Julie said:
A roach once crawled out of my bag and into the briefcase of the man sitting next to me.
You reminded me of one of mine. I was sitting next to a musty old woman who was already grossing me out a bit. Then a baby cockroach poked its head out from out of the folds of her coat.
No need to overreact, I thought. After all, I'd lived in the city long enough that I didn't always look for a paper towel anymore if I saw a roach on my counter. Better to kill first and wash hands later.
And then a HUGE cockroach followed the smaller one, and I jumped across the car in one leap.
* * * * *
Back when the Canal Street station was still under seemingly endless construction, I would sometimes forget that to enter closer to Broadway when you wanted the 4/5/6 train meant an underground trek though what looked like a set from a post-apocalyptic sci-fi/horror movie. There was one long tile hallway you had to go up a couple of steps to get to, and as I got to the top of the steps, I saw a huge rat in the middle of the hallway.
For a second, I thought about it: should I just go back the way I came, exit the station, walk a couple of blocks and re-enter the station? I didn't want to pay the extra fare, so I continued along the hallway, hugging one wall and walking in as non-threatening but confident way as I could. To my horror and amusement, the rat did the exact same thing on the other wall. We were both scared. Finally, we passed each other and the rat took off like a shot. I looked behind me, the way I had come, and the rat hit the stairs going so fast that it launched itself off of them, almost hitting the opposite wall.
Man, I thought.
That would have sucked for any guy coming around the corner just then. Imagine turning a corner to see a terrified, airborne rat aimed at your face!
* * * * *
I think there was a guy with multiple neurofibromatosis (what the Elephant Man disease was once considered to be) on my train a couple days ago. He kept repeating, "If you see something, say something. If you see something, say something." Not as much disgusting as disturbing.
* * * * *
I saw a grown man, a huge guy who looked as if he did most of his workout routine in prison yards, punch a teenage girl in the face. She and her two friends were mercilessly mocking this guy. I don't know if he'd given them reason to—maybe he tried to pick them up or something—but they would not give it a rest. He was quiet, expressionless, though his friend told the girls to shut up. After taking it for a while, the guy just stood up and—WHAM!—punched her in the face.
The girls freaked, shouting at the guy and taking swings at him, while the friend got in the middle and tried to break it up. Some other guys and I headed up the car towards them. I was thinking,
Am I really going to have to try to restrain this behemoth? Couldn't the girls flee or something and make this easier? And why does this have to happen when I'm late to rehearsal? Fortunately, the guy fled at the next station, leaving the girls and the friend to explain it to the cops.
Those girls were fearless. Obnoxious, reckless, and possibly retarded, but fearless.
* * * * *
To be fair, I have never seen anyone shit on the subway in NY, but I have in Paris. A homeless woman, who then had to run before a couple of homeless men beat her up.
And I'm pretty sure the only time I've seen someone masturbate on a train was in Tokyo. (Once, a friend and I had to stop an old man from molesting a school girl on a crowded train coming into Tokyo from the suburbs.)
Just in case you thought New York was alone in its squalor.
uke: