Subway Stories

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.

Sholeh Dalai

Our first meeting took place at a Brazilian feijoada at Laura’s in Chelsea. A Flamenco guitarist’s nimble fingers plucked at his nylon strings and we all reclined about in the shadows, as if in an opium den. Suddenly, a piercing cry broke my repast and I looked up to see an imposing figure with high heeled black boots and tightly-curled dark maroon hair. She was singing in an unrecognizable language, which I learned from the others was Farsi. There was tenderness in her voice at first, but it became shrill and startling as she expressed loneliness and heartbreak in universal and intuitively understood tones, the tones of agony. She and the guitarist blended elements from the middle-east, Spain, and the Blues, when she started scatting. I’d never heard the like. This is Sholeh, and singing is only one of her hobbies; she’s actually a painter.

As a Child in the Woods

I had a dream lastnight, a beautiful nightmare. I was a child in the woods with all the wonder and mystery they hold. Esoteric powers, ineffable and faceless forces, terror, awe, and sublime violence all seem to lurk invisible in the woods, when you’re a child. The dream contained images I intuitively recognized, whether landscapes or dreamscapes, they seemed so familiar, it was taken for granted that I had known them long ago. Upon waking a forgot them, only the feeling of familiarity and fear remained, the fear of the unknown and the elemental. I always expected for some supernatural or monstrous being to come barreling out from behind a tree or from the shallow depths of a creek, in the woods, it seemed all too peaceful and silent, in the woods.

Upon awaking, I felt most deeply the contrast between my consciousness as a child and as an adult. Now, the mysteries that transfix my thoughts are private parties, power play, virtual financial coups, and orgies in unassuming buildings in manhattan and all the pairs of eyes that, I imagine, are watching the subway trains go by from the darkness inside the tunnels. I wake up and think about money and clients and the office. Not the windigo or the ghost of the weeping mother by crybaby bridge or the blood sacrifices of satanic rites- the kinds of things that a child imagines to exist in the woods, just as soon as you turn your back. It’s too bad really.

I fell out of a cherry tree.

I fell out of a cherry tree. I heard a cracking noise, and everyone within one hundred yards turned their heads to see me plummet to the ground. I didn’t really have time to move, but I sorta recollect having reached skyward with my hands. What buffoonery, I know. In my defense, however, I feel obliged to mention that I’ve been reading Italo Calvino and it was because of him that I fell. His first novel is about Cosimo who, at the age of twelve, chooses to live out the rest of his days in the trees, spurning his father’s entreaties that he accept his rank and title of Baron, along with its manifold responsibilities. There’s a bold and uncompromising spirit for you! The story is extolled by the younger brother, who watches, wistfully, silently envious, as his brother pursues various crafts and adventures, including but not limited to stealing fruit, battling a ferocious wildcat, learning to hunt with a dachsund on the ground to retrieve his kills, studying Latin, reading classics, courting a high class foxy blond who rides a pony and tries to enslave him, running with brigands and providing them with reading material (after which they eventually cease to rob and pilfer from the villagers), spying on beturbaned Turkish pirates hiding their booty, sleeping in hammocks, making clothes with animal pelts, planning an aquaduct, and a lot of other shit too, and I ain’t even finish the book yut!

Well, I can tell you, I feel positively infused with the spirit of Calvino’s genius. I want to live in the trees and I’m even in love with his horn-weilding blond Italian princess (it helps that I know one like her). I know what you are saying to yourself, you says, says will Tim always be such a flaneur? Let us hope not. Elsewise, I’ll prolly die next time I go amok with the beauty and sex of Spring and climb a tree all ablaze with foliagé and fertility.

I mean, like, to return to my original narrative, I landed on my feet, narrowly missing an adamant trunk and a bunch of hardass roots that would’ve certainly broke my bare feet. My left ankle was all swollen and right is still a bit a bummy and stiff-toed. Wish I had been wearing mah steel toed boots, yup… I was swaggering hallified gangster lean for a bit there, and, on the streets of Harlem, a few fellow pedestrians didn’t know how to take it, judging by their comments on the order of, that boy so fucked up he cain’t even wawk, and that boy’s momma need a teach’em how ta wawk. Now I just do a little mosey with occasional stutter-steps. I feel nostalgic for the gangster lean though, I think I might continue with that. I could just keep telling the tree story, although with the caveat of Italo Calvino’s engenius writing so’s that it don’t seem like my momma raised a fool.
If y’all read that book, you’d prolly end up in a similar predicament. I says, steer clear of Italo Calvino! Shit, I mean, he was part of the reason I ended up in love with that benedetta Italian heartbreaker in the first place. Goddamn you Calvino! But I still love you. May you be reviled by History! May darkness consume you! But I’ll never tire of you. May your seed perish on the cold dead Earth! But I’ll always have your name on my lips, frequently while panting. The Benedetta spied your name on the cover of a tome which I pretended to read while peering over the aforementioned cover jealously devouring her tanned body and blond hair and Italian elegance. Now, years later, I haven’t succeeded in ridding myself of thoughts of her, of our conversations, of the way she shouted, non sei normale and non mi capisci. Chimera! Calvino, eh, can I call you Italo? Would that it was every man’s goal, says I with my hat in my hand. You succeeded in making your futile, brutish, and short attempt in this world have an enduring meaning. Calvino, do you know people all over the world get laid by the mere mention of your name, often only in a whisper, especially regarding the brilliance of I Numeri nella Oscurità, which I was pretending to read when the Benedetta started sizing me up as a prospective mate and husband?
I heard a cracking noise, and everyone within one hundred yards, I reckon, turned their heads instantly. Then I came down in terminal velocity, with a cloud of petals enveloping me, in my hair, pockets. Not a sound was uttered, except for the boisterous laughter of a good-natured British guy who later came up to discover if I was alright. Anthony (my roommate and comrade) was in the adjacent cherry tree, which was also all ablaze with the pink taco fecundity of Spring in the hills of Central Park. He came walking up about the time the first perturbed onlookers did. They were two twenty something girls, pretty easy on the eyes, but I could do no more than remark that fact, seeing as I was kind of embroiled in shock, pain, and chagrin. The one girl was like are you alright, and I was like, between shocked gasps for breath, I think so. Then she said, suddenly sultry, she can kiss it and make it better, but I was unable to reply. I was damn near paralyzed by shock, and Anthony stood over me, with his hands in his pockets, trumpeting his voice to the four winds, he’s alright, he’s just embarrassed, JUST EMBARRASSED, yeah, he’s just too embarrassed to talk, not to worry. I later managed to get on my feet, and the girls were sort of lingering in the valley, looking up at me, but i was still too shaken up and embarrassed to gesture for them to come over. I hobbled about, exalting my woes and sometimes using Anthony as a crutch, to the Metropolitan Museum, because Anthony had to see the Gustav Courbet show.
The moral of the story is that, well, I don’t give a fuck, live large, take risks, get out here and headbutt the sky. Calvino will be there watching, make him proud, make him a part of you, he is still around, as an onlooker and benedicting spirit, chuckling at our pining and our folly.