I caught the F train to Manhattan at 9 am and stood among heaps dreary-eyed people trying to mind their own business. Most people on the train take a gander at everyone else, only they are careful to dissimulate it. I guessed the nationalities of the various characters all around me, China, Philippines, Russia, Ecuador… What about the couple with the gaudy gold jewelry, sunglasses, and matching sports jerseys? Puerto Rican New Yorkers- Newyorkinos. The stalky guy with new brand-spankin’ new old Jordan’s, the hoody with neon silk-screened designs, and the too big baseball cap with the bill completely flat and the tag still on it? Brooklyn, I’d reckon. What about the three portly gentlemen with sombreros and guitars of different shape and sizes, singing an old ballad of Besame Mucho? Mexico, I’d bet my last ten bucks on it. What about the girl with the polka dot yellow dress and the shiny red heels, looking at me? Probably Japan, she’s almost too stylish to be Korean. New Yorkers are quick to size other people up, because the first impression is often the only impression you get in New York City. Most people put everybody else in a box at first sight, you automatically are whoever your outward indications suggest. Your clothes are a language of signs, and so your posture, your body type, your slicked back hair. That guy with the ostentatious shades, the scepter, and crocodile skin boots has dressed the part of a hustler, but who knows what he’s into. This girl in the yellow polka dot dress is… beautiful and still staring. I took out two suckers and offered her one, which she accepted, but we were both too shy to speak. The bedroom eyes were in full effect, however. The train bounced along through the dank tunnels, sometimes next to other mirrored moving rooms where people are like us, subdued, floating over cesspools where rats reign supreme and by forgotten subterranean lairs where bums sit together in filth and darkness, sharing cigarettes and trying to keep warm, or such is my mythology. I gave the Mariachis a dollar and got off the train at Broadway Lafayette. Then I watched the girl in the yellow polka dots watch me as the train slid away.
I got back on the F train at 14th Street, going uptown. Why did I ever get off? No reason in particular, but my metrocard is unlimited, so why the hell not? Besides, the F train is often full, perhaps because it traverses from the southernmost point of Brooklyn, Coney Island, tracing the numerical middle of Manhattan, 6th Avenue, to the outer reaches of Jamaica Queens. Moreover, a little promenade can be delectable in the city, you pass sleek sunglassed women with six shopping bags slipping through the crowds like wraiths, still men weeping in narcotic euphoria on the steps of the cathedral, women down and out who borrow babies for their day jobs as sedentary mendicants, bejeweled weed dealers with gold grills that pop out flashing dime bags from behind cement stoops and wrought-iron rails. What’s not to like? The train pulled up with gail force winds, just as I was descending the stairs. A little teenage Indian girl wrapped in neon saris was ascending the stairs with her mother, and she stopped to look back and watch me. Then, she turned, head down and followed her mother. Beep boop, the train doors shut and I swiped a seat between a sleeping Levantine man, on my left, berobed in galabiya with a white beard following his jawbone and a white embroidered skullcap enclosing the creases of his brow and an another man, on my right, this one occidental with shades and a newsboy hat. I started talking to the guy in the shades and learned that he was a jazz musician from Cuba, now playing in NYC for five years. He was going to play that night in the West Village and I promised myself that I’d be there (and I was). Just then, an old woman looked up from her Bible and started jabbering in Russian. I understood nothing at first, but as the cadence of her sentences started to roll along more smoothly, I realized she was quoting from the scriptures. The man in the skull cap awoke and was watching her intently, I remarked. Then, she changed languages and began speaking English. She was clearly distraught and tears hovered at the edges of her speech, when she mentioned her daughter. Oh, my daughter! She unintentionally reminded herself, seemingly wounded by the words themselves. My daughter was kind, never a bad word was spoken of her! And she started sobbing, calling out to the pasajeros ensimismados for sympathy, in vain. I instinctively got up and went over to her.
My daughter killed herself, oh why!? Everyone loved her, why did she do this to us, to herself?” I could only look at her, there was nothing I could say. She continued in a quivering voice, Now our family is being threatened by the Russian mob. We are poor, what do they want with us? Again, I was tongue-tied. She went on, I understand that not everyone can be rich, but so many people, they live like slaves, like SLAVES!” When I looked up, I realized I had missed my stop, and I turned to her, saying, It’s not all bad m’am, there are good people out there. Don’t lose hope.” And with that flimsy consolation, I left the bereaved woman. As a walked past the old man in the skull cap, his eyes sparkled. Beep boop, the doors closed.
I was taking the dark gumspotted stairs of 34th Street two at a time, and as I exited the stairwell I nearly collided with squat man in a pin-striped suit. He wore a fedora with greying steelwool hair poking out from under it. He looked at me and I looked at him. Then, he burst into a narrative of his day in fast-forward, I came up from Washington on the bus to Penn Station and I was like… and he started shuffling in place, super fast, sweeping his feet back and forth like a moonwalker. His fancy footwork was awe-inspiring, and he didn’t stop fasting talking about his day, frantic to tell the story. He was putting on a show for me, but did that mean he would ask me for money afterwards? He was carrying a little leather doctor’s bag and couldn’t have looked more anachronistic, like an stooped icon of the roaring twenties. Now, he was shouting greetings at me in Italian, which I heartily answered, in Italian. Buona giornata! Oh, grazie signore. Prego! Buona serata anche! Altrettanto! We smiled ear to ear and wished each other well, neither of us knowing what had just happened, but both infused anew with the atomic collision energy of the city.
