I got into a train car this morning and the car is practically empty while the two cars on either side were packed and I wondered why – if it was summer you would figure the AC was out in the car, but it is wintertime.
As soon as I stepped in I knew – you could smell an odor – a familiar odor – one of old bums been pissing and shitting on himself but it wasn’t strong enough to keep me out and anyway my nose was a bit stuffy this morning.
So I sat down – I have plenty of room to spread out and then I could hear the ranting and raving coming from the other end of the subway car – I didn’t have to look up to know it is the ravings of an old black man –
I didn’t look up, being in my normal two seats at the other far off end of the car, and then slowly but slowly the subway car is emptying because I am taking the subway north this morning, against rush hour people traffic to the last stop in the uppermost reaches of the north Bronx so I can be assured a seat for the long ride south into the southernmost reaches of Brooklyn.
So the car, as expected, is slowly emptying stop by stop until there is only me and a young kid sitting across from me, and the old guy raving – another ‘crazy nigger’ – he is stumbling down the length of the subway car towards us two because we were the only ones left on this subway car and he is yelling and banging on the subway car’s walls and the subway car’s windows pulling out his bible from his dirty gym bag that amazingly he had kept in tow and managing to keep with him, and finally he is standing right over on us – more next to me than the young kid sitting across from me at this end of the car and I guess I could have moved – through him(?) - to the other end of the car – and what, abandon this young kid? On his way to school?
I don’t think so.
And I had my pen out because I was marking and writing on some papers and I got to wondering what I would do – what maybe I must do –
Well you can imagine –
I mean he was old, not old enough though to make that interaction easy, maybe as old as me and he was certainly full of energy and with his bible swinging and “smiting” this and “smiting” that and well you can only understand I was a bit concerned being it only me and this young kid now and me not having too much confidence in what the young kid would do if we two adults got into it –
No ‘dis on the kid – I mean he seemed nice enough – maybe; quiet surely.
And I had this Bic pen in my hand and although I was finished using the pen for its say, its intended, more proper design, I was now deciding to keep the ink tip open, not put the cap back on – pointy ink point tip bared, in case, just in case I might find a different use for it, the inky sharp point, might need to explore how useful that point can be in say, performing a tracheotomy – and emergency tracheotomy, of course.
And now we are coming into the last station way up in the Bronx, and he is standing next to me blocking the nearest subway car door that is about to open and he is shouting about he deciding(!), he judging(!) who comes and who goes and I am thinking he is setting up to block my exit through those two about to be opening doors right next to me and I am thinking, do I stand and claim my right to exit through those two doors knowing full well of the ‘mixing’ that most definitely would, most probably would occur and my pen is still bared and in my hand and this is all really much better than morning coffee for a wake up.
I deciding this morning deference the better part of valor;
So I walking past him as he was just a step out of the way of my path as he is leaning on and blocking the subway car door, blocking that path of mine – daring me it seemed, waving his bible and screaming of the judgment he will met and the smiting he will do and I walk past him with the hair on the back of my neck bristling, walking quickly by him to the middle of the car and the young kid follows right behind and the middle doors open and I get out and go across the platform to the waiting D train huffing and wheezing, preparing to go south to the farthest reaches of Brooklyn and the young kid bounds up the stairs out of the station and I am wondering had I just witnessed a reflection of myself, each of us, sitting across from each other - a reflection – 50 years, a half a century hence while a dark avenging Angel of God is swinging the smiting holy sword of the Good Book -?
“When I ruled he world –“
So I walk across the platform and get into the waiting D train which is empty, as expected, and I settle in and I can see outside the train the raving maniac giving loud testimony on the platform and I do not think much of it since I am a believer now – certainly no infidel me(!); since this would-be loud preacher, seemed to be mixing and matching a variety of litanies and liturgy and matins this early morning – impressive his catholicity.
But then he gets into my car – and again it is me and him – though this time it is only me and him, and he enters the car through the same open doors I did and I am really not paying him no mind and I am considering moving down to the end of the car, my usual haunts, and away from him but then I decide – no –
No.
