Manhattan Offender

Time savers! Eat your jelly-toast on the subway!

All of those sparkly new subway cars with their video screens and robot voices and funny hydraulic noises? They'll be arriving at the platform every 45 minutes or so.

The old orange and amber seated cars, even the purple trains weren't that much of an upgrade to these new cars.  With entire lines being cut from the system, it's not like you're going to be riding them much anyway. 

MTA's planned cuts include everything from station agents to entire train lines.
(Via Maura, who's right.  Nobody reads the Daily News.)

And you wait for the G train

And you wait for the G train
within a sea of black clothes
milling as they wait too.

Those scotches are piss now
convincing your bladder to break free
while that slice in the belly sinks lower.

You remember details of an evening:
Jen brought her rabbit and you sucked Vito's thumb and
my god but Michael knows everybody.

That copy of the New Yorker is exhausted
as you just don't care about Trillin's take
of this or that murder on Long Island.

The number of a car service burns through
from your phone to your hip, but
after thirty minutes you'll stay, out of spite.

And you wait for the G train
brain sober, feet tired, patience gone.
And then the fucking thing comes.

Is subway molestation too last year?

Boarding the downtown 6 train this morning, the usual thought was in my head:  "The Upper East Side has the least attractive people in the world."  Also per routine, I surveyed the car while boarding, hoping to prove myself wrong.  (Shallow as it might be, looking at pretty people is a habit.)

My eyes met a pair of hazel eyes staring intently back at me.  They belonged to a guy, probably Greek or Italian or Jewish, with dark hair.  He was my height, more muscular for sure, but with a touch of a belly.  Enough of my type to notice.  And what I noticed was a too-tight pair of faded jeans and, the killer, an Abercrombie tee shirt.  (Shallow as it might be, wearing such a shirt automatically reverses any attraction I may have for someone.)

The door closes, and the crowd adjusts.  Swear to whatever, it was not my intention to have my back suddenly pressed against his front.  But it happens.  As I read about Bill Clinton reconciling with Paul Tsonga's wife, it occurs to me that there is extra pressure on my posterior.  As the train is packed, I ignore it and continue reading.

The more primitive signals in my brain start firing and a, well, physical response begins in my pants, as the motion of the train in combination with the person's persistance is actually enjoyable.  At 51st Street, the train clears a bit.  I remain in the same spot, moving on to an article about Barack Obama.  And despite the clearing of the train, Abercrombie's assault continues.

Granted, nothing on my behalf is being done to stop this.  But at Grand Central, my position changes so that I am now against a door and my molester is to my front.  My ability to keep reading falters, but I don't put my Observer down as that would mean looking directly at this person.  He relents briefly and the train empties more at 33rd Street.  Now I'm looking up to see if people are paying attention to the fact that the back of this muscle daddy (Is that what they call themselves?  No clue.) is rubbing against my crotch with increasing vigor.

No one sees anything.  I'm about to break into laughter.  And he doesn't stop.

Finally my stop arrives (28th Street), but completely caught up in the absurd (erotic?) scene, I decide to ride one more stop and get my morning wrap at a different deli.  By 23rd Street, my pants bulge in flagrant, but still no one is looking in my direction (which sort of bothers me - why is no one looking at me!).  As I'm about to get off the train, I look at this person and consider him again.  The face is good and the body too.

And then I fixate on the shirt.  The Abercrombie shirt on a man in his forties.  As the door opens, I turn to exit and never look back, sending a quick email to five friends.  "I was just molested on the subway!"

Metropolitan Transit Attitudory

Walking out of Madison Square Park, something doesn't look quite right.

• 

Doing bumps on the way to work

When you finish a 'subway read', the best thing to do is replace it immediately.  The Times is unwieldy and the tabloids are crap reads.  Without such distraction the mind is left to wander and, worse, to notice. 

There is a reason for a book, a paper, a su doku puzzle, an iPod, a Discman, even a Bible.  It is to draw attention away the car's combatants co-habitants.  Feeling a little unwell, but not at a "sick passenger on the train", my sensitivities were heightened already.  Then my brain, seeking out something to do decided to count and classify jostlers.  More specifically unapologetic jostlers.

Unapologetic jostlers are of two varieties, those body-bumping or bag/briefcase/purse-bumping or those trying to work their way through a crowd and moving the crowd so as to reach whatever destination is unfortunate enough to receive them.  For the purposes of research, my facial gaze was put in a prozacian blank so as not to elicit apologies.

In a twenty-five minute commute, the tally was thirty-nine, about equally split between baggage and body contact.  In order to perhaps learn from the quantification, the offending parties were classified by race, sex, and hair color.  Following are the results:

(Clicking makes biggity.)

From this unscientific study the following assumptions can be made: 

1. Blondes are nicer than brunettes.
2. White people are rude.
3. Women are awful.
4. The best people to stand or walk near on the subway are blonde Latins.

But the key thing to riding jostle-free on the subway:  avoid brunette white ladies. 

Hey, nice bag. Sorry about the whole food thing.

Morning on the subway, half-asleep/half-reading Metro (really the only way to read Metro), suddenly hearing a full-blown Queens accent of a woman in her late forties booming above the noise of the subway. 

