I stood on 125th street, listening the rumble above me as the train rolled into the ground. McDonalds smelled behind me. Cabs, like giant ants formed an army up Broadway. Crossing the street, the sun staring between train tracks, I hear a voice laced with the Grant Projects and affection.

“Yo, Ms. D!”

I knew her as my own immediately.

Gisele Henriquez-woman. She had the same sexy Harlem gait that I remember being alarmed about when she was my student (a girl her age with a body like that shouldn’t walk like that). Her face was unchanged: she was still beautiful; black opal eyes against the backdrop of alabaster skin, the slight curly patch that joined her eyebrows in the middle of her forehead, her long thick black hair alluding Taino heritage was in a ponytail, exposing her small ears which hung “banji girl” gold doorknocker earrings.

She ambled toward me, glowing and very pregnant and kissed me hard on the cheek.

She had house keys and Chico Stix in her hand, and as her face re-emerged from the nape of my neck I watched her seductive lips exclaim some statement of happiness adorned with expletives. This is how Harlem girls address each other, in affection, in nostalgia. In profanity. The train gargled uptown on top of us and I grabbed the Chico Stix from out her hand. I couldn’t stop smiling. When the 1 ran past she repeated herself.

“Mira, Oh my God, how you doin? Oh fuck!!! Ms. D”!!!!

I grabbed her hand and crossed Old Broadway, the small inlet that gave itself over to Grant projects and grand tenements, that housed so many of my students. We walked towards the sunshine, away from our train, next to the bodega that sells loosie cigarettes to all the hard faced man-children that plant themselves on the corners under the train when they should be in social studies class. I stopped and opened up the Chico Stix, bit down, and took my beloved student in, fully.

She started talking slowly, holding my arm, she complained about her feet being swollen, I told her how beautiful her hair looked-it really did. We walked towards the diner before the firehouse, where cars park at an angle when the cops are busy stuffing themselves with Dunkin Donuts.

-The diner, where all the waiters speak Spanish, the corner where the Citerella just didn’t quite take.

I walked with her and listened to her tell me about her life, and him.

I know this beauty. I know this woman from her 15th year as an angry and sarcastic and beautiful hold over- an overage school kid- a hot mouthed, neck swinging thing with a chip on her shoulder and signature Dr. Jay jeans that were way too tight. I liked her immediately.

And she liked me too, Thank God. I never got cursed at or fought like so many other of my District 5 colleagues, and plus, she loved my music class. She had a beautiful voice- clean, chimy, but nasal, like a true Latina. She joined chorus, and my Saturday morning community service outreach, and got into a pretty good high school, thanks to two recommendations from the principal and guidance counselor that I almost had to sell my soul to get.

She was on her way, I thought. She was fixed. She was going to break the cycle of degradation and miseducation that has plagued far too many young women of color in Harlem or any ghetto in the USA for so long. She was the story I told to skeptics and naysayers who wanted to scrap NYC’s public education system completely.

Gisele went to A Philip Randolph High School, next to City College. She also won a scholarship to Harlem School of the Arts (HSA). She was a vocal major, excelling in her studies. She enjoyed high school, remarked how much easier it was that middle school, both socially and academically.

“There were girls there my age. None of these little bitches who gave me shit looks cuz they was jealous.”

She loved voice class very much, and was even crazy about music theory and appreciation class. She was asked to tutor students in the learning annex because of her prior community service experience. The end of freshman year found her on the Dean’s List. There was talk about putting her in accelerated college prep classes.

We sat down in the diner, she remarked about “Precious” being filmed there- I laughed when I remembered the bucket of chicken scene.

“Word,” I smiled bigger, and ordered some coffee to compliment her san cocho.
I asked her if her mother is still at 26 Old Broadway, where she was living in junior high school. She nods, and smiles.

“Yo, you remember when you showed us “Fame” the last week of school in 8th grade? I loved that movie, yo. “

“I remember, Ms. Thing.” I sipped my coffee slowly, watching her square-cut French manicured nails wrap themselves around the soup spoon.

“We was in vocal class last year tryna harmonize Body Electric n’ I thought of you. I sounded mad good too,” she smiled, and finished her compliment with a lip smack that would make all of West Harlem proud.

Then, She told me about Peter. She describes the first time he kissed her like she’s reading script from a novella, her street-Spanglish cascading out over tumescent lips.

“I fell in love with him the night he gave me this,” she points to necklace she wears, with a medallion, of Saint Peter, patron Saint of what, she isn’t sure. It was enough that he entrusted this necklace to her. From that moment, she entrusted her heart to him.

I asked her when she realized she was pregnant.

“I know from that day he would be the father of my children. We NEVER used anything, Ms. D, we just knew it was right.”

Peter subsequently dropped out of school, and has a job now at the new Costco that opened up in East Harlem. Gisele still lives with her mom and younger siblings in that house on Old Broadway and plans to attend Missions School, for pregnant teens. She says she still sings, and wants to name her baby, India, after her favorite Salsa singer.

“Its gonna be ok, Ms. D, you’ll see.”

I smiled again and looked away, not wanting her to notice the worry in my face. I stared out the window and I watched the baby banji girls on the corner headed towards the Old Navy and the braid spot, licking innocently on the deliciouso the Mexican woman pushes on the corner (“$1 mix coco/cherry”!). I eye them closely, like I did Gisele, and wonder if they really know what they’re doing, licking the ice like that, pretty sugar stained lips adorned beautiful ethnic faces full of attitude.

She reached across the table and touched my hand.

“He loves me.” She said it, I realized that after all these streets had thrown at her, after all the clawing over broken glass and racing under booming train tracks and fighting for a meager public school education has done to this girl, that was all she really wanted.

I told her I was happy for her.

Her phone rang, her face lit up, and she told me she had to go. She waddled up, saying her goodbyes way too loud for the small corner diner. She kissed me goodbye and left me with my coffee.

I sat for a minute, stared out the window, and watched this beautiful woman-child venture down a coolly-lit Harlem side street that seemed to me as precarious as her future.

Breeanne Elizabeth Daniels is a native New Yorker. She is taught middle school in New York City for 11 years and community college for 3. She is currently pursuing her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the City College of New York.

