No Rest for the Crazy or Stupid

The train was more crowded than I either expected or liked at 6:40 on a Monday morning. I guess it's something I was going to have to get used to for a while.

I took a deep breath and began sidling my way through the crowd, newly annoyed, aiming for the empty spot against the door at the front of the car.

As I shuffled, I heard a man speaking in hushed tones to my right. He was the only one in the car who was talking, so, hushed as he was, I could hear him perfectly well.

"Riding on the F train...," he was saying, "because the F train goes to places in the city other trains don't go..."

Some fucker on a cellphone, I thought absently. Then I added, but what an odd thing to say to somebody.

"I'll be back again as soon as something interesting happens," he said. Then, instead of hearing the expected beep of a cellphone, I heard the unmistakable "click" of a tape recorder's "off" button.

I started racing through the possible explanations for what was going on. This didn't take long, as there were only two I could imagine?either he was with the NPR, putting together one of those annoying mini "slice of life" documentaries they insist on airing, or he was insane.

When the man?tall, he was, with short, thinning hair, standing against the doors with a suitcase between his feet and another bag slung over his shoulder?took a few steps forward before bending over at the waist in an apparent effort to read (upside down) a book another passenger was engrossed in, I thought I had my answer.

Still wasn't sure, though. He didn't look all that insane. A little unshaven, maybe, but his clothes seemed clean and he didn't smell awful.

Then, as the train broke above ground into the overcast morning, he snapped bolt upright, moved back to his spot by the doors, whipped out the tape recorder again, hit the record button and said, "Going above ground now... this so-called 'sub-way' is going above ground!"

Click.

Then he turned it on again.

"I can see buildings from my vantage point now...and signs... Signs advertising...products..."

His voice had a quavering urgency that would place him somewhere in between Dan Rather's days in the mountains of Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion and Cosmo Kramer. He was on a mission, this man. A deadly serious mission. Records needed to be kept.

Not surprisingly, I was the only one who was?actively and obviously, at least?paying any attention to him.

"Ahh, the Smith-9th St. station," he mused a few minutes later. "Highest subway stop in the city... There are many above-ground stops in New York, but the Smith-9th St. station towers above them all..."

Click.

Maybe he used to be a Big Apple tour guide, I thought. Or maybe he'd really like to become one.

Once the train headed back underground, he turned his back to me and adjusted his suitcase. Looking around the car, but not really looking at anything. The only time the tape recorder came out, it seemed, was when we were at stations. To his mind, that's where all the action was.

"Bergen St. stop...not many people here right now..."

(He obviously had a very loose definition of "something interesting.")

When he shoved the tape recorder hurriedly into his pocket, picked up his suitcase and left at Jay St., I felt a small twang of sadness. There went my morning entertainment.

It was more than that, though?this man obviously saw life as an epic adventure, full of danger and intrigue and suspense. I could appreciate that. He might've been a little jittery and intense, but I bet he was having fun.

Later that night, around 10, I found my way to the last available seat in the last car of a train back home, where I witnessed the flipside of the morning.

It was a woman's voice this time, as intense and jittery as the tape recorder guy's, but different. The intensity this time seemed to be induced chemically, rather than through honest conviction. Plus, she had a real person to talk to.

"All they want is the macarena and the chicken dance," she said, "but I'm a creative person...real creative, you know?"

I was tired, sweaty and drunk, and the last thing I needed right at that moment was the shrill voice of a speeded-up drama queen, complaining to an obviously cowed friend of hers about the travails of being a wedding singer. I didn't want to glance over there, but couldn't help it. Just for an instant.

"So I'm like, 'I'm going to give you something good and creative,' but all they just want is the macarena, right? So I give them the macarena, but I'm also going to do something creative, because I'm like, a creative person..."

Her face flat, her eyes dull, chubby hands gesticulating more than they needed to. Nothing interesting there, like a million others. Her voice drilled on, and I could feel my guts slowly begin to turn.

"...So I do some things for the kids, right? Things the kids would like, too...the boys and girls... I worked, like, real hard on it?I studied dance?you know I studied dance?and I'm real good?and drama?but now? Like?"

Oh Jesus Christ.

I've always maintained that cocaine was an asshole drug.

Once in Brooklyn, she and her friend got off the train, and I closed my eyes. In an instant, I was asleep in a way only drunks on downtown trains can be asleep. And almost immediately, I began to dream, and in the dream, her voice returned, and I got to hear more about how creative she was.

The next morning, 6:40 again, and I'm on the train again, heading back into work. The train was still too crowded, but to my disappointment, the guy with the tape recorder wasn't there to perk me up.

No, instead at Jay St. the doors open, and the same fucking woman gets back on, with the same fucking beleaguered friend, and she's still talking. You know she's been talking all night, hasn't shut her big fat yap once. She's a creative type, don't you know, all full of ideas she simply can't contain. It was like the nightmare never ended.

"So I was at this bar with Jana, right? And like, this real gross guy sits down at the end of the bar where we usually sit? And he's got, like, buck teeth, y'know? These big yellow buck teeth. And he just starts like, staring at me!"

She went on to pantomime the scene, much to her friend's delight, and the rest of the car's horror.

"So finally, Jana's just like, 'So why are you staring at her?' And he's like, 'Because she's so beautiful!' And I'm like, 'Eewww!'"

For the past 10 days, I'd been trying to get the prescription for my rage medication refilled. Every time I called the pharmacy, I was told that they were having trouble getting the shipment in from their warehouse, and that I should maybe try back in a couple more days.

All I know is, they'd better damn well hurry.