This car will be filling up – that is for sure - so I have no fear of having to single handedly dispatching this errant(?), Angel of God. I would certainly soon have help with that if need be; I am pretty sure I can hold him off long enough for help to arrive.
There is another advantage here though – you know me – always in survival mode down here in the city’s hell; I mean you have to be, and always in the comfort mode, or at least always in the searching for comfort mode or at least what you can make of it down here in these dusky cellars of the city, with him ranting and raving and banging the walls and slamming open and slamming closed those narrow slits of an awning type window that I had forgotten you could open and close – who knew? – who remembers? And his stench, though by this time I had become inured, I was used to his stench as often happens with the human nose no matter how sensitive the nose can be – at first - so I could no longer smell his stench unless he had bathed himself in those few moments he was out of my sight as I crossed the platform – you know miracles and such must happen, no matter all the smiting – I mean Hell! You need a few miracles if you are to believe.
SO whether he had found and cleansed and washed himself with the holiest of waters during those fewest of moments on that subway platform I pretty sure, very sure he would be keeping the middle of this car free of passengers, for a while, and as we making the first few stops heading south that is indeed what happened.
I must admit I am always getting a kick from watching the newly arriving, newly entering passengers going about their normal subway routine, normal subway sitting business or at least searching for sitting business not realizing they are really entering the Jaws of Hell; for even God is silent sometimes – you know those Biblical phrases about ‘I can’t hear you God!’ – Job 30 comes to mind.
And so the people get in and sit close to us two and not noticing perhaps the stink – as I said, maybe he was washed and miraculously made clean in some few moments – and then the dark Angel speaks – roars actually and the newly arrived newly seated passengers perk up to the reality in front of them, to the reality made manifest; and the passengers express surprise at first, as often the case when witnessing the ‘mysterious strange ways of God’; Amos and Deuteronomy quickly come to mind.
And then you can see the expression of surprise at first, in their faces and maybe just the slightest tinge of fear, these are NYC subway natives after all, and then the calculation – for you see at this moment they are having to calculate: calculate if they are to move. Should they get up, off this seat and move to a safer radius, a safer distance to all those far off other seats, those far off seats that are all taken now and so you can see the calculations clicking in their collective face, in their head, in their twitching bodies: comfort or safety; standing for ten stops or risking the roaring tumultuous four horsemen of The Apocalypse being possibly brought, let loose by this dark Angel? - (Revelation).
Well as the subway jerks and jostles further south now entering the upper reaches of Manhattan, even that choice of their moving farther off is allusive as the car so crowded and packed now the newly arriving passengers having no choice but to sit and stand closer and closer, closer still, than they would surely wish, to the avenging Angel and the miraculous word of God and now I am starting to grin - smile actually – because I had always known, hoped for sure, that by deciding to stay put way up there in the northern reaches of the Bronx when I first entered this then empty subway car alone, and not moving when he entered and sitting near to me, not only would this space be free of people for a while but also as the car became crowded with people a show, a revelation would be delivered unto me (Mathew 11) and indeed such a show was delivered; God did not disappoint.
A long while ago an idea had come to me, had revealed itself to me as to why there is a difference between the probability of seeing two big black men get into it in a crowded subway car as opposed to two black women mixing it up. And I have this theory, the theory being that if two big black men get into it, this is really going to be a really heavy place, there would be no choice, between the weight of their bodies and the size of their fists and the raging quantity of their testosterone – we all know where this is going or at least very, very possibly can be going; I don’t see that mix up that often, with good reason, whereas with a woman, or two women, the level of violence and deadly physicality is usually on a different level. The rage may be the same, or maybe even higher, but the possibility of deadly or at least ruinous physical injury is lower, often times quite a bit lower; in my experience.
And this theory was exemplified here in this subway car this morning.
First, way up in the Bronx as we starting our way south, this man got on and sat down near us, across from us two, he not having a clue as to what would ensue and then the old dark Angel jumps up and crosses the aisle and slams open that narrow thin opening of that window, and he does this right behind this guy who is sitting on one of the seats that faces forward.
