On board with that stink

As an everyday user of public transportation, I have gotten used to smelling the most wretched odors imaginable. There are the smells of BO that permeate Penn Station. There is the strong stench of urine in the underpass at the Subway station at Spring St. And let's not forget the people who are very comfortable passing gas on crowded cars; God love 'em, they are unashamed.

But this morning I had a first. On the subway on the way to work this morning, a man came onboard holding his 3- or 4-year-old daughter, whose rear was near my head, and I got the unmistakable whiff of a soiled diaper.  The car was crowded, so she stayed by my nose until the next stop, when thankfully, dad moved closer to the door and I was allowed to breathe again. He got off at the stop before me, and I can only hope - for the other people of New York - that he changed that diaper soon after. She may have been small, but she did her part to make NYC public transportation one the smelliest in the world.

On board with nail clippings

I saw something today I never thought I'd see. The lady next to me on the subway this afternoon clipped her finger nails. On the subway. Next to me. (I repeated it to make sure you heard me.) When I say she sat next to me, I mean she was sitting on the bench next to me, with nothing separating us. And finger nails separating from fingers.

Part of me wanted to pretend that a clipping hit me in the face and start screaming. I would have sold it too: I'd cut my face to draw a little blood, produced fake tears, the whole nine yards. All of this would have culminated the only way it could: lawsuit. I'm thinking $4 million.

But to reiterate: woman on subway. Clipped nails. Next to me. Gross.

Rats! (or: Welcome back to work!)

Having been out of the state for two weeks, I had a long period of adjustment on my commute this morning. Essentially, I forgot everything that makes the journey from New Jersey to New York so quaint:

• Walking to the train station in the bitter cold as a fierce northern wind blows snot loose in my nose (I apologize; there was no better way to say that)
  
• The mad rush to get inside the train so you can find a seat
  
• Large men sitting with their legs spread far apart, taking up as much of my seat as they feel comfortable doing (spoiler alert: it's a lot)
  
• The conductor who greets me every morning with "Good morning! All tickets display!" providing a sentence I still cannot diagram correctly.
  

And best of all: the rats scurrying along the subway tracks.  This morning I saw a rat that at first did not appear to have a tail. Luckily, I had time to study him and found that he did in fact have a tail. So much the better.

And thus enters 2009. Welcome back!

On board with a scary loud shouter

I'm now into month six of working in the city, and until today I had never felt scared. Sure, I had had situations that seemed odd, but nothing like what happened on the subway this morning. After the last stop before mine, a large man interrupted the calm commute by shouting at a unknown, horribly scared and quiet anonymous person in the corner of my car. Most of it made sense in that I couldn't make out complete sentences, but I heard phrases like "... you former law student ..." and "... won't get out of MY seat ..." But what scared me was when I heard him say something about "the end" and I noticed that he had a large suitcase.

This was when he started walking to my side of the car. It was funny, later, as I thought about it afterwords, that at this moment, as the large man, unabashedly shouting at something who was not saying anything, walked down the car, the heads of everyone who had been looking at him suddenly and violently shot down, eyes on the floor, like something out of a Rockette's show for the head. This, you might say, is when I really got scared.

As he got closer, he started saying more nonsensical things like "... as the white man says ..." and "... Jesus himself ..." (I don't think he was implying that Jesus was the white man.) But then he said the greatest thing which only added to my fear then (but which, had I heard it 10 years ago, would have been my senior quote in high school): "... talkin' 'bout a check. The next check you get is going to be in Hell. And they don't cash checks there."

You can see how, at the time, I might see these as the last words of a suicide bomber. As soon as I saw the first hint of Spring St, I stood up and walked to the door, crowding the man standing in front of me, eager like never before to get out of the subway.

On board with Stephen King?

I think I saw Stephen King on the subway today. I say I think because I don't actually know, and while I was staring at him as much as I could, he was only on for one stop and then left with two young girls, whom I assume were his grandchildren. He wore a barret, which I believe the master of horror would wear, and his face had those pot marks that I recognize from Red Sox games. But this whole thing brought up two questions:

1) Would Stephen King ride the subway?

2) Why am I thinking about Stephen King this much?

The answer to the former is, why not? Is his face really famous enough to make riding public transportation such a problem? I don't think so. And the answer to latter - we all know I'm a loser.

On board or at least you better be

You have only a window of time before you can jump onto the subway before the doors close. The process is unforgiving and emotionless: Even if you are running towards the door, there's no guarantee that the door will wait for you.

Unless, of course, someone stands in the way of the door closing.

