One of the more underrated things about an overrated city is the
subway system in New York. Yes, even writing a sentence about New York feels fatigued, but the subway is both the most New York thing about New York—insofar as it represents the city’s rushed and wedged commuters flailing about—and also a pretty jolting stimulant. Which is what New York is supposed to be, or at least attempts to be—I think.
There is nothing like battling the 6 train crowd at 7:15 on a weekday or a 2:00 AM Saturday morning L train heading to Canarsie as the pleading, concubine of last call. It’s an agoraphobe’s nightmare where the phrase “teeming humanity” seems like an understatement. The body odor alone at 6:23 PM on a Thursday will make anyone familiar with the aroma wrinkle their nose with remembrance.
Or the homeless person that’s been napping since they got on in Cony Island. Their plume of forgotten egg sandwiches can send many a hungover bruh bro straight to the train gap for a quick retch.
Then, there are the good nights. You’re heading home after a particularly numbing day of computer things and phone calls and 20 minute meetings that make your skin scratchy, and you catch the eye of someone on the train just as a piece of music from your headphones crashes into your ears as you smile at this enchanting stranger haloed by the tune.
Or you’re going somewhere: a party in the UWS domicile of a kid you knew from high school, and you’re 20 minutes removed from drinking and snorting some molly. So your head lolls at an angle and a sly smile creeps out from behind the city transit mask and your body is charged by the people out; really out for a night of drinking, smoking, dancing, chattering, flirting, fucking, tooting, puking and grasping at the idea of New York we read about before we move here.
There’s a song on your iPod or iPhone that can sway with the clattering train and your ears pop under the East River as you briefly think about all the corpses that have been dumped directly above you; you wonder at the engineering marvel of the train tunnel where workers were able to pour enough concrete to stem the pressure crashing all around them—and now you.
The same pressure of New York, the New York of no jobs, and passive occupations and active incarcerations. The pressure to simply keep that roof above your head. Unyielding and clautraphobic, the pressure is ubiquitous with the city and the trains. Most can’t handle that pressure without a few tips of the bourbon, or toots of the yey or tokes from the battie.
We’re all drug users in New York City. Just look at the person next to you on the subway.
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