against the glass. The clacking of the train against the tracks and the up and down hill movements of the L train as it made its way to my stop always reminded me of  the Cyclone at Coney Island. We called the L train’s Livonia Street stop “over the hill” because it was atop a rise in the neighborhood landscape, a rise that greeted rubble, burnt out buildings, empty store fronts and abandoned car lots. Quickly I would make my way home, sprinting even faster than I did in the morning despite the light of day. My mother never knew of my diversion; she would have thrown a fit.

     In my senior year my class schedule changed to the later one. I didn’t need to be at school until 9 a.m., but that meant with my after school activities I wouldn’t exit until around 4. I would be commuting home in the dark which to my family’s horror was more dangerous than commuting in the morning dark.  Maybe they thought the muggers and rapists slept in. Before school started that year I moved from Brownsville, ending up in Richmond Hill, Queens, a German neighborhood that was always quickly turning over. I commuted on the A train for my final year of high school. I stopped riding the Cyclone that summer as well. I had gotten really sick after my final ride and to this day the thought of boarding it again still makes my stomach clench. A few weeks into the semester my friends and I began to meet toward the middle of the train. It made for a faster exit up and out of the subway station. I dozed off, did my homework or chattered loudly with friends until we reached their stop and they had to get off to make their way home. I forgot about the rickety Junius Street Station and scary dark crumbled blocks leading to the Lavonia Street Station and the clickety-clack of L train wheels against its railings until today when my face was pressed against the glass window of the F train.

     Simone Rene is a visual artist and writer recently published in the first edition of Nerve House Magazine.