Some cars have an automated voice that rings out, "Beware the closing door." The lines I usually ride do not, and the conductor has to come on and announce the doors are shutting. This afternoon, something went horribly wrong. Some thoughtless soul stood between the conductor and his departure (i.e. between the doors) and we couldn't leave. The conductor asked in his usual manner to step away from the doors. A few moments later, as we had not left, he got on the intercom again, but he was not calm. In fact, I would go so far as to say he was mad. He yelled over the intercom, "Stand away from the doors!"

I was a bit shocked. I've never heard an employee of the MTA get so upset. I never thought about it before, but this is not a taxing job: You push the gas, you hit the breaks. Doors open, doors close. Repeat. But I suppose dealing with New Yorkers can get tedious. And if someone is interfering with one-fourth of your job responsibility, hey, that could upset the best of us.

On board with VOGUE VOGUE VOGUE VOGUE

For the most part, I am pleased with technology. I like my TV, iPhones are cool, and air conditioning is great. Oh also indoor plumbing is nice. However, one downside to technology is that people are fast and loose with cameras these days. Ignoring, for the moment, cell phone cameras, people have taken digital photography to great highs and great lows. The low: without the expense of film to deter shutter-happy fingers, people do not hesitate to take picture after picture, no matter the inanity, sometimes reaching 30 CMP (clicks per minute).

I thought of this today when I was waiting for the subway. No less than 4 people were taking pictures of the subway, some even taking pictures of just the tracks. No people. No action. Dark, ugly, disgustingly filthy tracks. With film cameras, I have to think that people would not waste time taking pictures of such boring subjects. Of all the things you see in New York, surely the subway is one of the least you're eager to picture. But with room on a memory disk for 200, 300, or 400 shots, people feel as though they can take these pictures. Will they ever look at these pictures again? Of course not. But God help you if you try to take it away from them. Technology. Blah.

On board with ... oh wait while I finish what I'm doing, which is more important than anything you could possibly say to me

I am, indescribably, consistently surprised by the self-absorption of New Yorkers. Everyday someone will sneak through a closing door in front of me without pushing it open behind them, leaving me to walk into a closed door. Or someone will sit on the train beside me and proceed to call everyone in their address book and talk loudly about inane things that would make even the most Prozaked person on earth go on a three-state killing spree.

Today's example came on the subway ride after work. A gentleman was sitting in the middle of the bench, typing away on his iPhone (nothing wrong with that!), with a bag sitting on the seat next to him and his oversized, extendable-pull-handled briefcase resting on the ground next to him, sticking out further than his legs so as to block anyone from sitting near it. This man, in other words, was taking up more than half of the bench, as people filed into the car, walked by, and were forced to stand in front of him. The man sitting next to him (and I use the word "next" as I would in the sense that "Pluto is next to Neptune ... with millions of miles to spare") actually hugged himself into a tight ball so a woman could sit down, and all the while Mr. Oblivious looked down at his iPhone, probably writing a congratulatory note to himself for an excellent presentation at work today:

"You absolutely rocked that PowerPoint today, Greggors. I could hear that woman at the end of the table, her knees quaking under the weight of her desire to rip my clothes off and throw me on the floor of the boardroom. What a sight that would have been! I only hope she allowed me to shut down my computer first ... I was running on battery power and, more importantly, the porn I had been looking at earlier was still open (but minimized!) I would probably want to take my tie off, fold it up, and neatly place it on the table, as well. But after that, the passion would have been HOT. Also, my boss seemed to like it. You go, Greggory!"

This is probably the same guy you saw at the movie theater last weekend, the one who had his coat laying in the seat next to him, his feet on the seat in front of him, wearing the stovepipe hat and talking on his iPhone during the bloody climax. Luckily, I didn't see a wedding ring on his left hand, so we can only hope that the man has not spread his seed because the last thing this world needs are his spawn crawling around, doing the Dark Lord's bidding.

On board with man-on-man bonding

Today on the subway I started worrying about this blog. How could I reasonably assume that something interesting would happen to me enough on my commute that I could write 3-4 entries a week? (This assumes, of course, that anything I have written here is interesting. Is it? Is it? Love me.) I wondered about this as I approached Penn Station. Just then, a man who had been sitting near me (as I stood holding the pole) stood up anticipating the train stopping. The train stopped, indeed. And the man, holding onto nothing but his briefcase, flew forward. Luckily, I was standing in front of him. He crashed into me.