I hate to drive, so I've never minded the subway. Usually I hold my book or magazine and pretend to read, but in reality I  just be staring into space. My mother, who is from Queens, would always admonish me, “Don’t look at people on the subway! No eye contact,” she always said was the rule.

When I was younger, and New York was new to me, I couldn’t understand how anyone could help herself. People are so interesting here! I would look at old people, young people, people wearing business suits, people carrying bags filled with bags. I'd wonder; how could I not stare?

It was a Thursday afternoon, around 1 P.M., when the man exposed himself to me on the subway platform.

The subway car was oddly empty that day. I was taking the R train from the East Village where I lived to midtown for an appointment at a law firm there. It was a peaceful commute, a non rush-hour ride. I could be assured of an empty seat where I could space out without guilt – pregnant women, elderly people, and the mildly disabled all cause me anxiety on a crowded train. I am always worried about taking someone's deserved seat or causing a person discomfort. When it's crowded, I keep my legs crossed tightly and hold my magazine close to my chest. But when the subway car is empty, it feels luxurious.

The R train was running smoothly and at each stop the doors opened and closed quickly because there were so few people on the platform. At the 34th street stop, normally a busy one, the subway doors opened and that’s when the man dropped his trousers.

I was sitting directly opposite the open door, like I was the sole audience member for some grotesque show. He was wearing a dirty t-shirt and khakis, which were around his knees, as he fondled his penis.

The subway seemed to pause then, waiting interminably in the station. He looked right at me, right into my eyes, and smiled, an awful grim smile. His flaccid penis flopped while he masturbated, and his face leered at me, smug in the knowledge that I was looking at him.

His hand worked a little harder, a little faster. I felt trapped, staring through a weird window into someone’s unpleasant inner life. His  penis continued to flop stubbornly. I had the urge to laugh. It wouldn’t rise to the occasion.

The man didn’t move toward me, but he didn’t back away from the edge of the platform. He was standing in the yellow area designated as a no-standing zone. I'm afraid of the edge of the platform myself and avoid it at all costs. Standing too close, the subway tracks feel as though they draw me in. I wondered, should I tell him to back away from the platform edge? ... Should I scream?

He still couldn’t get hard.

The doors mercifully closed, and the train pulled out the station. I hadn’t moved. I don’t even think I had blinked. When I got to my stop, I was having trouble not crying, but I didn’t know why I felt so awful.

“Nothing bad has happened to you,” I told myself sternly. “No one hurt you. No one touched you. It’s nothing, nothing. Just some flasher in the station.”

I could hear my mother telling me, “Keep your head down. Hold onto your purse.” She didn’t want me to be a target.

I could never keep my eyes off of the extraordinary. And now I could still see his eyes looking at me and knowing that I saw him.

Jessica Pishko is currently pursuing an MFA in fiction at Columbia University and received a JD from Harvard Law School. She used to work in a law firm and is now writing a novel about it. Her short fiction can be found on elimae and Anderbo.com.

Judging by the number of people milling around on the platform, I could tell I hadn’t just missed one. I picked a spot towards the end where the back of the train would be if it ever arrived, careful not to stand under any of the mysterious fluids that dripped from the ancient overhead structures. I couldn’t imagine what I would do if I ever got nailed by a drip. I imagined it burning an immediate hole through my skin forcing me to be rushed to Methodist—something I did not want to experience.

I was trying to be patient and not stare into the tunnel willing the headlights of the oncoming train to appear. I was attempting to be all Zen-like but always found it hard to fight the impulse. Just then I heard a woman’s voice resonating off the underground structures, “Don’t cry for me Argentina…” I turned around to face the direction I thought the full-bodied tones were coming from. But the singing had stopped and I didn’t notice any divas in sequins and chiffon, standing around waiting to catch their breath, preparing for the next stanza.

As I turned back around, it came again. “The truth is I NEVER left you.” The voice was getting louder; the mystery singer was really belting it out, evidently caught up in the echo quality that was more than a few notches up from a normal singing in the shower experience.

Only now I thought I figured out whom the show tunes vocalist was. The strong, falsetto soprano was actually a slightly overweight, balding man with glasses carrying an unmarked shopping bag. He was neatly dressed; the kind of average guy that would go unnoticed had he not been singing at the top of his lungs in a high, extremely loud voice, that wasn’t too bad.

He stopped after each line, like he was savoring the reverberations of each sound. He didn’t want to rush through it. And while I could appreciate this desire to sing, given the acoustics provided by the underground tunnel, even in a voice atypical of one associated with a male, he had crossed some sort of line. He had entered into that area reserved for the not quite right. Those who should know better but can’t seem to help themselves. I knew I was being judgmental but we couldn’t all just go around doing whatever we felt the urge to do. I mean, I’d like to belt out “ROXanne,” or something similar, but I don’t because, well, I just don’t.

The train pulled into the station and as I boarded I glanced down the platform to see if the diva was headed my way. I was secretly happy to see that he was. I stood by the door, where I would be exiting at the next stop, Seventh Ave. He took a seat next to a man who appeared to be Pakistani. He said something to the Pakistani man that made him smile and nod in agreement. I watched, riveted, thinking, about how the world works--how one can never tell when they are talking to a man they think is “normal” or one who dreams of being Patti Lupone.

As he sat there with a wry smile on his face, I heard his falsetto softly starting to emerge. Was he using all his wits to keep from singing or was he just warming up? The train pulled into my stop and as the doors opened and I stepped off, I heard, “Don’t cry for me Argentinaaaaaaaa.”

Fran Giuffre is a freelance writer from Prospect Heights, Brooklyn whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsday and this web site. She is currently teaching elementary education in Brownsville.

When she achieved whatever she’d wanted to achieve, she put the Twinkies in the other bag. She remained motionless for a while. Then, as if she had just remembered something, she opened the first bag again and took out another pack of Twinkies. She rubbed it fervently; then she mumbled something and tossed it in the other bag. She relaxed for a moment, and I relaxed too. Not for long. A third pack of Twinkies was to follow, then a fourth, and after that I stopped counting. When all the Twinkies had been successfully transferred to the second bag, the process was reversed, and it became clear that there was going to be no end to this.

The thought of changing cars did cross my mind, but whenever the train reached the next stop I remained seated. None of the other passengers seemed to mind the rattling cellophane noise. They continued looking straight ahead, at nothing in particular, at anything but the crazy person. So I did the same, following their example, and I was fine with the arrangement until she yelled, “Miss!” and pointed at me.

