A Note From The Train

5.20.2025

There are some moments in time, living in NYC, where things couldn’t feel more like, well, New York City. You accept your surroundings, the craze, because you are in New York City. The Homeless Man with a rag around His waist contemplates stepping onto your car of the 6 Train at Astor Place, you quietly hope He doesn’t, but He does. You jinxed it. He steps on, spitting on the ground, and Himself, as He screams, and spits, “WHY IS EVERYBODY ALWAYS TALKING”. An elderly couple speaking Cantonese sits across from you and right next to him, they keep their cool, stop talking, and their calm turns into yours. You get off at 14th Street, transfer to the 4/5 for a more expedient journey to the Upper East Side, and the platform smells like shit, like you stepped in shit, but the train arrives and all is well, for a moment.

You notice a man as you walk on, he wears a frown, more than a frown, he actually looks like he wants to kill you, and it turns out he probably does. You get to Grand Central and the 4 Train that was once an express turns into a local ride, there’s a sick passenger somewhere along the line. The train empties and fills, empties and fills, and tensions rise just so. There is young man, he is loud and perpetually online, swiping up and down between TikTok and Instagram in a similar cadence to the subway itself as it stops at each station. The angry man is quiet, but the young man is boastfully yelling, and the two brush shoulders, a warlike act on a subway car at 3 pm at 96th street. The men start talking, in a far less civilized manner than the word “talking” would suggest. Their words slowly rise to the decibel of a shout, and the angry man is clearly very, very angry. He takes off his backpack, removes a water bottle and sips an inconsequential sip, puts it back, methodically, deliberately, and unhurried. Cautiously, one might say, he slides his arms back through the straps of his bag, but then it comes off again, he unzips the second compartment and removes a grip strength trainer, (this one precisely in case you’re interested), squeezing, releasing, staring, angrily of course. And as you write this, you are in the direct line of his hateful gaze. Actually, you think you started writing this to avoid him.

You get off at 103 St. and you’re 15 minutes late, it’s New York City.