I got back into the subway at 52nd Street, beside, underneath the silver, slant-topped Citigroup building, to await the 6 train with a French novel in my hand. Actually, it was from a Spanish writer, Lucía Extebarría, but the copy was in French. Those of you who know me know that I am not averse to drawing the attention of fly girls with such props, but this time however, I was really into the book. So, there I was, my eyes greedily assaulting the lines of smooth sounds, loving their grace and elegance, when I felt the breeze of the arriving 6 train against my cheeks. Then, I heard a noise, and, turning my head, I beheld a man, presumably an ordinary shmoe or bum, if you prefer, who had just fallen off the platform and into the train’s path. I assumed he was drunk or extremely high, because he was sitting on his ass in the mud, in the middle of the tracks, reaching over slow as molasses to gather some papers that went down into the muddy vermin pit with him. When I turned back to the train, the first and second cars of it had already slithered into the tunnel and it was fast approaching the reclining, scraggly, drunken curmudgeon. I took to my heels, along with another onlooker, and, without a moment’s hesitation, I jumped off the platform. Maybe it was the adrenaline, but the bum was really light; I fairly hoisted him up onto the platform, where the other man was waiting to pull him up. Then, I hopped out of the grimy cesspool myself, and all three of us strode like into the train, which had pulled right up to us in the ten seconds the whole episode had spanned.
In the squeaky clean, air-conditioned 6 train, my fellow and I came to ourselves, looking at each other, and then at the bum, who now began yelling, You saved my life, you saved my life. We sat down, feeling like new hires at Goldman Sachs settling down to a first five course meal. Then, the bum began pacing nervously, with his torso bent dramatically forward, his aspect grave, his fists trembling. I looked back at the other guy, curiously. Then we both looked at the bum, who know resembled Groucho Marx, huffing, puffing, and stomping about. What’s he doing? He isn’t going to tell the story to the people in the train… Then, both our faces dropped, in disbelief. The man began lecturing everybody, in slurred speech, about Jesus Christ. He was waving his fists and saying something about the way the truth and the light, but I can’t be sure, because I have an advanced Christian message deflector system, which I developed after my radicalized Protestant upbringing. My radar deflector works on word combinations to identify and isolate proponents of Christianity. For instance, if a person says anything about the ‘end times’, being ‘born again’, or any other similar combination of archaic terms, I immediately tune that shit completely out. As such, I didn’t hear anything the bum said after the first reference to the soul-saving power of the gospel. Christians preach mercy and compassion. When it comes to hypocrisy, I am not about mercy or compassion, so I heckled him. And so is one of life’s great ironies: the person saving your life in one moment may be heckling you the next.
I was walking along the subway platform in 14th St., beside a stopped N train, when I came upon two men. I stopped between them, because one of them asked me to help him get to the train. He was in a pitiful state. The train doors were open, and he was slowly summoning the force to walk five steps. I put out my hand, wincing in horror at the sight of his left foot- swollen, bulging out of the brace, infected and suppurating. He took my hand and made his first step, swaying then back in agony. He looked at the ground, fully lucid, determined, coherent. This man was in full possession of his faculties, and I wondered how he had gotten into such a desperate situation. As I examined the man, I realized that he had been paralyzed on the bench, perhaps for days, in despair and excrement. You need to see a doctor, I said uselessly, stating the all too apparent. He didn’t respond. He took another step, and then another, bringing him within three feet of the open train door. A dapper young gentleman was holding the train doors open, holding a suitcase on wheels, obviously that of the derelict man, upright. I looked into the good Samaritan’s face and he looked into mine, Don’t I know you? Yeah, you were at Jim’s party. Yes, I remember you, Alex right? How are you? As if it were totally normal, with this shadow of a man on my arm, his stench making my eyes water. The people on the train didn’t protest or yell, neither did the conductor, the world seemed to wait for this broken and hopeless man to board the train. Can you get my jacket? I turned around, his jacket was on the floor, sodden with rank and unidentifiable substances that ran towards the edge of the platform in two streams. I picked up the jacket fastidiously and draped it over his roller suitcase, which Alex had been holding as he held open the doors. You are a good man… to do this, I said. And the doors closed. Beep boop.
I was examining the bench where the man had been sitting, when the smell hit me, and I reeled back and began coughing. Perhaps this happened all too easily. The division of responsibility in the New York multitude is as cruel and indifferent as the sea to a castaway in Magellan’s Straits, like it was for the woman who was pursued by a killer as she ran down East 62nd Street and whose screams were heard by no less than 38 people, none of whom called the police. Perhaps he called out to Alex or Alex offered to help him, finally ending that stage of his helplessness. I do not know what became of him afterwards, because I haven’t been able to locate Alex.
I told my friends about it over dinner in the UWS, and was again back in the subway, passing through the revolving door turnstile, when a portly man in a tshirt and basketball shorts grabbed my Ukranian friend by her long flaxen hair and, brandishing a broken bottle, demanded of my stalky Jersey-born Italian American friend Chris, his wallet. The man was drunk however, and he tripped and then was pushed by Chris, pulling the girl by her hair to the ground and smashing his bottle in the process. All this happened while my back was turned. Nadja, the bandit, and a smashed bottle were on the ground when I turned around. The stranger was cowering below as Chris yelled, What was that, look at you now! You piece of shit! Nadja got up and ran to me, thrusting her wallet through the bars and attempting to push her whole black horse hair purse through, which didn’t work. Chris turned to her, and away from the bandit, who retreated up the stairs. A young MTA worker opened the emergency door for Nadja, who promptly broke into tears and sat forlornly on the cement, frenetically moving her hands about her body and hair, violated, asking herself, vat if I hyad been alone, I am hyere at night alvays. Chris ran up the stairs, after Nadja’s assailant, who escaped. Then, they went with the MTA employee to file a report with the police, and I road the train alone, horrified and demoralized by the violence, poverty, and desperation I saw around me, and unable to resolve my conflicts with this society.
