What Does The "S" Stand For? Part 2: The Bernard Goetz Factor

I was on the east side and I was running for the S train. No, not running. I was moving fast, which would be considered running if I lived anywhere else. But I live in a city where everyone moves this way when you’ve got somewhere to be. It’s kind of like driving at a certain speed in spite of what the speed limit says, because that’s how fast traffic is going. When everyone around you is moving that way, you either pick up the pace or get run over. I’ve lived in New York City for so long that I know how to eat lunch, talk on my cell and move it with a quickness – in heels.

Everyone around me was going in the same direction at breakneck speed like some urban herd, with some band or some panhandling toothless freak or some guitar player’s incessant canoodling as the living soundtrack to the airtight nightmare i call “getting there.” When the music is full-tilt and I am surrounded by oblivious strangers, when my legs get to swinging underneath me like I’m a lifesized metronome and my eyes are wide with exhaustion behind my dark shades, when the flow and the crush of the herd makes my mind wander, that’s when I know I’m moving in stereo.

About a month or so ago, I was caught in one of these panoramic sensurround lapses that forces so much noise and confusion onto me that I didn’t really hear anything at all. On this particular day, I was thinking that if I moved from train (S) to train (2 or 3) to train (1), I would be home inside of 30 minutes. No waiting on the overcrowded platforms, no down time for casual interaction of any kind. Keep it moving – that’s the goal.

I hear them before I see them: three black girls, long and lean and somewhat lanky, one of them pushing a baby stroller, the other two lagging behind her, around her – falling behind, catching up, hanging on. Bobbing in and out of the herd in their own rhythm as though they were the only ones there. It’s a game they’re used to playing. They are laughing so loudly, it almost sounds as though they are screaming. Sweet-faced girls. Pretty. Probably teenagers. I don’t give them a second thought.

I head for the back of the train because at the next and last and only stop, it will be the front, which will crash-land me in a direct path to my next train line. Everyone is already sandwiched in every doorway I pass like sardines in a can. They look like obedient sheep being led to the slaughterhouse. I approach the last door and who do I see? Those three black girls. I step in next to one of them, I murmur an “excuse me” to her, she readjusts and then I wait for the door to close. Right as the doors are about to come together, this white woman runs up and jumps on. She was blonde and she was pale and she was dressed in black. It was a nice overcoat. She had heels on. Comfortable heels. She didn’t look nondescript, but she did look like she worked in an office. Immediately the black girl to my left started loud-talking and shoving into her with her arm and her shoulder, trying to get her off the train. “can’t you see there’s no room?” something like that. The black girl to my right immediately started to calm her down. And the black girl with the baby threatened imminent bodily harm if the child got hurt. That’s when the doors went all herky-jerky the way they do sometimes when the train is packed and someone’s belongings are keeping them from closing completely. It’s like they’re having an epileptic fit. To tell you the truth, it was almost as though the doors wanted her to get off the train, too. But she didn’t move. She didn’t say anything, either. She just held her ground physically and looked down. And then the doors closed, the girl stopped hitting her and the train began to move.

Everyone saw this girl hitting this woman and no one came to her defense. I was standing right next to her, and I said nothing. I figured she could handle herself as a city dweller. No. Scratch that. What I really figured was that it wasn’t any of my business. I figured that interfering in moments like these is what gets you beat up or badly injured or even killed. I figured that with a train filled with men, I shouldn’t have to say anything. Some gentleman would appear. Or a cop. Or something. Or maybe what I really figured is that it was over. But it wasn’t over. The black girl to my left said something like, this lady (she points at me) said excuse me but this one (she points at the blonde) said nothing, and she starts going off. She’s loud and young but she’s old enough to have already learned that it’s all in the delivery, so she’s smiling and sounding really light and affable as she’s saying all of this foul racist garbage, stuff like “if I was a certain kind of bitch, I would kick your ass,” and all this junk. Someone on the train said something. She goes, who said that? No one said anything. She kept going.

Honestly. It’s a two minute train ride with one stop in either direction and I’m telling you, it felt like I was on that thing for more than a half-hour.

