Monday

Alright, who the hell is eating motherfucking salami on the train at 7:30 in the morning? It must be some really twisted, odious way of heralding the coming of Spring on this, the first Springy Monday. I much prefer the technique employed by Little Miss Carroll Street. She prances on into the car all tall and blonde with her premature technicolor sun-dress, jaunty jean jacket, and lemony handbag, perched quite precariously atop too-high teal-colored heels, clinging to the door for support and at least looking good doing it; good and really, really uncomfortable. She plays with a blackberry for a while, plays with her hair a while, flipping it hither and yon, and pulls out a paper. Quite attractive though not quite stunning, she looks somehow above it all this Monday, flipping through the free rag, that is, until she enters what must be the meat of some article, and damn if her lips ain't movin'.

Thursday

On the ride home a rather disheveled Chinese lady boards at East Broadway with a baby in a stroller and a toddler stumbling around in her orbit, somewhat confused but completely unconcerned by the rocking of the train. A seat opens up almost immediately and his mother steers him in its direction with a noncommital palm on the top of his head as she struggles to one-hand the stroller and with the sudden proliferation of feet. He reaches the seat successfully without remotely loosening his death-grip on a large zip-lick bag packed to the gills with candy. He can't quite hoist himself up onto the seat by squirming alone, with his hands so preoccupied. A very old frail woman sitting in the next seat springs into action, expertly gathering his waist to her body behind his back and perfectly placing him down. She pats his shoulder and beams contentedly as his little feet dangle far from the floor. He's obviously distracted by his most precious cargo, and she notices. "What you got there? Candy?" He snaps fully to attention, twisting his entire small body to put it between her and the bag, and eyes her suspiciously. Yet she persists. "Can I have some?" His wide-eyed defenses clearly breached, he does what any toddler would do, and cries, loudly.

Wednesday

So I start out marginally content with my lot, my Wednesday, when I spy an anomoly. The train is reasonably crowded, say 90 or 95% seated capacity, a couple standers, but way off on the end I spy two whole rows of three-seaters with only one person sitting in any of them, and she's not even homeless, doesn't even smell! No puddles of urine, no vomit. Can it be? A high school kid (with iPod at completely acceptable volume) takes one of the seats, I take another, and the doors haven't even closed on my station yet. What bliss! It almost smells nice in here too - clean, closer to a doctor's office than fabric softener, nicely neutral. The water sparkles beyond the cranes and derricks past Red Hook. Those few blocks of Carroll Gardens between highway and train tunnel verily glisten in the crisp morning sun, so charming as to appear foreign, up early for bread and coffee in Paris when they've just finished swabbing the streets. The Bergen Street platform is jam-packed with kids, rambunctious, but they're inexplicably all waiting for the G. A large couple sits shoehorned into a two-fer reading the paper together, making conversation. Kinda obese and singularly unattractive - she with the scraggly gray-streaked mouse-brown hair, he with the tremendous red Amish beard, mustacheless, and both in velcro shoes to bypass the peril of tying - they are completely lacking in awkwardness, completely unselfconcious, content. But it's not the contentment of the physical freak, the fat stretch-pants wearer or junkin a' nod, not at all oblivious, just, why the hell shoud they care? They scrunch close to kiss and it's not even gross. Delancey darkens the mood a bit with gentlemen far too well-groomed for huge jeans and baseball jackets talking too loudly about sports, but I've got to transfer soon anyway, and look! there's the express train, patiently waiting. A not-so-fat stretch-pants wearer with obligatory tight short down jacket gets up to get off and a middle-aged toothpick chewer, Nextel in hand, nearly snaps his own neck in admiration. Encased in aluminum, buried underground, springtime in the city...