I looked at him, waiting to say, "Don't worry about it" after he apologized to me. He did not. He turned to face the door. We stopped, I turned to the door (which I was standing in front of), and he barreled into me again as he tried to speed out. Was he embarrassed and eager to get away? Was he in a rush? Was he mentally imbalanced? He wore a suit and carried a briefcase, so he must have been gainfully employed ... that or he was on his way to an audition for "The Nutty Professor: On Broadway!"

At anyway rate, God bless you crazy falling briefcase man. You have given my blog another day.

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And now it's time for everyone's favorite feature: "Did Phillip get touched unnecessarily by a stranger on the subway today'?"

Seriously? Did you read this post?

In board with grammar

What is with you people up here? "We had to stand on line for 10 minutes at Starbucks!" That is not American. You can stand IN line for 10 minutes; you can be visiting starbucks.com ONLINE for 10 minutes. But you are not physically on a line ... unless you've managed to convince your linemates to pass you above their heads, forming a sort of impromptu Starbucks crowd surfing phenomenon.

Also, stop saying "supposably."

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This is going to be a new feature of the blog: "Did Phillip get touched unnecessarily by a stranger on the subway today'?"

The answer today is yes. The woman sitting on the bench by me stood up as the train approached her stop and grabbed onto the pole I was holding on to. When I say "grabbed onto the pole I was holding on to" I mean she grabbed my hand. And held it until I moved it lower ... and then her hand fell down to mine.

Can someone seriously explain this to me? Why all the touching? I thought New York was supposed to be cold and isolating. So far it's been uncomfortably warm and rife with inappropriate togetherness.

On board with drool

There is an unwritten rule in New York that you do not look at anyone on the subway. Looking at someone for 1 second results in an ugly look back. 2 seconds: a profanity-laden tirade. 3 seconds: a hard slap across the face. 4 seconds: a swift kick in the fanny. 5 seconds: death by drowning in rat urine.

But today, I had to stare. The guy sitting across from me had fallen into a deep sleep. So deep, in fact, that he had started to drool on himself by the time I saw him. I am not talking about a bit of saliva falling gently from the corner of his mouth; there were lines of dark drool streaming down his chin, leaving numerous water stains on his polo shirt. After two stops, he woke up and, noticing the liquid flowing from his mouth, sat up and wiped his face. And then he looked down and noticed the three pools of drool festering on his shirt. This was a image I could not have looked away from if you had paid me. Here sat an adult with drool covering his chest, wondering what he was going to do to hide his shame.

So, after noticing that I was staring at him, he opened his shoulder bag and wiped his shirt with the underside of the outer flap. Of course, this did nothing, and the drool remained. And I continued staring. I would have sat there staring for another hour if I hadn't reached my stop. Risking my life to see this, I'd do it all over again.

On board, almost

There are two types of people in this world: Those who stand on the edge of the platform, longingly looking down the line for the subway to arrive and those who stand aloof, almost apathetic against the wall, indifferent to when the subway meanders down the line. I am most definitely the former.

And we can infer a lot about people from where they stand waiting for the subway. Those who pace along the edge, turning around obsessively to see if the train is coming - those people are anxious to get where they are going. They don't want to be late. They are punctual, they are Type A. Or they're high on crank.

Those who stand back, patiently waiting for the subway - they are laid back. They take things as they come and take them in stride. They are Type B, they are calm. Or they're high on grass.

On board with second base

Just Monday I mentioned that I grow tired of New Yorkers groping me on the subway, whether accidentally or not, as the cars jerk back and forth. Today I had an entirely similar yet horrifyingly worse situation. On the way to Penn Station after work, I stood on a not-too-full car holding on to one of the poles. A man and woman (they were together but I don't know their relationship) got on and joined me on the pole. However, the man grabbed the pole and felt the need to touch my arm in multiple places between my thumb and elbow. I did not care for this, but I do not move on the subway while in motion. The woman, meanwhile, stood on my right - obnoxiously close but at least not touching me. She held on to the pole while we started but let go once we got moving.

That's when the fun began.

Along the way we hit a jerk and the woman went flying. Her left breast went firmly into the back of my hand. She looked at me (after removing herself from me) and what seemed like the entirety of Dances with Wolves passed before the gaze broke. I felt like I needed to say something, but what? I didn't want to apologize; I wasn't the one putting my life in the hands of a subway driver who may or may not be qualified to teach a course on shoe-tying. I stood perfectly still as a woman lunged at me with her baby feeders. I had done nothing wrong.

So what else could I say?
"Thank you."
"Those feel real."
"No thanks, I'm married."

