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Copping Out
(Yes, still.)
Think you had a bad day? At least you’re not the subway steps at Union Square.
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Dissonance
A guy with long hair enters the subway car and begins to tell us his story (in many more words than I am going to repeat here): I’m 67, sorry to say it, unemployed, need money, and it’s hard in the summer.
He’s the long-winded type who tries to wield his speech as a laparoscope to the heart. And he knows that with each unnecessary word, he’s making some of us increasingly uncomfortable, hopefully (for him) to the point of opening our wallets.
However, most of us never give money on the train, so it’s a losing battle. For fear of safety, questionable authenticity, and just because you can’t do it every time, I don’t. But it still wrinkles my stomach into a big ball of guilt. I’m sad for these people, even if they’re not genuinely in need.
Now there’s this guy across from me, we’ll call him Smug, listening thoughtfully and smiling, as if he’s the only one in the universe who knows the secret to curing humanity’s ills.
He digs in his backpack and removes $3 from his wallet, and puts the money in the guy’s cup, making sure all three bills are visible to everyone. The guy responds with a hearty God Bless You, Thank You, Have a Great Evening, giving the rest of us time to contribute.
And then Smug looks around waiting for same. And when the guy passes, no one else having opened their wallets, Smug starts in about the mortgage crisis. “The predatory whims of the people who knowingly sold bad deals to people all over the country…”
He focused in on the woman next to me, who was busying herself in her bag, trying not to be noticed, asking, “Can you believe how mortgage brokers sold a raw deal to America?” He went on and on about how thousands are going to lose their jobs, while the people responsible won’t be touched, and the rest of us go on living.
She barely looked his way, clearly uncomfortable, and yessed him until he exited, thankfully only one stop later. Then she turned to me, exasperated, “Because I don’t watch C-Span, right?”
I don’t really see what C-Span specifically has to do with it, but I get it, sister! Let’s say we READ, though, okay?
Evidently, she understood that the Smug was subtly targeting many of his comments at my Crate&Barrel bag, because she was feeling guilty and confided that she was headed to Paragon for a new tennis racquet.
And why should she feel guilty because this self-satisfied ass decided to conflate the issues and make this homeless guy (who I’ve seen and heard at least a dozen times*) the representative of the mortgage crisis?
Yes, we go on living. (Would he prefer we all die?) Yes, it’s unfortunate. Yes, as I said above and a million times before, I feel immensely sad when I see someone in a bad situation.
But this is part of the dissonance that comes with living in this city. People eat ramen every night, while upper Fifth is taken care of by personal chefs. People sleep on the street while those ramen-eaters snuggle into bed. And people beg for money while I hold a Crate&Barrel bag full of towels.
It may be sad, but it’s how the city works. And idiots like Smug, who choose to conflate the issues are only making it worse.
*This guy’s age keeps changing. The first time I saw him, he was 63, then 69, now 67. Is there a perfect age at which people will give you more money? Good for him for doing the research.
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Observations
My morning started on a high note, when I noticed an older gentleman across the way glancing furtively around the train. He proceeded to pull a large ziploc full of greens from his well-stuffed messenger bag. And I couldn’t pull my eyes away from him as he began to shake some of the crispy, broken leaves out onto a small white paper. His hair was disheveled, his clothes all black, and his eyes droopy, but until I saw it happen, I never would have pegged him for a 9:08 a.m. stoner. Especially not a 9:08 a.m. public stoner. All rolled and ready, he exited at 49th Street.
Then, after my appointment with the doctor, whose office is all the way up at 90th, I made a stop at my old Duane Reade (for a Soyjoy, which can’t really be called food) and then headed back to the train, where I got lucky. One was rolling up just as I pushed through the turnstile. Just like glamour parking, I thought. But when I chose a car that looked mostly empty, what I found instead was a bunch of short people (children, but worse: day camp children) filling the seats with their bodies and the air with their noise. I was surrounded, in a sea of high-pitched squealers, and hopped off at the next stop to a less air-conditioned, but quieter car.
And it was there where I overheard an extremely loquacious person talking about “kids today” and “school” and “going to the movies too much”. It took me a minute to identify the familiarity of the voice, but here it is: what Bill Cosby would sound like if he impersonated himself. But when I looked up, I found the voice coming from a curious source: a woman… who, unfortunately for her, kind of looked like Bill, too.
Now who’s up for Jello?
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Enforcement
Between the regular warnings that your personal property is no longer personal when you ride with the MTA, and the weekly police “drills” to get us used to seeing thirty or more police cars swarm to locations throughout the city, things are feeling much more 1984 around here.
Last night, I heard a cop scream from his loudspeaker, “PULL OVER THE CAR. … TAKE THE KEYS OUT OF THE IGNITION AND PUT THEM ON THE HOOD… NOW!”
Since when is it standard operating procedure to demand the keys placed on the hood?
I was too preoccupied watching and listening to get a good shot of the interaction, but it ended with …nothing. Not even a ticket for the cabbie. And unfortunately, since the cop stopped talking through his loudspeaker, I don’t know the details.
Sometimes it feels like they just stop people because they can. And needless to say, I don’t like that.
Last Saturday, I was coming home tired from a visit to my mother (on Staten Island). And as anyone who has to ride the ferry somewhat regularly knows, by the end of a long day, after sitting with idiots on the boat, then finding a subway closure and a longer walk than expected, you just want to get home.
So as I was schlepping three bags at a fairly good clip through the underground paths at Union Square, I was surprised to hear a police officer shout after me, “Ma’m.” Again, “…Ma’m.” And finally, with gusto, “……Ma’m!”
It seemed that he was expecting me to stop, especially since just a moment before I’d seen another three women stopped for a bag check. But this was not how my night was going to end. I’m not voluntarily turning around so this jackass can make sure I’m “safe”. It was on him to stop me, and he’d have to make a real issue of it to catch up.
So I kept on walking.
And since, in some ways, I’m still a good little sheep, I thought I should do something to make me look as innocent as I really am. So I took out the gum I’d been chewing and deposited it neatly into the garbage as I passed it, still not stopping.
There, asshole. I’m a good, non-littering citizen. But you’re NOT going to touch my bag.