And when the dark raving Angel slammed open and slammed shut that window and slammed open and stuck his Bible out that open slit waving it into the dark tunnel of Hell his elbow hit the back of the sitting guy’s head(!).
And I am thinking, Oh Boy – here comes the show.
But no – no – the guy just seemed to ignore the hit from that Angle’s elbow and kept on reading his newspaper, it must have been a really interesting story(?!), and I am figuring the man is thinking it is just an accident; people are knocking against each other in these subway cars all the time – though I have seen some fights ensue on that issue, especially between women, as in ‘Do unto others…’ (Luke 6).
And then it happened again, for this dark Angel it seeming to me he likes to test his congregation and now the Angel’s elbow taps again(!), accidently(?), the back of the guy’s head as the Angel is slamming open and closed that narrow window and ranting and raving and smiting and now the guy notices and turns around and looks up at the ‘crazy nigger’ and you can see in the guy’s face he is calculating – and then he makes the decision and gets up and moves further down the car, for there were still some seats left then.
A few stops later a black woman with a baby tightly wrapped in a blanket gets on and another black woman follows and the two take seats across from us, the two do not know each other, they are sitting apart and leaving the middle seat, of the three seats, empty and not acknowledging each other. And as any good Angel would, this Angel is noticing the baby and began teaching the ways and more importantly the judgment and the wrath of God, rather loudly actually, as all good Angles should, you know the wages of sin and all, even to a youngster – especially to a youngster – youngsters should be amply warned, especially in these neighborhoods, and he is really getting into his exhortation and pointing at the mother and child and the judgment of the Lord and the smiting!, and the mother is clearly surprised at all his unruly attention, no matter his intent, and that the mother is recoiling in understandable fear and concern and holding her baby tighter and –
And then the woman sitting next to the mother and child takes up the cause – this is the first person to speak out in what may be described as rather unspeakable license being taken by this dark Angel; and this woman is now warning this avenging Angel:
“Do not speak to that baby!”
This woman, another Angel(?), she apparently not having any fear of this exchange of ideas - and faith(?) - she now pursuing;
“Do not talk to that baby! And you are getting off at the next stop – at 145th Street or I will be pepper spraying you – you say another word!”
And she is pulling out a small aerosol spray canister out of her pocketbook seeming raring to use it too and the dark avenging Angel does quiet a bit, but you see this is not over and we are pulling into the 145th Street station now and he is getting up off his seat but instead of moving toward the opening doors he moves closer to the woman, to a seat recently vacated by an exiting passenger, and that is that and she gets up and not inches from his face sprays the Hell out of that canister – is there a law against this?
And sprays Hell into his face.
Well that certainly quiets him, except for some groaning and his eyes are really tearing and now all these new passengers are entering the subway car and whatever stench was in that car, mainly from the avenging Angel is now being displaced, replaced by the very ‘fragrant’ stinging pepper spray, and everyone entering trying to wave the smell away from their noses, which of course is impossible as the whole car being filled with the smell, and their perhaps innocent eyes, tearing too, and the wave of people coming into the car from behind negates any effort of trying to back out of the car and the doors close abruptly and we are trundling towards the next stop, twenty blocks to go and the avenging Angel is trying to continue his exhortations in between his whimpering and coughing and crying and I have to give the guy credit and all – his persistence is truly amazing and that black woman is hovering, waiting, just waiting to let loose, to spew again the judgment of Jehovah (Joel, Qur’an 88:26)) but the dark Angel is staying low, just low enough, cowing just enough that she is not adequately enticed to persist in another spraying and what I love about these subway cars is the new passengers entering have not a clue of what has just been happening though they are trapped and forced to endure the aftermath, the ugly remnants, for another twenty blocks jostling against each other teary eyed, this is an Express after all.
At 125th Street the avenging Angel stumbles off, I would have liked to have said ‘flew’ off, but really those wings had been clipped, though once off the car he seeming to get some of his bearings back, maybe it the fresher air and we could hear him proselytizing again as we pulling out of the station trundling downtown, further into the belly of the beast, Sodom and Gomorrah coming (Genesis).