In those first two weeks in New York I had already come across a surprising number of crazy people, and I’d come to accept them as part of the New York experience—much like the mice in my apartment. They were usually homeless, with the exception of the ones who actually lived in my building. Their madness was of the obvious and not dangerous kind and they mostly kept to themselves, though I couldn’t help but find some of them disturbing—like the old lady who occupied the apartment below mine and would yell profanities at someone in the middle of the night.

I told myself it would just take some getting used to. The places I’d spent time in before—the little town of Princeton, the larger town of Boston, the big cities of London and Athens—did not have that many crazy people, or if they did, they hid them and hid them well. But New York seemed to breed them.

“Miss!” the woman with the Twinkies repeated, and I could feel the discreetly curious eyes of everyone in the car were now on me.

“I think she’s talking to you,” whispered the girl next to me.

“Oh,” I said, and looked at the woman.

“Hold this for me,” she said, lifting one of the two Twinkie bags, in a way that deprived me of the right to refuse her. I looked at the bag but did not move, as if the woman had spoken to me in a language I did not understand. There was something off about what was happening, something extraordinary, so extraordinary in fact, that my mind could not immediately process it.

The mad can coexist with the sane as long as they don’t interact with them. That was the deal. But she had broken that rule and was now asking me to hold the Twinkie bag and I did not know what was right and what was wrong anymore. I was aware of the others around us, watching us, and wondered what they’d think if I did not help her. Would it be rude? Inconsiderate? There was no other obvious reason for not holding the bag for her, other than my prejudice. And then I became aware of the seconds passing, of my not moving, of the bag dangling under the woman’s fingers, waiting for me. So I reached out and grabbed it. Its handles felt greasy under my fingers—Twinkie residue, I told myself.

The train reached a stop and the girl who was sitting next to me jumped out of her seat and out of the car. I thought about doing the same. The Twinkie woman had been trying to reach a plastic bag that was under her seat and contained some thick, liquid substance of questionable nature.

“I’ll just tell her it’s my stop,” I thought, “the moment she rises back up,” but the doors closed and we were on our way again. Her chubby fingers danced only inches away from where the bag lay, but after one last stretch, she gave up.

“You get that bag for me,” she said.

I looked around me and the other passengers immediately looked away.

“Well I can’t get to it!” she said, aggravated. “You have to help me.”

I wanted to cry. By agreeing to hold the bag for her, I had agreed to so much more.

“You have to help me!” she yelled. I panicked. I kneeled before her and I reached between her legs, which she had kindly parted for me.

“Pardon me,” I said.

The air around her had absorbed her smell. It was an old-lady smell but there was something funky about it, something sour. I pinched the bag and raised it to her face.

“Here you go.”

But she didn’t take it. She opened it and looked inside, and as she did, a foul smell rose out of it.

“No, this won’t do,” she said.

She looked lost for a moment; then she took out a pack of Twinkies and started rubbing it.

I left the bag by her feet and returned to my seat. I would get off at the next stop. I’d be home soon.

My apartment in New York was smaller than what I was used to. Both in Boston and in Princeton I had had bigger places. It was still unfurnished, except a cheap red futon and a bulky TV set that rested on one of the empty moving boxes. I’d gotten rid of my queen-size bed when I moved, it was too big for the apartment; the futon was only a temporary solution. I’d sit on it and look at the space around me, imagined what would go where: a coffee table in the middle, maybe a floor lamp, a fat leather armchair by the window where I could read.
At work I spent hours browsing furniture store websites.

I was new at the job and didn’t have much else to do anyway, though I was beginning to suspect that that stagnation would be permanent. I worked as an associate editor at Bloomberg Press, which was a step up from the editorial assistant position I’d left at Princeton University Press, but I now had fewer responsibilities. Bloomberg Press was a very small part of the Bloomberg financial corporation and no one paid attention to our staff of ten. There were no books coming in and no books going out, but when I raised a question about it, I was instructed to keep my mouth shut.

IKEA, Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn—their websites were my new best friends. I’d dive into pictures of rugs and cushions, quilts and coverlets, match them to flowery bed skirts. I’d add things to my virtual shopping basket, save them for later, when I’d be settled.

On my way home I’d always stop for roast chicken. Spiced with rosemary and lemon, it was a simple meal, always warm, and I liked its smell—it reminded me of something, what, I wasn’t sure. I’d go home and sit on the red futon, the roast chicken on my lap, and turn on the TV. And so my first few months in New York passed.

From time to time I would receive a “Happy Hour” email from the younger people in the office. I went out with them once or twice for drinks. They asked me where I was from and how I’d ended up in New York and I gave them the short version. They pretended it was interesting though I knew it was not. I did not care to find out anything about them—they seemed nice, a bit boring, and I was not interested to get to know them better. I could not start over just yet. I had left my friends in Princeton, I had left my friends in Boston, I had left my friends in London, my friends in Athens before that. And I was going to leave New York, too, one day. When they invited me to go out with them again, I told them I was busy. After some time I’d open and read their emails but would never respond.

One day, in the ladies room, I heard the woman in the next stall crying. It was Dru, the copyeditor. She was in her mid-fifties, a stage actress turned copyeditor, who lived alone in an apartment in the East Village that was even smaller than mine.

“My shower is in my kitchen and my couch is also my bed,” she had told me. We had adjacent desks—the Bloomberg office was like a trading floor and we all sat next to each other in rows that looked like human row-crops, and, inevitably, we’d learn things about each other; also, Dru could talk.

She was sobbing and I thought about asking what was wrong—she had seen me walk in with her, so she must’ve known that I was there. I decided not to. I did not have the energy for someone else’s problems. I left the bathroom and when Dru returned to her seat, eyes swollen, nose runny, I pretended not to notice.

New Village Nails was a nail salon I went to every Saturday. I found it a few days after I’d moved into the neighborhood, and I soon realized it was one of the cheapest ones in the Village. Its last renovation had been done sometime in the early ‘90s and the turquoise pedicure chairs looked as tired as the women who worked there: Lucy, Fanny, Vivian, Betty, Rachel, Sharon, all from Tibet. After my first few visits they gave me my own supply box; it had my name printed on it—misspelled—and contained tools that they’d use only on my feet and no one else’s. I’d always pick “Package 2”: manicure, pedicure, 10-minute foot massage, 10-minute shoulder massage. Every Saturday afternoon I soaked my feet in hot water for an hour and a half, inhaling the rising steam—a medley of bath salts and cucumber cream.