Tuesday

Wait a minute - what's going on? I look down at my hand, at the journal on my lap. I'm OK. The other passengers, they're OK, well, relatively speaking. So then, this cartooney thing, the real life cartoon that just walked through the doors at Delancey - and holy shit, did it ever - is just an isolated incident. Thank god. It's still blocking the doors, but that's to be expected. Two sisters it is, hispanic, obese, really obese, one wearing sweatpants, the other teal-colored nurses' pants, both in those super-short down jackets with the faux-sexy faux-fur trim around the hood. One's a little taller than the other but they appear to be otherwise identical, although perhaps their features have been simply blurred by copious amounts of fast food. Obese. They share between them an iPod - again with the iPods - and they each have an earbud. This is hilarious in itself because these girls are real big, as I've said, and the cord is only so long, so they stand belly to belly, nose to chin, in the posture of a couple of overstuffed club shairs from Jennifer Convertibles. They must be listening together to some comedy routine becasue every couple seconds the laughter ensues, chuckling, jiggling, strained cheeks pulled back and extra chins forced rearward toward the ears and much heaving of shoulders in conflict with nonexistent necks. When one of them waddles off at 14th Street the earbud is passed back, the remaining cherub takes a seat or two, reggaeton takes over, and her floppy face suddenly turns to stone, just like everyone else's.

The Perils of Off-Peak

Toward the end of last week I found myself fast becoming a notable subway aberration following a multi-month cold turned minor sinus infection turned - well, suffice it to say that I hadn't lost my sense of propriety in terms of dress or decorum, rather my transgression was of the third option with the formation of a tremendous, hideous, bulbous sty: that of the physical freak. Perhaps my eye just felt itslef lonely on that side of my nose with the ear so far away. Perhaps it just needed a friend. Well, tea bags and eye drops got tired quick so I cut out of work early for a trip to the doctor. I found the train pretty mellow during the day, and I was grateful, especially in my diminished state, to be afforded a seat almost immediately. I was not quite so grateful, however, that it turned out to be something of a ringside seat. Ladies and gentlemen, in the red corner we had a shabbily dressed middle-aged man holding a garish chrome briefcase whose contents must be truly mystefying, as between his shiny Chuck Taylors rested two large bags from Jack's 99-Cent Store, whose contents were revealed through much concentration and squinting of the one giant eye to be innumerable boxes of Ramen Noodles, seriously, lots of 'em. The other hand, I would learn, must remain unencumbered because, ladies and gentlemen, in the blue corner was one silver Norelco ear- and nose-hair trimmer, seriously, and it was buzzing away. Now, the point of insertion is actually more of a point to ponder than one would imagine. Were he to opt for the nose, of course it would be pretty unpleasant to behold, but that would be mitigated by the fact that it would presumably cause him some degree of pain (just deserts) and therefore be done with sooner. Instead, he opted for the aural entrance and, rather unfortunately, took to it with the zeal usually reserved for cotton swabs and the like. He was really digging in, working it, pursuing that eargasm. Such a display of emotion, and such a public display, was infinitely more gruesome that than a quick tug of some nose hair. Luckily the daytime subway gods are benevolent and he was soon seated comfortably, as was his super party-pack of Ramen Noodles, both slumped on either side of the briefcase, him snoring through the untrimmed tresses.

Monday

Well, I made it all the way to Second Avenue with nothing to report and I figured that's the way it's gonna go, but I guess a Monday never disappoints. See, many people have heard and surely everyone suspects that the subway cars themselves were designed by some Japanese dude. The shades of cheery orange on the seats, the marbled vinyl flooring, homey woodgrain panels, it's all quite comfortable but for one notable exception: this Japanese designer, who probably stayed away from the interior decorating anyway, failed to take into account the vagaries of the American ass. Generally speaking, we're bigger than the Japanese to begin with, genetically and all, and certainly fatter than them in the, uh, end. But our subway seats, oddly enough, are not. Now, such ridiculousness aside, I've labored long and hard over the years to come up with some fair and reasonable ground-rules for my fellow travelers to violate in the manner of finger-nail clipping and Aeorsmith, and here's what I've got: If you are a man neither elderly nor infirm, or a woman of anything greater than sub-average size with two or more bags and neither elderly nor infirm, you don't take the middle seat. It doesn't fit you anyway, and if it's all that's open you can assume that the odds of getting a seat were pretty slim to begin with, unlike your ass. If, however, you are elderly or infirm (oh, or pregnant!) then I'm sorry, and go for it. The discomfort of your ass cheeks on your neighbors' lap is simply their just deserts for lacking the decency to offer you their seat. If you don't qualify for this middle-seat exemption and you go for it anyway, then fuck you, plain and simple. You totally suck. Oh, and not that you don't totally suck, but a big thank-you to the self-absorbed classless yuppie douchebag who warmed my left thigh this morning. When you glanced around the crowded car and saw that six inches of orange in between my haunch and that of the playfully oversized fellow to my not-painfully immediate left, you were enticed? "My, that looks comfortable." So you flexed your overdeveloped sense of entitlement by swinging your bagS around spastically and into the leg of that standing home-health aide - no apology - and then gripping the overhead pole like a dick to swing your pressed-trousered ass into my face and then that of my neighbor as you zeroed in on your target, which was of course, despite whatever you'd like to think, our laps. Yeah, gather your bagS together. Yeah, unfurl the paper. And, after all that, bolt for the express train after ONE FUCKING STOP. See you in hell, buddy. I hope your kids hate you.