"If you could please help me out, I've fallen on hard times.  I'm homeless.  I have no place to live.  I haven't eaten all day; I mean yesterday.  I didn't eat all day yesterday."

Ignoring the fact that sequential sentences starting with "I" as the subject are a sign of self-obsession, I continued to listen as her gravelly deep voice was somewhat intriguing.  As she continued on into a diatribe regarding "The Lord" and "Jesus," my gaze remained downturned toward the Metro and away from her, until she flashed me a little skin.

Not her own skin, but that of three buffed, toned and waxed chests.  Although they were not really my type  (fur preferred) the three slappers smiled up at me from the Abercrombie & Fitch shopping bag of the hungry lady.  As the bagboys had caught my attention, it's contents were naturally next to review.  The bag was topped off by what appeared to be a rather new pair of jeans and a crisply white shirt.

The fascination with the bag has now brought attention to me as she has now paused to my front continuing about how the people that have helped her the most in life have been in similar situations to hers, causing me to think about my early days of ramen noodles and second-hand store Levis and how I would have liked some nice new jeans or a crisp white shirt.  My eyes had already turned back to the Metro as she opened the door going into the next car, jesus thissing and thatting away into the roar of the tracks.

Immigration battle doesn't subside on the subway

Although the recent public discussion of immigration has lessened on the airways, the battle rages on in other places. 

The Scene:  The N Train, going uptown after work.

The Players:  Turquoise and Seafoam are a hipster couple.  Red is a dark-haired fellow.  Purple - that's MO. And Anglophile is a white woman in her late fifties.

ACTION: Getting on at Twenty-third Street, MO is tired and wants to sit and read assorted things that he printed out during the day.  There is space available, but it requires Red to move about two inches to accomodate MO's manly frame.  MO smiles and Red moves.  MO thanks Red.

At Thirty-fourth Street, some passengers exit while Turquoise and Seafoam get on the train.  As the train exits and proceeds uptown the ride is jerky.  Those without an adequate gluteal base (aka a big butt) are move somewhat with the sway of the train.  Turquoise and Seafoam move quite a bit.  Red moves not at all.  MO was brought up on the water and reacts well.  Anglophile has ample gluteal support.

As the train progresses between Forty-ninth and Fifty-seventh Streets Red is angered by the swaying of Turquoise and Seafoam and lets out a loud, "Stop Pushing!"  The three proceed to have a loud discussion regarding whether they are moving or pushing.  The discussion continues until Fifty-ninth Street where Red exits the train, most probably headed to the Upper East Side - the angry commuter headquarters.

(Strangely all of the above is just set-up.)

ANGLOPHILE:  (looks up from her book) Mumbles.

MO:  (assumes she is talking about Red)  Yeah, he had space issues.  He should relax.

ANGLOPHILE:  He should go back to his country, the dirty immigrant.

MO:  (removes sunglasses to purvey shock)  What?

ANGLOPHILE:  Should never let his kind into the country.  Probably a Mexican.

MO:  (points to ring)  Really?  I married a dirty Mexican.  You realize that everyone in this country is an immigrant, right?

ANGLOPHILE:  I'm not.

MO:  Doll, you're twenty shades too too white to be pure native american.

ANGLOPHILE:  I'm British.

MO:  (laughs loudly) You're also bonkers, doll.

Silence as the train pulls into Queensboro Plaza.  ANGLOPHILE packs away her book (the very British Jack the Ripper) begins to exit.

MO:  And you're tranferring to the 7?  The Immigrant Express?  (howls with laughter)

(Author's notice of disclosure:  MO is 3/16 British.)

Breakfast burrito

• Drop the attitude and give Christopher Street some props.
• Suspicious package?  MTA security is keeping the women's rooms transsexual-freel.
• During an emergency "gay bars should remain open as community centres and gathering places for news and support".  And here we thought there was no reason to move to L.A.
• Who can turn the world on with her smile?  Amanda LePore!  (Via Queerty)
• Clay Aiken is a joke.  (scroll to bottom (no pun intended))
• Enough about Clay, who will be the next Gaymerican Idol?

Here comes the train again

Typical.  Just as a new skill is acquired, the need for that skill is removed.  In this case, the skill was navigating the streets and avenues to avoid traffic jams, and success was mine.  This morning we left the house just before eight, picked up a friend and one stranger to make our quota of four, navigated over the bridge and downtown.  My passengers were dispatched and the car in the garage just after nine.  Traffic was, in fact, pretty much not bad after some trouble spots were identified in the previous days.

With transit workers seemingly going back to work, these new skills are for naught.  Add this to the fact that we will be out of town as of tomorrow morning and this brief episode will just be a fading memory soon.  All the drama and the hype were easily composed human-interest stories in the press.  Perhaps in retrospect, some analysis will be done as to how the situation was able to devolve to a strike. 

In celebration of the trains restarting though, we certainly hope that everyone will don their white furs and panties to celebrate.  Although we'll be in a car heading for someplace called Virginia (yes, there is a Santa Claus), we'll try to dress as close to same as possible.