As soon as I stepped in I knew – you could smell an odor – a familiar odor – one of old bums been pissing and shitting on himself but it wasn’t strong enough to keep me out and anyway my nose was a bit stuffy this morning.
So I sat down – I have plenty of room to spread out and then I could hear the ranting and raving coming from the other end of the subway car – I didn’t have to look up to know it is the ravings of an old black man –
I didn’t look up, being in my normal two seats at the other far off end of the car, and then slowly but slowly the subway car is emptying because I am taking the subway north this morning, against rush hour people traffic to the last stop in the uppermost reaches of the north Bronx so I can be assured a seat for the long ride south into the southernmost reaches of Brooklyn.
So the car, as expected, is slowly emptying stop by stop until there is only me and a young kid sitting across from me, and the old guy raving – another ‘crazy nigger’ – he is stumbling down the length of the subway car towards us two because we were the only ones left on this subway car and he is yelling and banging on the subway car’s walls and the subway car’s windows pulling out his bible from his dirty gym bag that amazingly he had kept in tow and managing to keep with him, and finally he is standing right over on us – more next to me than the young kid sitting across from me at this end of the car and I guess I could have moved – through him(?) - to the other end of the car – and what, abandon this young kid? On his way to school?
I don’t think so.
And I had my pen out because I was marking and writing on some papers and I got to wondering what I would do – what maybe I must do –
Well you can imagine –
I mean he was old, not old enough though to make that interaction easy, maybe as old as me and he was certainly full of energy and with his bible swinging and “smiting” this and “smiting” that and well you can only understand I was a bit concerned being it only me and this young kid now and me not having too much confidence in what the young kid would do if we two adults got into it –
No ‘dis on the kid – I mean he seemed nice enough – maybe; quiet surely.
And I had this Bic pen in my hand and although I was finished using the pen for its say, its intended, more proper design, I was now deciding to keep the ink tip open, not put the cap back on – pointy ink point tip bared, in case, just in case I might find a different use for it, the inky sharp point, might need to explore how useful that point can be in say, performing a tracheotomy – and emergency tracheotomy, of course.
And now we are coming into the last station way up in the Bronx, and he is standing next to me blocking the nearest subway car door that is about to open and he is shouting about he deciding(!), he judging(!) who comes and who goes and I am thinking he is setting up to block my exit through those two about to be opening doors right next to me and I am thinking, do I stand and claim my right to exit through those two doors knowing full well of the ‘mixing’ that most definitely would, most probably would occur and my pen is still bared and in my hand and this is all really much better than morning coffee for a wake up.
I deciding this morning deference the better part of valor;
So I walking past him as he was just a step out of the way of my path as he is leaning on and blocking the subway car door, blocking that path of mine – daring me it seemed, waving his bible and screaming of the judgment he will met and the smiting he will do and I walk past him with the hair on the back of my neck bristling, walking quickly by him to the middle of the car and the young kid follows right behind and the middle doors open and I get out and go across the platform to the waiting D train huffing and wheezing, preparing to go south to the farthest reaches of Brooklyn and the young kid bounds up the stairs out of the station and I am wondering had I just witnessed a reflection of myself, each of us, sitting across from each other - a reflection – 50 years, a half a century hence while a dark avenging Angel of God is swinging the smiting holy sword of the Good Book -?
“When I ruled he world –“
So I walk across the platform and get into the waiting D train which is empty, as expected, and I settle in and I can see outside the train the raving maniac giving loud testimony on the platform and I do not think much of it since I am a believer now – certainly no infidel me(!); since this would-be loud preacher, seemed to be mixing and matching a variety of litanies and liturgy and matins this early morning – impressive his catholicity.
But then he gets into my car – and again it is me and him – though this time it is only me and him, and he enters the car through the same open doors I did and I am really not paying him no mind and I am considering moving down to the end of the car, my usual haunts, and away from him but then I decide – no –
No.