“Would you like a magazine, Miss?” the Tibetan women would ask and I’d wave “No.” I’d watch them apply thick layers of red polish to my nails and toenails and it soothed me. Then I’d sit by the window under the green New Village Nails neon sign, bring my hands to the drier and watch all the Saturday people walk by in their coats and scarves.

One December night like all other nights, I was resting on my futon when the phone rang.

“Why don’t you come down this weekend?” my friend Lea asked.

I hadn’t been back to Princeton since I’d moved. It was still too soon I’d tell my friends, though it had been months.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

“Come, we all miss you! It will be so nice, we’ll build a fire, have some wine, it’ll be like you never left.”

“But I did leave.”

“What?”

“I can’t, I’m busy,” I said louder. I sounded guilty.

“You’re busy doing what?”

“I have to get my nails done.”

“Your nails.”

“Yes.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said and as I said it my eyes filled with tears. I thought of red nail polish, of bath salts and cucumber cream.

“Okay, I guess. Let me know if you change your mind.”
I returned to my red futon and lay on it like a dead fly and waited for something to happen—for someone else to call, for someone to knock at my door, but no one did.

“You have to help me!” the Twinkie-woman’s plea turned inside my head like a shark. It was not crazy people that New York was breeding, after all. It was loneliness.

Sophia Efthimiatou is originally from Athens, Greece, and now lives in New York City. She is currently pursuing an MFA degree in creative nonfiction at Columbia University, and working on a collection of humorous essays on the hidden persistence of loneliness in daily life.

On a recent Sunday the crowd pressed to the right of the stairs in a long drawn-out amorphous ring, from the midst of which emanated deafening music. Even the two Jehovah’s Witnesses stationed stiff as wax figures to the left of the stairs gave up God’s business for the moment and joined the onlookers, since nobody seemed to be interested in their message.

The object of everyone’s rapt attention remained a mystery to the chance passerby until suddenly the wall of humanity parted a crack, revealing a tiny figure mistakable at first sight for a little boy, but soon recognizable—on account of the powerful shoulders—as an adult dwarf. With a black hat set at a dapper tilt, dark sunglasses and a tight black sequined jacket, he moved gracefully and rhythmically backwards, in the soft stepping, faked forward motion of Michael Jackson’s trademark cakewalk, transforming the filthy, chewing-gum-flecked, floor into his stage.

"So beat it, just beat it!” the familiar androgynous voice blasted from a somewhat battered boombox, as the dwarf abruptly grabbed his private parts, and with shoulders flung back, obscenely heaving his hips, dry-humped the air before him. Some snickered, others cheered. “Don’t wanna be a boy, you wanna be a man. You wanna stay alive, better do what you can. So beat it, just beat it!” echoed the shrill command. Whereupon, after lowering the jacket slowly, provocatively, first from the left shoulder, then from the right, to demonstrate with rippling muscles the amazing strength of his arms, he started trembling suggestively, ever more unabashedly, first with the chest cage, next with the stomach muscles, and finally with his entire body, consumed by a carefully choreographed orgasm. Some spectators laughed out loud. Others turned red, covering their children’s eyes.

But they did the dancer an injustice. For his dance was at once a great tribute and an extraordinary send-up, in which he invested his entire tragic being and a remarkable comic talent altogether worthy of Aristophanes and Harpo Marx. –“Showin’ how funky strong is your fight, it doesn’t matter who’s wrong or right. Just beat it, beat it!”

The crowd fell silent as the song came to an end, and the dwarf took a slow bow, his hat pushed back, his glasses pressed down over his nose, his sadly noble, strikingly handsome Latin Mestizo face held up like a hidden treasure with the pride of a true artist and the desperation of an eternal outsider. For a split second his size was forgotten. In that instant he also revealed a striking resemblance to the fallen popstar. Coins and crumpled banknotes flew through the air. Every injured soul saw himself reflected in that face. And as the spectators scattered, the two Jehovah’s Witnesses surreptitiously slinking back into their corner, the dwarf deftly swept up his take, whereupon with hat, glasses and expression once again set aright, he bit his lower lip and prepared to be born again in the next dance.

A writer in multiple modes, including fiction (A Modern Way To Die), drama (The Tattooed Man Tells All and Burning Words) and translation (most recently, Selected Prose of Heinrich von Kleist), Peter Wortsman is the recipient of the Beard's Fund Short Story Award and The Geertje Potash-Suhr Prize of the Society for Contemporary American Literature in German, and was a Holtzbrinck Fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2010. Also a widely published travel writer, his texts have appeared in The Best Travel Writing 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011.
 

New York is now a blanket of white. These are days when I should probably stay in the house, drink spiked cider, watch Hitchcock movies, but this is my one day off from work and I’m restless. I phone a friend that bought me a dinner a few weeks back and tell her I’m craving sushi, my treat. She asks if I really want to come from Brooklyn into Manhattan on a night like this, but I say, yeah, no problem.

After getting on the subway at Smith and 9th the train makes it two stops to Bergen St. when the voice on the loud speakers which is hardly audible - we all know this voice, the one that, despite millions of dollars in MTA upgrades, still sounds like an eighty-year-old wino with his hands over his mouth yelling through a forty-year-old blow horn. Following this announcement there’s the questioning look and raised eyebrows of all the passengers looking to one another. "What the hell did he just say?" Before anyone has any time to think the doors close and the train continues on.

It turns out there's a power outtage in Manhattan, and now this train is staying in Brooklyn. It’s running on the G line. Suddenly I’m on the platform at Hoyt-Schemerhorn racing towards the map, looking for another route. I take the A-train, briefly whistle some Ellington, and sit in the same spot without moving for about twenty minutes. I’m beyond late at this point. My fellow passengers are starting to huff and puff and in the far corner of the car I can hear the moaning snores of a chalk-legged homeless man from underneath an oversized jacket. Then the wino’s back on the speakers. He seems to have hijacked our conductor.