I mean, I was stumped. So eventually - and eternally - I said nothing. She mumbled something and turned away. She and the man spoke Spanish, so I can't be sure whether or not she told him that I got to second base with her, but I didn't stick around to find out. At the next stop I scurried to the next pole, stared in the other direction, and got off without ever turning around.

Should I feel bad about this? What is the proper response in this situation? I ask you.

Comment at http://westeggvisitor.blogspot.com

On board with cool/disease-free people

Public transportation is not a clean business. When you step on a subway car, you expect to contract any number of diseases including Hepatitis, gonorrhea, Tetanus, or Whopping Cough. I find a good way to fight off communicable disease is to wash my hands when I get to work and home - my soap claims to kill 99.6% of all bacteria, and I assume that means all bacteria in the universe. What are the chances that the 0.4% it doesn't work on are actually on this planet? I'll say small. This is my plan, and in the now more than four weeks I've been doing this, I have yet to get terribly sick. The plan works.

I've noticed, however, that others are not willing to leave their health up to something that comes in either liquid or solid form. (Pick a state of matter, soap! Don't make me swift boat you, flip flopper!) These people chose to not touch anything. And as soon as the subway gets moving, they start sliding all over the car. They assume, I presume, that those of us taking care to prevent violent movements enjoy strangers knocking into us, the feel of their sweaty skin on ours as we roll down the dark tunnel to a land of gonorrhea-free companionship.

This has to be true, or these people think they are too good for bars. "I don't need to hold on to a bar, you weak, transplanted Southern," they seem to say with their snares. "Watch as I stand in the middle of the car, holding my horrible free tabloid newspaper telling me Batman beat his mom and sistAHHHHH. Oops, I fell down. What is this liquid on my pant leg? It has to be urine or blood. God, I hope it's urine." This repeats a handful of times until they reach their destination, limp out of the subway, and scurry to their too-cool-for-me homes filled with first aid kits and penicillin to fight gonorrhea. Because, come on, when you are too cool for metal bars, you're bound to contract a disease or two somewhere.

On board with animal cruelty

Today I stepped onto the subway right after a guy wearing a Michael Vick jersey. I never know what to think of people who wear Michael Vick gear - is this man a big fan of Michael Vick the player and hesitant to get rid of the jersey, hoping that the quarterback will return to his level of greatness (or even the NFL)? Is he showing support for a man he thinks has been unfairly/overly punished for a crime? Is he a Falcons fan and hasn't found a current player to replace Vick as his favorite?

I'd like to think that dog fighting supporters/animal cruelty enthusiasts have chosen his jersey to be a calling card: If you see someone with the Falcons 7 jersey, you can stop him and ask where the fight is that night. I encourage you, the readers, to try this tomorrow. I, however, will not be doing this because I don't care to get punched, and having a black eye before senior picture day would ruin me.

On board with a scare

One advantage to commuting by train/subway to NYC everyday is that I don't have to drive, leaving myself free to do other things, from reading to staring into space and everything in between. One of the disadvantages is that you have little control over how the ride goes and who's around you. On Tuesday, this fact became most obvious.

At the first stop on C-line after I had gotten on, a large man in a sleeveless shirt pushed in a cart carrying a bunch of Amazon boxes - about 6 columns of 7-8 boxes each, all apparently containing something. My first thought was, "Hum, this is odd. Usually Amazon uses truck services to deliver their packages." Before I had a chance to think more on it, the guy moved immediately across the car and faced a door opposite. "Rather trusting of his deliveries," I thought. At the next stop, the man got off the train without the cart.

At this point, I got a bit nervous. When you are walking through NYC you are warned to be on the look out for suspicious behavior and this certainly qualified. Could these be bombs? I thought now, "If I were a terrorist, I think I would blow up a subway train at Penn Station" ... and of course, this was where I was headed. So I was not incredibly happy to be on the subway at this time. At the next stop, I very seriously debated getting off. Never before have I been so concerned about blowing up ... and I had a gas leak in my apartment when I first moved in to it last July.

I stayed on the train and things I should not have been thinking about continued to race through my mind. "Which way should I face? If I look at the bombs and the blow, my face could be messed up. Of course, if these boxes are all bombs, it's probably not going to matter which way I look." This went on for a few more minutes until I finally got to Penn Station, got out, and never looked back.

I never reported the boxes, but I did watch the news that night to see if New York had exploded. It had not.

Looking back, I probably witnessed a drug delivery or someone transferring hot merchandise to an accomplice somewhere up the line. Whatever the case, this was the first time I missed driving to work in New Jersey.