Waiting, however, can be a delicate business. Patience can turn to impatience in a flash and prompt a stance I’ve come to call the lean-and-look. This involves standing on the yellow strip at the edge of the train platform, one foot firmly planted, the other extended back, and leaning out far enough (but not too far) to see if a subway is coming. It’s one step away from being either suicide or a minimalist dance move. One after the other, people would come forward and do it, myself included, as if collectively we could coax a train out of the tunnel.
Sometimes it actually worked and, on rare occasions, brought forth not one train but two: an A on one side of the platform, a C on the other. At such moments one realizes that even the smallest choices matter. Both trains went to my stop at Fulton, but the A was an express and the C, a local, was poky. Each attracted different riders, different personalities. Which am I this morning, I would think, an A or a C? And what might happen in the extra minutes gained by the express? Will I bump into my next love as I exit, or trip and break my leg?
On weekends, I tended to take the red line; a 1 stop was just down the street. Other than Oliver, I didn’t know many people here, which suited me fine. My primary relationship was with the city—like an Mbuti pygmy’s is with the forest. We got to know each other via long subway rides—through Harlem and Washington Heights, Brooklyn and the Upper West Side. I would always carry my camera with me, and I took to approaching people on the street who caught my eye—strangers—whether because they looked interesting or attractive or unusual or, perhaps, utterly ordinary. “Can I take your picture?” I’d simply say.
After a day of exploring the city, one night I ended up in Midtown at Lincoln Center. I stood for a long time in front of the Metropolitan Opera House, watching the luminous dance of the fountain at its entrance. I got a ticket, last-minute, to an opera just about to begin. The lights dimmed and the crystal chandeliers made their silent retreat into the ceiling. I found myself shedding a few tears as the overture started. Did I wish there were someone with me? Perhaps. So I wasn’t shy about sharing my joy with others at intermission.
For some reason, there were no subway trains at Columbus Circle that night. I didn’t have money for a taxi, so I started walking. Eventually I stopped at the Fiftieth Street station. It was empty save for a blind man tap-tap-tapping a jagged line on the platform. I watched him for a while, then, worried that he might fall to the tracks, steered him toward a back wall. We introduced ourselves; his name was Harold. It was past midnight and we were both going home—I to Christopher Street, Harold to 155th.
Now, I still didn’t know a lot about subway lines at the time but felt pretty sure that if Harold wanted 155th, he was headed the wrong way, and I gently told him so. He responded with a seeming non sequitur: “Sometimes, Billy, you have to go down to go up.” Just then a train came and we rode together to Forty-Second Street, where Harold got off and disappeared into a crowd. It was only then that I understood he hadn’t been dispensing sage advice about weathering the ups and downs of life in New York. The uptown station at Fiftieth Street had merely been closed.
I am told by longtime New Yorkers that the subway used to be awful—garbage-strewn, graffiti-covered, suffocating in the summer, dangerous late at night all year round. And of course I know plenty of people who despise taking it today, even though the cars are remarkably safe, clean, and cool. I suggest they ride with me. I cannot take a subway without marveling at the lottery logic that brings together a random sampling of humanity for one minute or two, testing us for kindness and compatibility. Is that not what civility is?
The other day, I was on a local 6 going uptown and seated next to a young woman with a baby in a stroller. At each stop, a man (always a man) would enter the car and end up standing right above us. I had my iPod on and was just watching. Inevitably, each man would make goofy faces and smile at the baby, and the baby would smile and make faces back. At each stop, the standing man would be replaced by a new one, straight out of central casting: First, an older Latin guy. Then he gets off and a young black man appears. Then a white man in a suit. Then a construction worker with a hard hat. Tough guys. New York guys. All devoted to one important task: making a baby smile.
I have other subway stories to tell. And I could list lots more reasons why I like riding the 1, 2, 3, C, F, D, 4, 5, or L. But if pressed, I’d have to say that what I love most about the subways of New York is what they do not do. One may spend a lifetime looking back—whether regretfully or wistfully, with shame or fondness or sorrow—and thinking how, given the chance, you might have done things differently. But when you enter a subway car and the doors close, you have no choice but to give yourself over to where it is headed. The subway only goes one way: forward.
NOTES FROM A JOURNAL
5-9-09:
O says I must keep a journal.
And so I must.
I make notes on scraps of paper, the backs of envelopes, cocktail napkins. Sometimes dated, sometimes not.
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5-12-09:
I brought over a bottle of wine and we went up to O’s rooftop.
My one-month anniversary in NYC: “Shall I get glasses?” asked O, flustered.
“No, no need.”
We took turns swigging from the bottle.
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