He stood quietly, very quietly, looking upward the whole time, straining to elevate his head until the neck began to tighten and hurt. Avoiding the eyes of those immediately in his space, Strenski looked long and hard into the ceiling light fixture, the one that intermittently blinked on and off the entire route from Brooklyn into Union Square. It wasn’t such a long ride, but the vacuum-tight crowd of bodies squeezed into the subway car created a sensation of timelessness, and he froze in this thicket of human experience, just short of numb. It went on like this each day, to and from the office, with that damned light arhythmically flickering overhead dominating his view.
Attempting to release some of the tension from his neck now, Strenski slowly turned and tried to roll his shoulders back, to no avail. As he did, the backpack on the guy behind him struck him square in the spine, causing him to move quickly up against the long silver pole he held with white knuckles, and it was then that he realized his face had gotten much too close to the heavy-set woman standing to his right. Sucking her teeth annoyedly, she leered at him from the corner of her eye, attempting to ward him off from her personal space, whatever personal space one could find in this rush-hour ride through the fifth circle. Strenski’s eyes shot back up at the light, which blinked twice just as he caught glimpse of it, momentarily throwing the rumbling car from bright light to blackness and back. Now Strenski just focused on the metallic pole, chilled from air-conditioning, which stood inches away from the bridge of his nose. Should the car come to a sudden halt, he considered, he’d probably crack his nose and forehead right into the thing. Gazing deep into the convex image in front of him, Strenski saw his side-show distortion laughing back at the sardine can which encircled it, but mostly right back into his own eyes. It was a discomforting view to go perfectly with just such an occasion.
Little by little, Strenski snuck little glances at the people in his purview. The heavy-set woman lurched forward each time the car rocked, so she was most obvious. The pudgy alabaster face under thick eyeglasses rippled with each jolt of the train. She was a woman perhaps in her late 50s but with freshly dyed and teased reddish hair attempting to blur the years. She watched Strenski carefully through smudged lenses encased in a gold-turning-green metal frame, vigilant of the possible sexual predator the automated announcements warn travelers about (lately this announcement competes with “If You See Something-- Say Something”, replacing the old standby “Keep Your Hands Off the Doors”). She wore a strangely green dress with a frilly yellow collar and, as she suspiciously looked over at another man, Strenski spied on her fingernails, painted in the same odd green shade, albeit in a sparkling finish, and the handbag wrapped tightly around her forearm. It was of a shiny fire engine red. The woman, whose ruby-painted lips had remained sealed in an angry grimace the whole ride, did all of her shouting through her wardrobe, it would seem. But her guttural garment-hollers were enough to make Strenski wince. He felt, right then and there, that as they were sharing a moment, she at least deserved a name within this imaginary cocktail party from hell, and declared that she’d be known as “Martha My Dear,” after the regal Beatles song. Warily, Martha leered back at him and Strenski tried to suppress a laugh, imagining the conversation they’d have in response to this. He looked away, swallowing a violent chuckle.
Just beyond Martha stood a round-faced Asian man with thick, sweeping black hair. Disregarding all that went on around him, the man’s arm craned around the bodies in his path, protruding uncomfortably from his short-sleeved white dress shirt. He grappled with the pole, holding on for dear life, but his face only reflected solemnity, his gaze frozen. The man’s shoulder bag, with the initials “K. J.” embossed in gold along the front pocket, hung loosely around his chest and Strenski tried to imagine what his name could be. With little thought, it was decided that the man’s initials and appearance indicated Kim Jong Il just enough to make it impossible to pass up this moniker. Strenski noted that from deep within Kim Jong’s bag came a white cord, snaking out into a bifurcated end, and culminating in a pair of ear phones placed within the confines of his smallish ears. Kim Jong appeared transfixed on his music, only occasionally reaching into the bag to fetch the listening device and seek out another favorite song. Then he’d go right back into the realm. Strenski wondered what it was he could be listening to that pulled him so deeply into his own sphere; something soft, maybe a mellow Chet Baker vocal? Hmmmm, “Let’s Get Lost”. No. Strenski decided upon something very avant garde, like a Xenakis piece, or maybe something by Frank Zappa. The blank, detached look on Kim Jong’s face made this idea that much more bizarre--so then of course the music could only be the squealing attack of Anthony Braxton’s saxophonic death blows. Yeah, that’s it: an atonal plain of frenetic primal screams for our Kim Jong.
Strenski noted, though, that each time Jong let go of the pole to segue over to another musical selection, Martha—resenting his steadfast reach—would move a little further over, into his path, causing Jong to have to struggle anew in his quest for the pole’s stability. When the train would take some dangerous curves, Kim Jong’s fingers worked furiously to maintain hold of the aluminum pole which seemed to slip further away from him with each rock of the car. But he never blinked.