This car will be filling up – that is for sure - so I have no fear of having to single handedly dispatching this errant(?), Angel of God. I would certainly soon have help with that if need be; I am pretty sure I can hold him off long enough for help to arrive.
There is another advantage here though – you know me – always in survival mode down here in the city’s hell; I mean you have to be, and always in the comfort mode, or at least always in the searching for comfort mode or at least what you can make of it down here in these dusky cellars of the city, with him ranting and raving and banging the walls and slamming open and slamming closed those narrow slits of an awning type window that I had forgotten you could open and close – who knew? – who remembers? And his stench, though by this time I had become inured, I was used to his stench as often happens with the human nose no matter how sensitive the nose can be – at first - so I could no longer smell his stench unless he had bathed himself in those few moments he was out of my sight as I crossed the platform – you know miracles and such must happen, no matter all the smiting – I mean Hell! You need a few miracles if you are to believe.
SO whether he had found and cleansed and washed himself with the holiest of waters during those fewest of moments on that subway platform I pretty sure, very sure he would be keeping the middle of this car free of passengers, for a while, and as we making the first few stops heading south that is indeed what happened.
I must admit I am always getting a kick from watching the newly arriving, newly entering passengers going about their normal subway routine, normal subway sitting business or at least searching for sitting business not realizing they are really entering the Jaws of Hell; for even God is silent sometimes – you know those Biblical phrases about ‘I can’t hear you God!’ – Job 30 comes to mind.
And so the people get in and sit close to us two and not noticing perhaps the stink – as I said, maybe he was washed and miraculously made clean in some few moments – and then the dark Angel speaks – roars actually and the newly arrived newly seated passengers perk up to the reality in front of them, to the reality made manifest; and the passengers express surprise at first, as often the case when witnessing the ‘mysterious strange ways of God’; Amos and Deuteronomy quickly come to mind.
And then you can see the expression of surprise at first, in their faces and maybe just the slightest tinge of fear, these are NYC subway natives after all, and then the calculation – for you see at this moment they are having to calculate: calculate if they are to move. Should they get up, off this seat and move to a safer radius, a safer distance to all those far off other seats, those far off seats that are all taken now and so you can see the calculations clicking in their collective face, in their head, in their twitching bodies: comfort or safety; standing for ten stops or risking the roaring tumultuous four horsemen of The Apocalypse being possibly brought, let loose by this dark Angel? - (Revelation).
Well as the subway jerks and jostles further south now entering the upper reaches of Manhattan, even that choice of their moving farther off is allusive as the car so crowded and packed now the newly arriving passengers having no choice but to sit and stand closer and closer, closer still, than they would surely wish, to the avenging Angel and the miraculous word of God and now I am starting to grin - smile actually – because I had always known, hoped for sure, that by deciding to stay put way up there in the northern reaches of the Bronx when I first entered this then empty subway car alone, and not moving when he entered and sitting near to me, not only would this space be free of people for a while but also as the car became crowded with people a show, a revelation would be delivered unto me (Mathew 11) and indeed such a show was delivered; God did not disappoint.
A long while ago an idea had come to me, had revealed itself to me as to why there is a difference between the probability of seeing two big black men get into it in a crowded subway car as opposed to two black women mixing it up. And I have this theory, the theory being that if two big black men get into it, this is really going to be a really heavy place, there would be no choice, between the weight of their bodies and the size of their fists and the raging quantity of their testosterone – we all know where this is going or at least very, very possibly can be going; I don’t see that mix up that often, with good reason, whereas with a woman, or two women, the level of violence and deadly physicality is usually on a different level. The rage may be the same, or maybe even higher, but the possibility of deadly or at least ruinous physical injury is lower, often times quite a bit lower; in my experience.
And this theory was exemplified here in this subway car this morning.
First, way up in the Bronx as we starting our way south, this man got on and sat down near us, across from us two, he not having a clue as to what would ensue and then the old dark Angel jumps up and crosses the aisle and slams open that narrow thin opening of that window, and he does this right behind this guy who is sitting on one of the seats that faces forward.