Friday

Paying attention totally sucks because people really are truly horrible and this horribleness compels them to exert themselves fully to ensure that it is revealed with maximum effect, so much so that paying attention is actually irrelevant; you're pretty much screwed either way. Add to that the variable of a public place, a contained, dare I say intimate space, and, worse still, one entered into with almost universal reluctace, and boy, talk about accentuate the negative. Last week I found myself in close and unfortunate proximity to a truly dastardly duo. They spoke with great passion and conviction for the better part of a half hour about ringtones, mostly ringtones but also voicemail, reception, the shortfalls and benefits of all manner of electronic devices such as Tanisha's crappy-ass Blackberry and, speaking of Tanisha, who in their circle of esteemed associates transmitted the clap to whom, and all in the most incoherant, babbling, jabber-jawing state of high animation, gesticulation, and great thundering volume. The purple pants-white sneaker combo coupled with the companion's purple hair-white jacket combo heralded such a breakthrough in color coordination that their residence in Williamsburg is all but impossible (assuming you exlcude the recently subsumed Bed Stuy and Bushwick); nevertheless, they were clearly in compliance with Williamsburg's Law: whereby the paucity of sense or substance in a given statement is directly proportional to the volume at which said statement is spoken. Anyway, there we were again this morning, and Lord help me. This time they wax philosophic about some subtle and devious machinations at someone's place of employment. In itself, the conversation is benign enough that my relative contentment would be complete, had they not been situated in the corner two-fer, the love seat, enabling him to spread his knees 'cross creation and she to place both legs atop said knees, effectively lying down as it were; the better for him to alternately stroke, caress, and outright knead the ample flesh of her green-velveted thighs (Happy St. Patty's Day!). Most remarkable is how they managed, sitting so supine, to so efficiently aspirate through their crinkled diaphrams that the decibel levels made the fillings in my teeth decidedly ache. Were it not for the very old man in the gravy-stained municipal tie poring over a dog-eared copy of "What's Your Wicca I.Q.?", surely all hope would be lost.

Thursday

So right when this appeared to be the rare ride with little afoot, I'm distracted from this pretty crappy book of Gide's (are they gay or just French?) by the harsh crackle of second-hand music creeping out from underneath someone's headphones, er, "earbuds." I notice a couple other yuppie passengers also glancing around for the source, equally indignant. Finally it's spotted - Harry Potter, only without the magical powers, the friends, or whatever boyish charm that schmuck is supposed to have. Same hair though, same glasses, same gawky, lanky, peripubescent awkwardness. And an iPod, I presume, judging from the compulsory white tendrils, and it's turned up loud. What the hell would a kid like that be listening to so loud, so obviously for the benefit of his fellow travellers? With what shall our young hero prove his point? The crackle becomes ordered, forms a familiar pattern, and it dawns on me: Aerosmith, "Love in an Elevator," blasting. And he's pitched forward in his seat, leaning almost aggressively out from the edge of the seat into the aisle, elbows on knees, head nodding only a little spasmodically and nearly on-beat. He's been practicing. "Livin' it up while I'm going down..." The crackle continues to permeate, and it's amazing how long a song really is when you're underground. We, the silent sulking cattle, breathed a collective sigh of releif when our chariot rolled into Jay Street. A handfull of junior-high thugs careened into the car and our hero, beset with dragons, it would appear, sank back in his seat. The crackle faded. His head was still.