“The F train is not running due to a tree falling on the tracks at Rockefeller Center.”

All right, I know there’s a snowstorm out there, but I’m trying to picture exactly how a tree has managed to plunge three or four stories through thick concrete. It’s baffling, but then again this is New York. Stranger things have happened. After much confusion, it turns out we’ve all mistaken tree for debris, and suddenly I feel a little more relieved.

Eventually the train proceeds to go one stop and somehow miraculously now the F train is running once again, slowly, but it's plodding along. I can't use my phone underground and an hour later I'm thinking maybe I should just get out and walk from 6th Ave. to 1st Ave. and everyone's a little frustrated and late for whatever engagements we have or pretend to have, and I shouldn’t be up in arms; it’s to be expected in this sort of weather, but their agitation and grumbling is contagious and I find myself cursing under my breath, muttering like an old woman, “This is just ri-diculous. I mean, really.”

We're racing down the mezzanine of the 14th Ave. station like a hoard of suburban soccer moms power-walking and then I get down the stairs and I hear music blasting and echoing against the walls down at the bottom platform. It sounds like a Motown group down there. I follow the music, thinking, wow, amongst this madness the Four-Tops are hanging out giving a little winter concert. But when I get to where the music is coming from all I see is a fat, chubby-faced, raggedly dressed older man sitting on a bench. He’s got his Yankee hat on sideways and has a huge p.a. speaker next to him and a little portable cd player on top of it. My Girl is blaring throughout the tunnel.

I've seen this type of thing before, the whole karaoke deal, or with the fella trying to sing a cappella on the train, but usually it’s just some guy that can't sing at all. The difference this time is that this guy's good, really good. He has a high soul voice, like Sam Cooke, smooth and soulful like Smokey Robinson, and he's singing along with The Temptations, but off the vocals, ad libbing in an Otis Redding gospel style. His lips are pursed to the side, smiling, shaking around, nodding his head with a little wink of the eye, doing a little shimmy shuffle, moving his hips and arms around. A big crowd is forming around him, transfixed.

Amongst us sits this Laughing Buddha, singing away, having a ball, feeling it. Even the rats along the tracks have stopped to watch. He gets to the last verse of the song in which The Temptations sing "I don't need your money..." but instead he throws in his own words, "That's not true, I need your money, ooh yeah!" In a matter of seconds this man and his music has managed to transform a crowd of frantic subway riders into one filled with beauty and love and laughter and everything that’s great in life, everything that’s magical about New York.

A guy who looks to be in his late twenties next to me takes off his earphones as tears fall from his eyes and down his cheeks.

A girl next to him says, "My god, you're crying,"

He smiles big and wide. "I don't know, it's really beautiful, isn’t it?"

She laughs and places her hand on his shoulder and agrees it truly is and I’m standing there, thinking how quick the human emotion can change, how trivial our idea of time is, but before I can form any deep, profound thoughts the L train comes along, "Next stop 3rd Ave.!"

So we leave our soul man all to himself, still singing his heart away, music blaring above the sounds of trains. The doors close and we're all shaking our heads and a woman with an accent miles away from New York says aloud to whoever's listening, "Gotta’ giv’ it to him. He sho’ do bring a smile to yo’ face." A minute later the laughter subsides, headphones back on, books and newspapers out, eyes close, and a strange, yet familiar silence fills the car.

I get out at 1st Ave., walk up the slushy stairs and now on the streets I’m greeted with the loud sounds of sirens and honking horns and taxi cabs and finally I get to the sushi restaurant over on 18th St. My friend's back at a booth completely complacent and sipping on some martini with a fancy name and some weird fruit inside of it that looks like a yellow slug, so of course, I order one too and then tell her, "I know I'm late, but I swear, I got a good story for you."

Seth Swaaley currently lives in Brooklyn. He writes a column for Razorcake magazine and more of his writing can be found at www.talesfromthetunnelny.blogspot.com.

“It is easy to speak Chinese. It is easy to speak to Chinese. It is easy to speak Chinese.”

He repeated this sentence over and over with such conviction even though he probably never spoke a word of Chinese in his life. Since I’m Taiwanese-American, my fellow passengers began to look at me as if they were expecting guidance on this subject. I felt enormous pressure to stand up and say, “As a matter of fact, folks, it is not easy to speak to Chinese. Although I was born in Pennsylvania, I’ve listened to my parents speak Mandarin at home, and I’m still not fluent. I can comprehend a lot of Mandarin, but my speaking is pretty rusty. ”

But I didn’t say anything. I just sat still, hoping like hell that this guy would quiet down. The man simply kept droning on without a break. I tried to drown out his gravelly voice by concentrating on my reading, but his words, “It is easy to speak Chinese. It is easy to speak Chinese…” bolted themselves into my brain like steel spikes. His relentless voice in my head was bludgeoning my own sanity into an oozing pulp.

Usually I try to stay impassive as possible on the subway and avoid all expression on my face. Thus, I was mortified when I felt an uncontrollable laughing fit erupting inside me. These were not mere giggles that I could suppress into dainty tehees. They were monstrous, gut-busting convulsions that roiled though me like an earthquake. With nowhere to escape, I locked my eyes on the printed page in front of me, and shuddered with agonized laughter.

People on the train thought my reading was the source of great amusement. Who knew Time magazine could be so hilarious?

In between gasping for air and snorting away like a baby elephant, I couldn’t help but admire this man’s sheer lung power. He had been repeating himself forcefully without a break for almost half an hour. It was a miracle that he didn’t need a sip of water to replenish his voice. During his repetitions, he broke free from his original monotone and began to riff away like a jazz musician by accenting different words.

“It IS easy to speak Chinese. It is easy to SPEAK Chinese. It is easy TO speak Chinese.”

This man certainly knew the secret of breath control and how to speak from his diaphragm. Before he went mad, was it possible that this man had been a gifted singer, a politician, or a horse auctioneer? This intriguing question would forever remain unanswered because he and I had both descended into varying degrees of madness.

At last, my subway tormentor departed the train at 14th Street, and I could finally stop laughing. They say laughter is the best medicine, but on a crowded New York subway, it is also an instrument of torture and the road to mayhem.

