subway stories: part one
by Emily Johnson
Recently I was walking down to the B line at West 4th St., coming home from work, when I was interrupted by a man in front of me walking slowly, who kept pausing to look back at me. He would walk a few steps, then stop and make a big turn with his head, leering with a goofy grin. Now this is no big deal really, almost too pedestrian to notice or mention. What set it apart is that he was doing this while walking down the stairs. I mean, it’s one thing for some sad old guy to stare at you — it’s kinda dopey and sweet sometimes — but I am mobile, and you do not interrupt a New Yorker’s stride. That’s for tourists only. Exasperated, I flew past him, trying to make a train just as it was closing its doors, breathing “shit shit shit shit” while those on the inside prayed “close the doors close the doors”: battling litanies. As the doors shut in front of me, stopping me short, I veered off and continued down the platform as if it was what I had been planning to do the whole time. It wasn’t my train anyway.
I remember at times actually boarding the wrong train just to escape a similar leering stare. Now, a little bolder, or caring a little less, I stand my ground. Still, confrontation seems impossible. Helpful girly defenses — ignorance and deflection — come to my aid; I move in the opposite direction. If I can’t change the world at least I’ll change the direction of my gaze. Always reckoning with competing reactions of anger and timidity — to be flattered or indignant? — the threshold of tolerance ebbs and flows.
So why write about the subway? What could possibly be interesting about it? It’s just the place you are while on your way to somewhere else. I mostly don’t pay attention, but then sometimes I start to add up the time I actually spend here; it’s as futile as counting the days one spends on the can in a lifetime.
This is just to say that moving around New York, small packed bag on your back like a shell, through the recycled days and occasionally eventful nights, you’re inevitably back on the subway. Like a refrain of a song before the chorus kicks in, designed to lead somewhere else, it hums along a route you come to know in your muscle memory: the turns, the yowls of the wheels on the tracks. You try to get comfortable, acrobatically balanced with all your shit, holding that pole, while managing your method of distraction: book, music, cell phone game.
First it is interesting: the short-lived but fun people-watching stage. It doesn’t last long.
Pretty soon you meet the crazy smelly guy, the lay preacher (using the term “preacher” verrry loosely), the incoherent beggar, the Mariachi band, the guy standing behind you — closer than he needs to — and of course the feint of a roomy spot in an otherwise crowded car: the one truly reeking guy, sleeping — or
After that you grow gruff, world-weary, and salty as heck. Countless hours spent waiting on platforms — useless announcements proclaiming delays; the cacophony and visual distractions — gradually strip away levels of hearing and comprehension, softening the edges of focus until people resemble nothing so much as zombies. I start to think it’s totally doable to ride my bike over the Manhattan bridge and through Chinatown. Yeah, well maybe next Spring.
At this point detachment sets in, like weight gain progressing unnoticed and finally, shockingly confronted one day before the mirror. You might step over a person collapsed on the platform, or curse a grandmother for being too slow in the door.
These two anti-moods congeal unflavorfully, and we ride on our subdued wave of distraction and detachment, wound up so tight that one minor infraction causes a snap. Time is weighed out station by station, pointing out all you could be doing instead. As the train passes into a black hole, the barely-civil barely interact, once in a while making a connection that marks the exception. The train itself is a squalid still life; it doesn’t seem like life even really extends to it. But maybe this is why it sort of fascinates me, like tracking the part of life that is lost in the cracks of time.
Except today. On days I consider lucky I come full circle; today I feel like a newbie again, cursed to watch these awkward interactions between people on different trajectories, amazed at the indifference with which we ride together, and at my own easy anger as someone’s bag moves in on my territory. It makes me feel like a gangly and fumbling outsider again. Then suddenly the train rears and I go flying; I feel someone’s hand close firmly on my arm to steady me and I’m back home again. Tomorrow, it’s you.
declared in subway stories