The black girl to my left went on and on and on. She had a chip in her heart, she laughed. And then all of a sudden, we were there. It looked like it was over. Everyone wanted it to be over. The blonde turned around and faced the door so that as soon as she stepped out of the train, she’d be on her way. The doors opened and pow! It happened in an instant: The black girl to my left shoved the woman with all her might and made some declaratory statement about white people, with the black girl to my right begging her not to and the black girl with the baby carriage laughing; some guy over my shoulder said, “don’t do that to the lady”; and the blonde staggered, very nearly fell, recovered and kept going. Picked up the pace, moved fast and disappeared into the crowd. It all happened in a nanosecond. It was over just that fast.

I can’t stop thinking about the blonde, how frightened she was, how she never said anything the whole time. I keep wondering what I would have done -- if I would have hit that girl in the face and shoved her onto the tracks or kept it moving. i actually thought about Bernard Goetz. i know that statistically, i'm the one that's more likely to get physically assaulted or harassed or robbed, but i'm convinced that if stuff like that keeps happening, paranoia will turn this place into a city of Bernie Goetz' guns.

and they won't be the ones saying "what are you going to do, shoot us" either.

what does the "S" stand for?

The S train is a one stop midtown situation that runs from east to west and back again on four tracks. Everybody knows that there are other ways to get from point A to point B if you have to get across town and everybody knows that they aren’t as fast or nearly as efficient. That’s why everybody uses this train. And when i say everybody, i mean the unwashed masses, yearning to get to work on time.

If you’re smart, you hit the ground running. God help you if you need this train line and something goes awry, like there's less cars than usual or one track is out. It’s a messier stand-off than any other one. Then again, I can’t ever remember using it when it wasn’t as tightly packed as a clown car. There’s always this desperation involved that heightens the intensity of it all. I look around me as i'm headed towards the S and i feel like I’m running with the bulls in Pamplona because i'm surrounded by people who are moving as fast as i am -- so fast, in fact, that it seems as though none of us are really moving at all. The horde moves as one toward that one train door, a tidal wave of proletariats coming from every direction. The train is already full when we get there. And we get on anyway. That's what the S is like.

Lately, I've noticed that people are quick to mouth off on this line. It's trippy. I don't think that's ever a good idea in a city like this one because you don't know what people will say or do in retaliation. Maybe they'll ignore you. Maybe they'll snap a pistol in your face. (The last thing on earth that you would ever want to do is provoke someone, especially if they have a gun -- right?) Sometimes you don't have to do anything at all. Just standing on the platform is enough to get a complete stranger to attack you with a power saw. That's why i'm always in awe of people who will shoot their mouth off to a stranger. I honestly think it's some new kind of stupid.

The other day I’m on the east side headed west. i wanted to get into the very last car because it meant less people to weed through in my sprint for the next train I'd have to take to get home. That doesn't sound like much, I know -- but when you're in one of the busiest corners of the world, every little thing makes the commute easier. Of course, this meant running the length of the train, a skill in and of itself. The doors could always close before I get all the way to the end.
As I got to the last car, the doorway was a wall of people but i could see that there was room further into the car and evidently so could some Indian man directly behind me because we both began to ask people to move in. Surprisingly, they obliged. One of them didn’t move, and as the crowd shifting around him to accommodate us, he began to complain. As soon as I heard his voice, I knew that he was from the south. He talked like Boomhauer’s would-be cousin – not as fast but just as twangy. He must have been furious to talk at all – and why he directed his venom at me, I’ll never know. I guess as a black girl I must have seemed to be an easy target. Most Southerners I know don’t like to let their accents out of the bag up north. He looked Texas-German: stocky, with dark blonde features and blue eyes. Although he probably wasn’t, he looked severely middle aged. Like some crummy job that kept him well fed had totally worked him over, the wrong way.

He was all wound up and madder than a wet hen, letting me have it about how he waited for ten whole minutes until the train got there and he didn’t see why I should just walk up and get on the train, how supremely unfair it was. To tell you the truth, I was amused that he thought I was some Yankee.

We kept going tit for tat until i finally said, what do you want me to do. He said, i want you to get off the train, is what i want. I said, i can't get off the train, i'm already on it. So he went off on another tear and when he was finished, i said -- slowly, with feeling, in this really high pitched voice, like a little kid, all singsongy and soft -- i love you.

i know you're not going to believe this (because i didn't) but that totally shut him all the way up. of all the things i could have said, that's what got his goat? ha.

maybe when i said that he realized how stupid he sounded.