Lily Shen works in fundraising at Columbia University, where she taken several creative writing classes and is earning a certificate in conservation and environmental sustainability. She has previously been published in The West Side Spirit, a weekly newspaper, and mrbellersneighborhood.com. Her hobbies include painting, photography, and performing in improv comedy shows.

Middle-aged white New York woman with long, dangling earrings: No.

This is the Number 1 track. Number 2 trains, they're all express. Over on that track. A Number 2 just pulled out.

French man: Oh! I just got off that train! A girl on that train, she tell me to get off because it was express and I need a Number 2 that is local.

Woman: I tell you there's no such thing as a Number 2 that's local. Where are you going?

Man: Here, I show you [opens large, MTA map]. One Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street. That girl on the train said there was a 2 Local.

Woman: Harlem. You're going to Harlem?

Man: Yes.

Young white New Yorker man wearing black yarmulke in hair: There IS a Number 2 train that's local!

Woman: No there is not! There's not. I don't think there is. Lemme me see that map.

NY Man: Where are you going?

French man: One Hundred and Twenty-fifth. Right here on the map.

NY man: Harlem???

Woman: He's going to Harlem.

NY man: This Number 1 local here, at Broadway and 125th, is also Harlem.

Woman: No it's not! It's Manhattanville! Morningside Heights! He wants to go to Harlem!

French man: Is there something wrong with Harlem?

American man: Oh no. There's nothing wrong with Harlem.

Woman: He wants to go to Harlem. Let him go to Harlem!

French man: That girl on the train, she said there was local Number 2. That girl--

Woman: Forget that girl. You want Harlem.

French man: Yes, Harlem!

Woman: Here's a 3 train coming right now. Take it! Take it! It's just like the 2. It takes you to Harlem.

French man: Harlem.

American man: Harlem?

Woman: Harlem!

Debbie Nathan lives in Upper Manhattan and is working on "Sybil, Inc.," a book about the making of the 1970s bestseller Sybil.
 

While making my way down the Union Square station steps, I glance at my watch: 4:05. Before I can squish through the turnstile, a faceless body dressed in a black couture trench coat, gives my spine a sharp shove, and it occurs to me: I’m on the cusp of rush hour.

Reaching the platform, I’m thrilled to see the train waiting for me, as if by destiny. Maybe I was wrong and life is really going my way today. Soon I’ll be in the safety of my warm cozy studio apartment, sharing caramel cookie scraps with my red teacup poodle, Maple.

As soon as I step inside the car, there’s a two-seater for me and my bags. It isn’t even a crowded train. Glancing at the lovely rainbow of multicolored rubber boots decorating the subway floor, I realize half the passengers in my car are also carrying soggy Trader Joe’s bags.

My years of urbanite training no doubt qualify me to a teach class for tourists in “The art of ignoring other humans” at the Learning Annex, but for some reason, this Friday afternoon, I’m feeling the safe-Manhattan vibe. Don’t know why out-of-towners think it’s dangerous here. Such tourist naiveté is almost cute. A true native knows when to let her guard down.

A chicly-dressed woman on the far end of the car checks out my bags and gives me a knowing smile. As if we’re all part of the same cool club, where waiting on rock-concert-sized lines for groceries is a rite of passage.

Right before the subway doors close, a thin, wiry, guy wearing a baseball cap gets on and takes a seat across from mine. His black satin bomber jacket is crinkled, and he looks at me while sipping a can of A & W Root Beer. His lips still wet as he says, “Did somebody pay you to sit there like that and—?”

He must be another member of the club, I think, when I respond with an easy smile, “Oh yeah, its like we’re some kind of walking ad for Trader Joe’s.”

“Who? What? I’m confused.” He glances around. “You’re making me paranoid.”

I eye the other end of the car where two round-faced women with matching yellow woolen caps are chatting happily, with their bags at their feet. I say to the guy, “Ya know. The shopping bags.”

Confusion colors his uneven features. I notice a faded scar on his eyebrow, as he speaks, “I was going to say. I thought you were a real live angel sitting there. You startled me.”

I’m beginning to think I never should’ve unzipped my protective Manhattan bubble-shield. “Oh. Um. Thank you.” I say, trying to mentally suck myself back into the void. But it doesn’t work.

The guy goes on like I’m his long lost cousin. “It’s amazing. With your hair and those innocent dark eyes looking at me like that. Do you have any idea what you look like?”

It occurs to me that the subway car hasn’t taken off yet. This is my chance. I can still get off. But maybe the mere action of leaving would trigger his paranoia to such a psychotic degree that he would then chase me, which would be much worse.

“Don’t you recognize me?” He bobbles round in his seat, like a scary doll with bloodshot eyes about to come popping out of his head.

There’s no way I can reinvent the bubble-shield. Eye contact is much like murder: once it has taken place there’s no going back.

Trying my best to play off mellow, I say with a casual hand wave, “Recognize you? No. But I never watch the news or read the paper. So if you were in the new show would I know?”

I feel a grumble beneath my butt as the train takes off. Did I just make a grave mistake? There must be a way to dissolve into something. Escape, without drawing attention to myself. But how?

Digging a novel out of my handbag I attempt looking bookish while leafing through the pages. But as soon as I focus on the first sentence, the guy calls out to me in a serious tone, “I’m famous. I thought you knew. And that’s why you were sitting there.”

Right away my attention is bulleted on him. No choice, I’m trapped in captive conversation. Trying not to reveal my feelings, I shrug, “we’re all famous.”

No matter how hard I try to hide, he draws me back in. Even though the train is filled with New Yorkers, it seems as if he and I are completely alone in a dark tunnel, rocketing though the darkness of life together. I pray for an interruption. Anything. Anyone. Even a smell would be welcome.

His questions turn personal, “What do you do, for a living?”

I refuse to play the game and try turning aloof–after all it’s worked for me on Thursday nights at Bond Street Bar, why should now be any different? “Oh all sorts of things.” I cement my eyes back in the book.

It’s backfired. Now I’ve become even more fascinating.

His brows dart up, “Really—are you an actress?”

I murmur, “No—not at all,” annoyed as if he’s saying I don’t look brainy.

“What do you do?”

Before I can think of a lie, the awful truth comes spitting out, “I’m a writer.”

This excites him, “Of course you are. I can tell.” His feet twitch and I notice a hand in his pocket jiggle.

