First, and apology from the mezzanine. These last couple of weeks have made me take a back seat to my writing ( A seat might I add that was gotten through student rush!!!) and I want to let all seven of you know that I am back. With the holidays fast approaching and Black Friday....or as I call it "Reasons to be Pretty" Friday....PRETTY FREAKING OUT OF YOUR MIND.....ok so maybe I do dress up a little when working retail on black friday....shut up you in the corner. There is a reason you aren't seating with the rest of us.
Anyways, I've developed a complex. And not like one of those LIfetime movie complexes that Dame Elizabeth Berkley develops where she becomes a high class prostitute to feed her family because she just "CARES SO MUCH", but end up feeling worse about her self because of the demoralizing nature of her new found whoredom and can't figure out how to "get out of this rut!"....not that I've gone into great analyzation about the affects this movie has had on 40 something women trying to find purpose in this messed up crazy world of ours.....because I haven't....nope.....haven't even seen "Black WIdow"....ummm....I mean some rando movie where her whorish ways drive her to kill men...DAMMIT.
Back on track (I apologize for the pun). I have a complex, and it has been created by the 1 train. As any current and informed resident of NYC knows, the 1 has seen better days. In fact, on a frequent basis, the train just misses whole groups of stops for....well...who really knows why. They say work is being done, but every time I've had to crawl at snails pace through Columbus Circle, all I see are groups of men eating sandwiches. Kind of wish I had that job. I could be a really good Underground Sandwich Eating Director. If you paid close attention, the acronym for that is USED.....perhaps the humor is lost on you CORNER BOY!!!!
It all started about three weeks ago. Up until this point, I had been taking the NQR down to 42nd street and taking the one from there. This may seem extra lazy because I could easily be walking from the 57th street stop to my final destination on the upper westside, but as a Capitalist American I thought it was my rightful duty to be as lazy as possible. So I'm on my normal route, laughing as I walk by the troll people who live in the 42nd street station with their hordes of troll children, when I noticed something out of place. Even for 7:30 in the morning, the platform was exceptionally busy. People seemed extra sweaty as well, but I figured some biochemical virus had been released and they were slowly becoming zombies....you know....the logical reason.
Ten minutes go by. No train. I'm starting to slowly shit myself (THINK ABOUT IT...) because if this train doesn't come soon ima be late bitches!!! Finally, with what seemed like enough to to run out of the train and still glare at the hotdog vendor outside of the store who takes showers in our public sinks......the train came. Oh but it wasn't the 1, at least, it said it was a 1 but it randomly decided to run on the express track. I say express lightly because what happened next was both offensive and degrading. From 42nd street to 72nd took us 45 MINUTES!!! We were literally stopped at one point in between stations just waiting for whichever working was eating their egg sandwich to flip a switch so that we could continue. To top it off, there was a smelly smelly homeless man napping during the trip. He must have felt like a pig in shit...for a plethora of reasons.
So I haven't taken the 1 since then. It has been about three weeks now and I have to say it's getting easier every day. There are some days that I feel like biting the bullet and just going to the one, but then I check the status of the train on MTA's website and it's flashing red with the words STRUGGLESTAIN CITY on it. Every day it gets easier.
This had made me realize though that these trains, which don't directly affect any single person, greatly determine how that single person travels (not to say that said single person is seeing someone and isn't open for going on a night about town...or anything...). Over the last five years....don't even give me that musical theater glare because it is not a reference but actual FACT!!!...I have learned to rely heavily on public transportation. I will admit that the NYC system is by and large better than the jurassic failure that was the Boston metro system, but it still pains me that my life can abruptly change based on the whim of a giant speeding metal box.
The whole idea of sardining ourselves into a confined space, being forced underground to do so, only to come up from the bowels and push through the garbage of people that are going in reverse seems a little demeaning to me. We can't walk the streets because master might see us and take away our eating privileges for the day. To top it all off, we have to pay a monthly fee to be uncomfortable and listen to loud salsa music in the morning because there is a fucking band of "heterosexual" men playing guitar and shaking their surprisingly boring asses in our faces.
Chicago has an elevated train. Maybe that's why everyone is so much happier over there. Or maybe it's residual hallucinations from Cillian Murphey's poisonous gas during "Batman Begins" filming.
I love America.
LOVE AND STRUGGS
B DANN
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