Late Night Thinkin' on the Q Train

Why do I like the subway so much? Nobody else seems to like the subway. Is it weird to like the subway?

Even at midnight I love being on the train. The gentle rocking motion, the ka-chunk! of the bumps, the screechy screechy of the wheels. I love watching the dingy tunnel walls go by, and especially passing other trains--I love how passing other trains looks like you're watching an 8mm time lapse film. I love riding the B train in certain spots when there's an F or V on the adjacent track, and suddenly the B dips down underneath....it looks like the F/V is climbing a mountain. I love how, after the last Manhattan stop, the black bricks and pillars suddenly give way to what used to be tenements on the Lower East Side. In hardly any time at all the buildings sink and pivot in view, and I can see red Chinese characters stacked on yellow squares...I imagine they say something like "No Vacancy." Lit up floors of cubicles and computers wink and blink in the night, then woosh! They're behind us and then we are soaring over the East River....soaring! It's a little cathartic for me.

Maybe it's the river thing... When I used to ride the ferry in New Orleans I fell in love with the Mississippi chugging away underneath my feet, splashing flecks of slippery silt (mud from Minneapolis or St. Louis? Memphis mud?) onto my waitress shoes.

It's the platform that bothers me. I don't like standing around with all those creeps and feeling like I can't escape without jumping and risking a third rail zap. They hover, those creeps. Tonight at the Union Square station there were some gutterpunk kids, complete with dingy dog and two flea-ridden pet store rats (so gross). They were pretty wrapped up in conversation with some thug wannabes, who were totally perplexed by the grimy gutterpunk style. Otherwise I would have been a little nervous, since one of the gaunt, slimy-dreadlocked guys kept eyeing my bag. As annoying as the gutterpunks are, it's not so much the homeless that get me, it's people who are drunk or mentally ill, or some combination of the two. They hover unpridictably. In my head I often play out a scenario in which a drunk accidentally bumps into me a little too hard and I fall onto the tracks. It's not the train that worries me; it's the idea of touching the grimy innards of the City mixed with trash and bugs and rodents.

This might sound weird, since I think it's gross to have pet rats, but I love watching the rats go. I keep imagining their lives like Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Like they have this whole society underneath New York that is holding the fabric of the world together or something... Goodness knows, it's very apparent to me that they're smart enough. I always catch them making and carrying out plans and using tools and helping each other with little projects. It's very fascinating.

And where was I coming from so late on a school night? Well, if you must know, I had just slipped away from the Producer's apartment. We went to see No Country for Old Men, which was...wow, weird. It's practically a crime that I haven't seen this movie yet, being such a big fan of the Coen Brothers, and for that same reason I feel a little put off that I just don't get it. Not yet, anyway. I'm sure the third or fourth time I see it it will all make sense.

The Producer didn't have any new profound insights for me tonight. Instead he was just his pleasant and sweet self...maybe a little too salacious, but it sure is flattering. He's a doll really, but--and this is kind of typical of guys (even when I was practically married) and it bothers me to no end--he seems to be so caught up with flirting and being suggestive that I'm having trouble accessing who he is. And since my attraction to men is far more cerebral than it is physical, well...I'm not sure if it's gelling. But it sure is flattering.

Now if he stepped on my shoe and pulled my hair...