Now over to Strenski’s left side was a couple, a youngish couple, who couldn’t seem to keep their hands off one another. “Bob and Carol,” apparently trying to hunt down a Ted and Alice of their own, looked deeply into one another’s eyes, laughing lovers’ laughs and telling private stories no one else could hear, alone in the world. That Martha, at a three-quarter angle, resentfully huffed each time Bob nuzzled Carol’s ear meant nothing to them and while Strenski desperately tried to keep his eyes off the pair in heat, he was repeatedly pulled into their love scene, a self-conscious voyeur.
Carol placed a soft kiss on Bob’s lips as the train’s metallic wheels suddenly screeched to a high-pitched stop in the tunnel between 36th and Pacific Streets. As the light fixture flickered on in Morse code the moments of darkness were enough for the couple’s soft giggling to get a little bit louder, their embrace bolder and bolder. They were becoming the main attraction for all of the crushed, exhausted commuters with nothing better to look at. Those around them included “Langston”, a tall, slim African-American man with a bored expression and an intellectual air. His black tee shirt displayed a red circle containing a Black liberation image in the center, shouting down the Man. Tiny, black shades covered Langston’s eyes just enough for near anonymity, and his earphones sought to close out everything about him. But as the train sat in morbid stillness for what felt like an eternity, the only sounds in evidence (besides radiator-like hissing grumbles from some of the dispirited travelers) was the throbbing overspill of Langston’s music: bombastic bass and a cutting, electronic backbeat supported some kind of Hip Hop vocal, but no one could really hear the words, just their skimmering, rhythmic attack and the occasional curse.
Martha’s eyes rolled upward and to the side as her lips curled distastefully. Bob and Carol now stood wordless, finally aware of the crowd in their immediate grasp, and Kim Jong fiddled emotionless with his iPod. Over beyond him, Strenski observed a very tall middle-aged man in a rumpled suit speaking buoyantly to the short woman in turban and sari, perhaps a co-worker or maybe a building neighbor he’d found on the train that day. Would they retain this friendship or was it just one of those things momentarily constructed in these settings? And opposite this pair were three young Mexican men carrying guitars, speaking in soft Spanish as they anxiously peered through the windows to the underground darkness beyond. Subway performers, maybe on the way to Times Square to challenge that Peruvian band that seems to be at every major stop. And whatever happened to that crazy guy who used to sing and play the washtub bass?, Strenski wondered , taking note of Martha who again leered at him with untrusting eyes. She pulled at her blouse’s ruffles, making certain that there was nothing exposed as Strenski again focused on the now static light fixture. And then, from the depths of discomforting silence, the train began to move as mysteriously as it had stopped, barreling out of the tunnel and landing at the next stop. God, are we still in Brooklyn?
Strenski let out a gentle sigh as the train pulled into the Pacific Street/Atlantic Avenue Station. The multiple doors of the subway car were simultaneously thrown open and out poured a bevy of passengers, each racing the other to be the first out, as if there was a prize given to the first fifty to emerge. Strenski watched the push and pull from the safety of his pole. People raced about the car, heading for the doors, a swollen horde seeking escape, only to be replaced by another thicket of humanity, charging in, seeking out any open seat or even a much sought-after door to lean on (these are especially good when reading a rather unwieldy book). Coming in from the rear of this new crowd, Strenski noticed a dignified older woman, almost certainly a European immigrant in her fashionably old world widow’s black. “Mama Celeste” carried one of those silver canes with the four little rubber feet at the bottom and moved slowly, in a dictated fashion into the center of the car and then veered off to one side towards the bench-like seat which lined the length of the vehicle’s wall. The passengers who’d claimed these seats had been alert all ride along, reading the newspaper or a book, chatting or gazing blankly at no one in particular, but now, without warning, each was immediately thrust into a deep, unshakeable sleep. Each of them, meekly peeking out of mostly-shut eyes, hoped that the next person would offer the elderly woman a seat. Strenski watched as they squirmed while trying to maintain the sedated act, inwardly cursing their own sense of guilt. Finally, a large man wearing a tool belt jumped up and surrendered his seat to her, just moments before she was to plunge the prongs of her cane into his booted foot. Strenski thought that it had all worked out well enough. Martha, still to his right, didn’t seem to agree as she watched the scene and huffed in annoyance, shaking her head from side to side. Strenski knew not to look directly at her, watching instead from the far corner of his eye. By this time Bob and Carol had gone off to a romantic getaway and Kim Jong was last seen running off for the number 5 Train, heading for points east. Langston held ground, as did the tremors of the Rap that leaked out of his headphones.
Packed anew, the train groaned and forced its way through a series of intricate tunnels. Emerging finally into the bright daylight illuminating the Brooklyn Bridge, it touched the face of Manhattan before plummeting again into the clockwork web far beneath the City.