Resigned to the fact that I’m locked into his line of vision, I rest the book on my lap and begin obsessing about that hand of his. And why does the darn thing look so suspicious? What’s he hiding in there?

He says, “You don’t know how amazing you look. You have no idea. You would make the perfect mother? Do you have any kids?”

Now I’m wishing I was an actress again. “Oh no. I have a boyfriend.” Secretly I’m wondering if this puffy coat makes me look pregnant.

As his hand moves, I’m thinking that staying in this car was one of the dumbest choices I’ve ever made. I envision the small blurb on the back page of the NY Post, “Local Woman Stabbed to Death on Downtown 6.”

I can’t help it; now I’m staring at him, seeing clearly how dangerous he must be. I’m like one of those clueless girls in the movie Scream, who the audience yells out to, “Get out of the house.” except I’m much stupider because I’m riding all the way from 14th street to the Upper East Side with an obvious maniac. How many stops is that anyway? A little voice screams inside my head, “Get out of the train!”

Intensity fills his eyes, “You do. Your boyfriend is real lucky guy.” He presses his other hand to his chin. “Oh my God you just turned into seven people right in front of me. Do you have any idea? I wonder. Do you? About your appeal, how beautiful you are? How old are you? Twenty-eight? Thirty-two?”

No way I’ll tell him my real age. And I try not to be flattered by his assessment, but twenty-eight sounds almost as good as the brick of chocolate in my bag right now. I shrug, “That stuff doesn’t matter. What matters is who we are inside. Once you get to know someone the outside doesn’t matter.”

I don’t know what’s possessed me to start preaching at the guy, when I’m supposed to be running. But I can’t help it. It’s as though against my will, a spring of hopeful feelings have sprung up inside me, and have begun gurgling out my mouth.

I’ve actually become a willing participate in the exchange. That tidbit will no doubt be part of the NY Post Blurb. “Woman Murdered While Flirting with Psychopath on the Downtown 6.”

Somewhere inside my dysfunctional-childhood-memory-banks I’m haunted by the “Don’t talk to stranger’s rule.” But no, I am too cool for rules.

What have I done?

Suddenly a wash of gray covers my vision. A homeless man in muddied plaid pants, comes by begging for money. After apologizing for the inconvenience of interrupting us, he zeros right in on me. Clearly he can see my bubble is broken making me fair game.

But I don’t mind. I’m grateful for the distraction so I toss some quarters in his stained, I love NY, coffee cup.

Homeless tells me, “I had my poems published in the Rolling Stone. They paid me 450 dollars.”

From the conviction in his tone, I have no doubt Homeless is speaking the truth. And I wonder if the universe didn’t plant him on this train at exactly 4:22 pm just so he could knock me off my writer’s high horse. Then I decide I’m not that important, and he gets off at the next stop. But me: I stay on.

Homeless was blocking the guy across from me. And our momentary author’s exchange almost made me feel safe. Almost.

Dangerous-guy-across-from-me goes on, as though he’s flow had never been interrupted. “You just turned into three people right then. It’s amazing.” Then he pauses and digs deep in his pocket.

It’s happening. Now. About to emerge from the recesses of his pocket and get me: the knife. The gun. A body part.

Inside I’m riddled with terror. Outside I’m perfectly still. Not even a blink, or parted lips. Nothing. Just slowed breathing causing my chest to rise and fall.

He pulls out–a small notebook with bent pages. And a Bic pen. Then he begins writing, and looks up at me, “You just made me realize how lucky I am. How I should appreciate my wives.” His hand whizzing words on the pages, as he says, “ it’s easy to be tempted.”

I gasp out all my fear, realizing I’m going to live, at least until the end of this train ride. “Wives? You have more than one?” I say.

He gives me a knowing smile, “I’m famous. I thought you knew. When you go home you’ll realize who I am. But for real—you made me see how lucky I am. And to appreciate what I have.”

Before I can process my thoughts, a tall African American man, with dreadlocks, glides through the train singing, “I Got Sunshine On a Rainy Day.”

His voice is so deep and resonant that it fills the car with echoing vibrations. The train is crowded now. Bodies everywhere. Although I don’t remember any of them getting on.

An older Asian woman with a pink scarf on her head, grappling the pole, as her frail body swings from side to side.

Crazy-Writer-Guy-Across-From-Me continues, “You were sent to me, to make me realize what I have. That’s a beautiful thing.”

I get up and say, “Excuse me” to the woman holding on to the rail. “Would you like my seat? I’m getting off.”

As soon as I rise up, she plummets into the seat: becoming the new face across from Crazy.

While standing I try turning my back to Crazy, but his friendly manner lures me right back, “I’m so lucky to have seen you.” He said. “A real live angel. You just became illuminated right then. Thank you.”

I surrender to his power and can’t help finding him almost sweet, “Bye, have a nice night,” I say.

And as I exit the train, the door shuts and I hear muffled music from the man singing “Sunshine,” and I make my way up the stairs.

Danielle Winston recently finished a novel with a magical twist set against the backdrop of Manhattan’s downtown art world, entitled, Brush Strokes. A native New Yorker, she writes everything from plays to magazine articles, and also teaches, Yoga for Writers.

Others from my working class Catholic parish adjacent to the park signed up as well. Mo Maloney was assigned to the carousel where he would collect tickets and throw teens off the ride if they didn’t pay with the inevitable fights that he enjoyed. Franny Hayden was given a push cart full of cracker jacks, the sweet popcorn and peanut mix with the cheap little prizes at the bottom, ice pops and watery orangeade. Stationed somewhere in the park, Franny’s job was somewhat dangerous since this was Brooklyn after all, and in 1965, there were muggings and murders and all that stuff which is why my mother wanted me to work in the cafeteria where it was safe.

So for minimum wage, a whopping $1.25 an hour, I cleaned tables, prepared food and watched the thousands–blacks, Puerto Ricans, Hasidic Jews, ethnic whites like myself–pour into this Depression era zoo on hot weekends because they had nowhere else to go. With their kids running wild, they would stare at the two pathetic polar bears or the unlucky seals in their pool or walk through the stench of the monkey house where an old Parkie would whistle and one mischievous monkey would hurl a piece of apple at the people. He rarely missed. He was the good one. The bad monkey pissed on the visitors.

