Escape from Penn Station
There are times I can ignore the eyes, even forget that they don't work. In my apartment. In a bar, after I get settled into a seat (until I have to use the bathroom). At my desk in the office (ditto).
But there are moments every day that are designed to remind me of the situation?sometimes subtly, and sometimes with the subtlety of a boot to the mouth.
Everything had been fine that chilly morning. Got to the train just after sunup, before too many others had dared to leave the comfort of their homes. The train itself was mostly empty, so I found a seat and nestled in. Even when it stopped just after the Smith-9th St. station, the motorman explaining that there was a train stalled up ahead, that was fine. I was in no tremendous hurry. And eventually, as they almost always do, the train continued on its way.
Two stops later, however, the stalled train in front of us apparently still having its troubles, we were informed that the usually (until recently) reliable F was going to turn into a G, to take us Lord knows where, and that, if we wanted, we could transfer at the next stop?Hoyt Schermerhorn?and hop an A into Manhattan.
Familiar enough with how these things usually work, everyone on the train got off. We'd wait for the next F, which, as legend has it, would not be having an identity crisis, and would take us on our regular, merry way. But only after he'd closed the doors did the motorman inform us that all the Fs were now running on the G line, and that we were all screwed ("Ha ha ha," he added as the train pulled away from the platform).
Okay, I thought, more calmly than I would have expected from myself, I'm at an unfamiliar stop, and I'm about to get on an unfamiliar train to go to another unfamiliar stop. You'll deal?just follow the crowds.
Unfortunately, the next train to pull in, seconds later, was a regular G?not an F pretending, maybe, to be a G?and I got on anyway, figuring I'd end up in the same place. I say "unfortunately" because nobody else did this, leaving me with no crowds to follow at the next stop.
The thing is, when you're in an unfamiliar place and you can't see, the cane will do you no good whatsoever. Oh, maybe it'll keep you from falling on the tracks, but if you don't know where you're going, you're not going to get there.
So at the next stop, much confusion ensued, until I finally figured out how to switch to a platform from which I'd be able to catch an A actually heading into Manhattan, where I needed to be.
I'm riding on the bus!, I thought jauntily, if inexplicably, after this small victory. I snagged a seat on the A and took a look around at all my other new A-riding friends. I wasn't thinking too far ahead. In the past, when the F turned into the A on me, I was always able to hop off in the 20s and luck my way over to 7th Ave. This time, though, we went straight to Penn Station.
Now, I've always had trouble in Penn Station. Even holding onto the arm of someone whose eyes worked, like Morgan, Penn Station has been a dark and terrifying maze. Now here, alone and lost at 7 in the morning, with commuters rushing in every which way around me, it became yet another pinch hitter for hell.
My "follow the crowd" instinct, to be honest, only really works about 5 percent of the time?more often than not, it leaves me befuddled and despairing. Yet I still cling to it with a tenacity even I find difficult to understand sometimes. So of course, once the train doors opened, people flew off in every which way, leaving me spinning and squinting, looking for signs of any sort, trying to determine which direction made the most sense.
Given that I saw no signs, and no direction seemed to make any more sense than any other, I struck out to my left, praying to find a stairway upward, toward the light, trying at the same time to avoid the benches, the garbage cans, the posts, the lovely people, the tracks.
All the stairways leading up were blocked off for construction. My only alternative was to head downward, deeper into the guts of the station. Always a dangerous move, but an unavoidable?and perhaps inevitable one.
Suddenly, at the bottom of the stairs, I was alone. To my left, more construction. To my right, a long, curving hallway. Knowing that going back up the stairs wasn't an option, I felt my way along the tiled wall of the corridor until I heard voices again. Too many of them. And before I knew it, I had passed through a turnstile (a good sign, I thought), to be pitched into almost total darkness (except for the newsstand lights in front of me), bodies sweeping in every direction around me. This is the first point when I seriously considered pulling out the cane. Even if it wouldn't help me get anywhere, it would at least let people know why I was moving like a drunkard?and, if I was lucky, I'd be able to trip a few of them in the process.
But I didn't, for whatever reason ("idiocy" is right up there). The cane stayed in my bag, and I forged ahead, slowly, fearing what sort of trouble each step would bring.
From around corners, from staircases leading even deeper into the Earth, from the very walls and floors it seemed, packs of people flooded past me?and whatever direction I chose to head turned out to be the wrong one, and left me, as they say, swimming upstream. I even tried turning around once and joining a tight group of fast-moving commuters, only to find out too late they were all headed for an LIRR train to parts even farther away from the office than I already was.
I hit a dead end, pushed my back flush against it, and waited, considering my options. There weren't many. In fact, there was only one?back the way I came.
Luck was with me this time, though?most of the other people were heading in the same direction, so at least I could pretend. But when we hit the turnstiles I had come through all those years earlier, they splintered into a dozen rivulets, leaving me alone again.
By now, the panic, and the anger, and the frustration, had begun to fade. There had to be a way out of Penn Station. And if I simply continued following the different vectors that shot away from the turnstiles, I would find it. Hell, I wasn't on any real schedule, didn't really need to be at the office at any particular time. I'd get there.
I thought.
And though I did find several exits?or at least things marked "exit"?they were all blocked off, boarded up, impassable.
On my fourth or fifth try, with my back to the turnstiles, I headed out at about a 45-degree angle from the direction I first tried. Falling into another stream of commuters, I broke away with a smaller group who actually seemed to be heading up a flight of stairs. That was the first good sign I'd had in a while. Standing at the bottom of the stairway, I could feel a cool breeze on my face. Not refreshing, exactly, but still. A breeze could only come from the surface.
Hot damn! I thought. I grabbed hold of the railing and bounded up the stairs.
When I reached the surface, finally?the surface where there was light and I could see some better?and could finally light a smoke to calm my addled nerves, I looked around only to see that I recognized nothing around me. And what's more, that I was standing in what appeared to be a construction site.
"Well goddammit," I said aloud. Because the cold wind was already tearing away at the skin of my face, I lowered my head and simply started walking.
I knew, given that I knew where I had just been and that I did not recognize anything, that I had to be somewhere near the intersection of 8th Ave. and either 32nd or 33rd. I'd walk until I hit a cross street, and work it from there. No matter where I was, I wasn't that far away from the warmth of the office.
If only it weren't so goddamn cold. That old lie about Midwesterners?especially those of us from the chillier parts of northern Wisconsin?being immune to the cold came back to me. I'd been frostbitten badly enough, and often enough, as a kid that I was actually weakened, and more susceptible to the cold than most. I left the cigarette screwed into the corner of my mouth and shoved my hands deep in my pockets.
Ahead of me, beyond the next row of buildings, I could see nothing but clear, frozen blue sky. That wasn't a good sign?but at this point, I figured I'd made up my mind, so I'd stick with it.
Come to think of it, yes, "idiocy" is the proper term.
At the next intersection, I looked up at the street sign, squinting through my badly watering eyes. I couldn't read it, but it sure as hell didn't look much like "Seventh." I blinked a few times and squinted again. I was right.
I turned around, and walked back down the sidewalk the way I'd just come.
I reached my stiff fingers into my pocket and slid another cigarette from the pack, lit it, and continued on into work.