And when the dark raving Angel slammed open and slammed shut that window and slammed open and stuck his Bible out that open slit waving it into the dark tunnel of Hell his elbow hit the back of the sitting guy’s head(!).
And I am thinking, Oh Boy – here comes the show.
But no – no – the guy just seemed to ignore the hit from that Angle’s elbow and kept on reading his newspaper, it must have been a really interesting story(?!), and I am figuring the man is thinking it is just an accident; people are knocking against each other in these subway cars all the time – though I have seen some fights ensue on that issue, especially between women, as in ‘Do unto others…’ (Luke 6).
And then it happened again, for this dark Angel it seeming to me he likes to test his congregation and now the Angel’s elbow taps again(!), accidently(?), the back of the guy’s head as the Angel is slamming open and closed that narrow window and ranting and raving and smiting and now the guy notices and turns around and looks up at the ‘crazy nigger’ and you can see in the guy’s face he is calculating – and then he makes the decision and gets up and moves further down the car, for there were still some seats left then.
A few stops later a black woman with a baby tightly wrapped in a blanket gets on and another black woman follows and the two take seats across from us, the two do not know each other, they are sitting apart and leaving the middle seat, of the three seats, empty and not acknowledging each other. And as any good Angel would, this Angel is noticing the baby and began teaching the ways and more importantly the judgment and the wrath of God, rather loudly actually, as all good Angles should, you know the wages of sin and all, even to a youngster – especially to a youngster – youngsters should be amply warned, especially in these neighborhoods, and he is really getting into his exhortation and pointing at the mother and child and the judgment of the Lord and the smiting!, and the mother is clearly surprised at all his unruly attention, no matter his intent, and that the mother is recoiling in understandable fear and concern and holding her baby tighter and –
And then the woman sitting next to the mother and child takes up the cause – this is the first person to speak out in what may be described as rather unspeakable license being taken by this dark Angel; and this woman is now warning this avenging Angel:
“Do not speak to that baby!”
This woman, another Angel(?), she apparently not having any fear of this exchange of ideas - and faith(?) - she now pursuing;
“Do not talk to that baby! And you are getting off at the next stop – at 145th Street or I will be pepper spraying you – you say another word!”
And she is pulling out a small aerosol spray canister out of her pocketbook seeming raring to use it too and the dark avenging Angel does quiet a bit, but you see this is not over and we are pulling into the 145th Street station now and he is getting up off his seat but instead of moving toward the opening doors he moves closer to the woman, to a seat recently vacated by an exiting passenger, and that is that and she gets up and not inches from his face sprays the Hell out of that canister – is there a law against this?
And sprays Hell into his face.
Well that certainly quiets him, except for some groaning and his eyes are really tearing and now all these new passengers are entering the subway car and whatever stench was in that car, mainly from the avenging Angel is now being displaced, replaced by the very ‘fragrant’ stinging pepper spray, and everyone entering trying to wave the smell away from their noses, which of course is impossible as the whole car being filled with the smell, and their perhaps innocent eyes, tearing too, and the wave of people coming into the car from behind negates any effort of trying to back out of the car and the doors close abruptly and we are trundling towards the next stop, twenty blocks to go and the avenging Angel is trying to continue his exhortations in between his whimpering and coughing and crying and I have to give the guy credit and all – his persistence is truly amazing and that black woman is hovering, waiting, just waiting to let loose, to spew again the judgment of Jehovah (Joel, Qur’an 88:26)) but the dark Angel is staying low, just low enough, cowing just enough that she is not adequately enticed to persist in another spraying and what I love about these subway cars is the new passengers entering have not a clue of what has just been happening though they are trapped and forced to endure the aftermath, the ugly remnants, for another twenty blocks jostling against each other teary eyed, this is an Express after all.
At 125th Street the avenging Angel stumbles off, I would have liked to have said ‘flew’ off, but really those wings had been clipped, though once off the car he seeming to get some of his bearings back, maybe it the fresher air and we could hear him proselytizing again as we pulling out of the station trundling downtown, further into the belly of the beast, Sodom and Gomorrah coming (Genesis).
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