Rebuilt in 1935, the zoo was like Noah’s ark, only sad. There were elephants and a buffalo that was always shedding, a hippo or two, mangy lions and tigers always asleep, black or brown bears–who knew the difference, and a pathetic rhino that was the target of snowballs in winter. They all appeared healthy, but not happy in their small, barren prison-like cages.

We loved the animals and hated the people who reminded us too much of ourselves but different–having no money and only the public parks and beaches for recreation. Of course in Holy Name parish, we had the Church for CYO basketball games and dances and bazaars, but in the summer we had to depend on the City since we never even heard of the Hamptons.

But we had fun. On breaks, Eddie Babicke would hang out in the yak cage and every Good Friday would refuse to talk to any customer between noon and 3pm. And one particular scorcher of a day, my brother Richard and Eddie Keyes went swimming in the seal pool, but only after the zoo had closed to the general public and the old cop had turned his back, muttering something about crazy kids.

In New York City as a teen, however, you couldn’t just work; first you had to obtain working papers. Because I wasn’t quite 16, I jumped on the Smith Street bus, rode it to State Street near the Long Island Railroad terminal and was given a quick physical by an apathetic doctor. In return, some lady gave me my working papers. There on State Street Johnny Hederman had his first eye exam and was told he needed glasses that he still wears. I still don’t understand the rationale for the perfunctory process. Probably to protect kids from being exploited as was common a generation or so before. But I didn’t really care since all I knew was that I needed a job to pay me money.

So we were proud to get the papers and have a job since spending money was scarce on our streets of large families and working class dads. No one starved of course, but money pervaded our world–a rip of your good pants was a catastrophe engendering a crisp, painful slap or two. You risked serious injury, lowering the smaller kids down sewers or climbing roofs, for a 25 cent Spaldeen, the pink rubber balls with which we played our street games of stickball, stoopball, punch ball. Our bats were always old broom handles. All clothes were bought two sizes too big–he’ll grow into them. You wore your cousin’s hand me down sweater or jacket and didn’t complain that they were out of style. And if you were the last kid born in the family, your clothes were always given to a relative or friend. Nothing good was ever thrown away. Ugly shoes were bought at Mr. Gutters, simply because his were made like iron–lasting months. It also didn’t hurt that he kept a bottle in the backroom for the dads.

The zoo wasn’t really my first job. At 11 I had a paper route delivering The Tablet, the Brooklyn Catholic weekly that everyone read in my neighborhood. A real good job, simple, predictable–just like my world. And one summer, the wrought iron fence of our row house was rusting. So my mother made me take the wire brush and scrape away the rust, prime it, and then paint it black. Since all 70 houses on Sherman Street had the same fence, I found a profession and was hired by Mrs. O’Malley and Nana Quinn down the street and made good money. But at 16, I was too big for the paper route and those fences needed painting every 20 years. And a steady job meant independence, that you were a man, earning your own way.

The zoo cafeteria was functional with metal tables and chairs, constructed of red brick like all the buildings in the zoo. You grabbed your tray and were served sodas, hamburgers, fries, ice cream and milk shakes or malteds, the food that everyone ate before McDonalds took over. The place was run by Bob, an old guy with white hair, whose girlfriend Ann also worked there and liked me. Ann was married and in my parochial world, theirs was the first affair I had ever known.

My parents, like everyone I knew, had survived the Depression and World War II–my dad fought for 3 ½ years in Africa and Europe and never mentioned it. Their lives revolved around Church and family. We lived in a two family red brick row house across the street from where my father was raised and four blocks from my mother’s childhood home. My grandmother Nana with the brogue lived with us and our cousins were downstairs until they joined the exodus to the suburbs. Aunt Rita and Uncle Tom lived a few blocks away and Grandma Maysie lived closer. In our neighborhood, we knew everyone’s relatives, even those who lived on the Island or Jersey since we saw them at Christmas, First Communions, Easter, birthdays. Houses were always filled with kids running about and the parents talking, laughing, having a drink that would inevitably lead to singing well into the night.

Bob and Anne’s affair was difficult to comprehend not only because these were the days before Woodstock and free love but because they were old and physically repulsive. I’m sure some parents in my small world cheated, but to this day, I don’t believe it. And if they did, where could they? Not in my neighborhood–a small town in a city of 8 million. Playing tag, you’re it, I ran into the street from between two cars and was almost hit by a car with the typical screech of brakes and the driver cursing out the window. By the time I arrived home, my mother had already heard all about it.

On the nice spring days, the zoo was mobbed. When it rained, it was empty with only the Parkies, those who worked for the Department of Parks, sipping coffee for hours. The Parkies, in their brown uniforms, never really did anything except feed the animals. A strange eclectic bunch of generally uneducated simple men, and in my arrogant teenage mind, just too dumb and too lazy to do anything else. But they were the power in the zoo, so I treated them with respect and deference, which, of course, was my upbringing. This inherent respect for authority was forever lost a mere three years later during my freshman year at college when a sit-in was broken up by police who nightsticked and bloodied the protestors.

Cleaning tables and collecting half-empty cups of coffee with cigarettes mashed in was not my idea of fun. But this was work and work was never expected to be fun. We had been raised with a Depression mentality, where you didn’t complain about digging ditches in 90-degree heat–you were thankful you had a job so your family could eat. Get a job, work hard, save your money because someday you could lose it all. We were raised on the stories of how my mother walked a mile and a half to high school to save the nickel bus fare or how my father quit high school to work because his father lost everything in the Crash.

So that summer at the zoo we worked and learned. Life was not the simple routine of school, church and stickball. It was cleaning encrusted mustard jars and butts shoved in melted ice cream. And being polite to the customers–pathetic slobs that they were. We Holy Name kids stuck together like we were taught. And of course we knew how to work. So we flipped the burgers, cleaned the tables, became immune to the stench and the ignorance. But as the hot summer days became cooler what amazed me was that I began to like those pathetic slobs, the people my friends despised. Even the disgusting ones, the shiftless Parkies, the stupid, rude mothers ignoring their brats. They were interesting in their faults, their poverty of mind and manner. After all, they were people, just like me, struggling to survive, searching for a slice of joy on a hot summer day at the Prospect Park zoo.

Kenneth P. Nolan is a lawyer who has always lived in Brooklyn.