“A white guy!” came a voice with a tone of genuine surprise. My fair features and unadjusted manner singled me out on the festival eve of the East-Indian Day parade. But I never felt uncomfortable walking those Brooklyn sidewalks, me the minority among festival cheers and forthright joy exhibited in open expressions—dancing, hugging and howling.
Four AM and I walked over to a booth where a bearded man rested his head against a fence post. It was late and the crowds were weary and in no mood to shop. His wears were draped over the chain link fence facing the street--multi-colored blankets, masks for Caribbean-style monster balls and beaded jewelry of every color strewn across the table in front. He opened his eyes to take my money for a red and black necklace I was buying myself. His face aglow for the unexpected purchase, he stretched his arms wide and asked with a thick Kingston accent where I come from. “All over,” I lied, and told him how I once traveled to Ocho Rios on vacation because I’d heard that’s where Johnny Cash lives. He didn’t know the name but agreed that Ocho Rios was a famous city in his country.
His name was William and he had never traveled outside Kingston except to come to New York City. He would be selling his goods through the next day when the real festivities began. Now awake, he lifted a 40 from the blue cooler at his feet and offered me the nightcap, as he called it. We drank over my tales of Southern Jamaica and we watched the passing strangers. Nothing wears out a man more than crowds of happy-go-lucky parade-goers flaunting their youth and indulging courtship. I’d been meeting people and enjoying the quarter million East Indian expatriates celebrating their heritage late into the night. Now I was beat and ready to head home.
I swallowed the final swish of beer and wished William good luck, then descended to the subway to await my train.
The bag ladies are gone from the 2-train, leaving room for us to pack the shiny new boxcars while pre-recorded a baritone voice drolled out “Stand clear of the closing doors please!” It blares at every stop and transfer between Brooklyn and East Harlem and although the mechanical words are clear, two guys hold the doors at each stop. I found space to wedge myself between a armrest bar and the wing of a woman’s hindquarters, my circulation compromised and bladder awakened. I’d have to wait till I got home. I guess the beer had gone right through me.
For most commuters, riding the subway offers two choices--sleeping or reading. But then there are those who think out problems on the subway, the ones who look as if they are studying the before and after picture’s of Dr. Zizmores patient’s or contemplating the trite quips of poetry sponsored by Barnes & Noble. In truth we are deep in thoughts about our responsibilities and events surrounding us. For me there’s a good chance I’m thinking about my next meal or what to say to my significant other so to keep her that way. For instance, once I felt a hankering for soft pretzels smeared with mustard, and immerging from the subway bought a salt covered bread knot from a food cart, mustard and all.
Great pleasures come from satisfying one’s hunger, or one’s thirst, and the train gives us time to consider our cravings. Here is a our primordial suspense in life, what maintains us through the ups and downs of our days and serves to connect us with the corporeal necessity in survival. Desire … Anticipation … Satisfaction. What better place to develop these yearnings than the idol time on a subway car?
That said, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The subtle call to urinate can arise unexpected like one’s appetite, a tingle in the central quarters preceded by the bladder pressing against the abdomen. As with all diuretics, drinking alcohol accelerates this process, and my mid region was quickly filling me with the most basic function of life. The train stopping and going, the cycle of fluids had reached their end and I had to go.
My bladder became volatile, and two stops into the ride back to Manhattan my condition upgraded to Defcom-2, one notch below the feared I-think-I’m-gonna-go-in-my-pants echelon. Like a doctor’s hammer to the patient’s knee, my legs responded and couldn’t be restrained. The car was crowded and those standing dropped their heads in their hanging arms as snores came from the seats. I stood up reaching my hands to the ceiling, thus stretching my body lengthwise with a naïve idea I might increase the size of my abdomen and earn extra time. Yet, the need to expel the fluids I had so liberally drunk with William caused a general outcry within my system. Four stops and a lady with a baby in her lap eyed me as if to say, “Don’t be high around my child!” My desperation was now showing in my bloodshot eyes.
The train becomes an express after Wall Street, and I considered the possibility for my transferring to the L-Train that would take me cross-town to my stop at 1st Avenue, my apartment just a block from the stop. By now the train had begun its journey under the East River, the cars shifting rhythmically back and forth as the speed of the train promised to deliver me in time to deliver my bladder from this crisis. I recited my 8th grade history presentation to reassure myself:
A network of trains and tunnels almost as long as all other public transit systems in America combined, the New York City Transit Authority is a government unto itself, spending four billion dollars a year operating and maintaining the complex system of transportation available to the public for a nominal fee. Millions of dollars in surplus income was collected last year, and the mayor promised to add trains and revise the scheduling system to ensure trains run on time—according to schedule.
The train pulled into Wall Street, passengers slumped against one another and the lady and baby both sleeping. The doors opened onto an empty platform, the street above not even the ghosts of Trinity’s graveyard out at such an hour. I could wait, I told myself.
Stand clear of the closing doors! the monotone voice announced as I started toward the door. I’d had enough. I was out of time. The explosion was coming.
But I acted too late, pressing my nose against the cold glass where the empty platform became a blur of porcelain tiles. I felt as forlorn and bloated as a baby does after eating baked beans. There was no sound except the snores of passengers. How stupid I was not to get off at Wall Street. I swore at myself. I’d take the 100-dollar fine for peeing on the platform. Fine. I didn’t care anymore. The situation was volatile. The lady and her baby were staring at me again. I meant no harm and would have happily irrigated third world countries or put out wildfires in western states in the process of relinquishing this boiling in my belly.
Then the most feared and hated words came over the speaker, a single sentence that echoed through the car loud and clear:
The train is being held in the station until further notice.
Robert Browning beseeched God to allow him at the end of the fight to find an end with privacy, an obscure nook to be forgotten in where death could overcome him in solitude. Well, kill me and dump me in my coffin. I could have extinguished the flames in Hell. I looked toward the door ready to take my chance with the third rail, but the new subway car doors are locked in between cars. I was trapped.
I looked toward the front of the car where a black man’s chin rested on his own shoulder, a wine bottle between his legs. Timeless moments passed and I calculated the risks involved, possible consequences, the reward. And before I knew what was happening, I’d slipped the bottle away from him and arrived at the end of the car arranging my back to the staid passengers as any respectable gentleman would do. I peaked behind me and saw that no one looked my way. Suddenly I realized I was the crazy man, the one with the problem, the one everyone ignores. The Mad Dog bottle filled as I balanced the act, availing myself so not to fill above the neck of the bottle.
The train moved on and the people remained unchanged.
The book on subway etiquette deserves to be written, but it’s a job the Ethicist could never tackle. Filled with contradictions and endless if/then scenarios, this guide’s outstanding chapter would deal with those exceptions we make for the daft, dumb and desperate passengers we see everyday while riding.
If one stops to think about it, we are all participants in the daily parade of subway trains, coming and going with the courtesy our moms taught us while politely ignoring those riders who have none at all. Sometimes we reprimand passengers with angry brows or subtle body gestures and thus doing so defend ourselves from the boorish riders. But to know the limits of our power on the train is to concede what we all know from experience, that the subway system contains it’s own unwritten moral code and sometimes it’s best just to ignore those people we see as absurd. There’s a time to stand up to them, and there’s a time to just let them be, for one day you might just be one of those exceptional passengers on the train with a bottle in your hand.
