What happened yesterday?

it was my turn to stay late. i hadn't eaten any lunch. i knew they'd buy dinner if i stayed after 7pm and it was already well after 5:30pm so i wasn't going to sweat it. sushi, i remember thinking. we should order from yama. i've had their salmon sashimi and it was really quite good. everyone was drifting into evening work mode. all quiet on the midtown east side front.

suddenly, there was a beep and then one of those distorted, abrubt, way too loud what-in-the-world-did-he-just-say announcements by the building management to stay inside. and then someone said excitedly, look out the window. and there was a horde of people out in the middle of the street, moving uptown en masse like well-dressed bison, on lexington avenue. some people were just standing there. some people were moving fast. there were businessmen in filthy expensive suits directing emergency vehicles through the confusion. women in office-to-evening outfits were kicking off their high heels and -- not running -- sprinting. there was fear in the street. you could feel it.

everyone had their cellphones out. everyone was taking pictures. everyone was making little movies.

except me, of course. i didn't charge my photo/video capable palm last night so my battery was dead. no matter. no one else could use their cell phones, either. someone was crying softly at the other end of the hall. i heard this white girl copywriter speak up like a sister and say, loud: i'm not going to die for this job! that's when i remembered: didn't they tell everyone that they could go back into the second tower on 9/11? i thought, who says we're safe in here? what do they know?

why were there people just standing there in the middle of the street?


(this was in front of the public library on fifth -- a few avenue blocks away, but still...!)


pandemonium everywhere. crazy. everyone was looking down lexington avenue at something that we couldn't see because we were looking onto the street. even the people who were running were looking over their shoulders in a freak-out panic, the way they do in horror movies, to see if the monster was gaining on them. wrong angle, to be sure -- but we caught all their reactions. and some people got really scared. i don't think i was scared. but it did freak me out.

stephen stood next to me and blurted, "it looks like invasion of the body snatchers!"

everyone jumped on the internet for information. someone scrambled to make their transistor radio work. i was glad that i had flat shoes on, so i could walk the 100 or so blocks to my place in west harlem. at least i didn't live in new jersey or long island. i'd need a boat to take me home.

all of a sudden, it felt like 9/11 all over again. it certainly looked like it.

it was a transistor explosion at lexington and 43rd. it spewed fire, asphalt, bricks, raw sewage, water and filth so high into the air, and it just kept going and going, the smoke kept rolling, the brown murky water flowing down the street, the asbestos filling the air like yankee smog, the billowing, rolling, stench. and everyone in the street, standing there, taking pictures and making movies.



i didn't stick around for act two. my coworker (the one who said she wasn't going to die for her job) and i walked west, then all the way up past lincoln center to fairway, where we got some comfort food and took the bus home from riverside drive.

somewhere along the way, i asked her if she'd ever been on a farm and she said yes. i said, you know how if you don't drive farm animals into the barn, they won't go -- even if it's raining hard? they'll just stand there in the muck and get soaked. that's what these people looked like. human cows, just standing there. she couldn't stop laughing at that one.

i couldn't laugh. i was wired, i was starving and i was way too relieved that i wasn't a cow.

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.