THE CRAZY
All this writing about how I almost died has really worn me out, so I’m going to take a brief interlude to tell you about a scene I witnessed the other day.
The only thing eventful about my commute this morning was its complete uneventfulness. In my two some years here, I have found that the New York City transit system always has something up its sleeves to ruin my morning. Delayed trains, overcrowded platforms, masses of pushy angry Asian women, there’s always always something. This morning, however, I realized while riding on the downtown 6 train that something was different. I was on time.
It was totally weird.
So there I was, sitting down on a semi-full car, reading my book quietly to myself. There were enough people on the car to fill almost all of the seats, but not enough to pack it in clown car style. Although there were a few seats open, several people chose to stand, most congregating around the door waiting for the next stop.
I was lost in my book, not really paying attention to anything around me, when I heard some sort of commotion going on to my right. I heard a weird noise, and I turned to see its source. I saw a middle-aged African American man sitting on a bench underneath one of the two subway maps located in each car. There was nothing particularly interesting about this man. He was average looking and unexciting in everyway possible. Bearded and bald, he was of average build (siding closer to plump), and plainly dressed in a simple t-shirt and jeans, but with expensive looking sneakers.
Standing over him was a young white woman, who was more plain that he. She was a curvy lass (also siding closer to plump), clearly dressed for a day in the office. She stood directly in front of the man, leaning over him to study the map propped behind his head. Her eyes were squinting, and she stood there hovering, tracing the path of her trip with her finger tip.
When I looked a little closer, I noticed the one thing that stood out in this otherwise completely average tableau was the crazy look smeared across the man’s face. He looked furious, the kind of furious that only a mental patient can achieve. I realized then that the commotion I had heard was him yelling. Yelling at whom or at what was beyond me though. I missed what he had said, so I was thankful when I saw his mouth open up wide, winding up for round two.
“Bitch! Get your titties out of my face!” he screamed at maximum volume. People around me were looking, so I knew I wasn’t imagining it. I did assume, however, that I had misheard him.
He screamed again. “Bitch, I said I gets your fucking titties out of my goddamn face!”
I was shocked. I couldn’t believe what was going on. I assumed he knew the woman, that they were intimately involved, and that they were having some sort of lovers’ quarrel until he opened his mouth again.
“Bitch! I don’t know you! Get your titties out of my fucking face.”
What shocked me most about this whole situation wasn’t what the man was saying, but the woman’s reaction. Or lack-there-of I should say. As this man shouted at her, she continued to stand their, motionless, looking at the map, her titties in his face. No shift in position. No change in her facial expression. She just stood there, her finger continuing to move up and down the map. My first thought was perhaps she doesn’t speak English. But then I figured no matter what language you speak, a crazy-looking black man screaming at you is pretty universal for “get the fuck out of dodge.”
The man continued to yell. Repeatedly he shouted “Get your titties out of my face!” each time with more fury. Each time he yelled something slightly different.
“Bitch! I said get your titties out of my face”
“I said get your fucking titties out of my face, bitch!”
“Get your fat fucking titties out of my mother fucking face!”
He finally jumped up from his seat, and for the first time the woman moved. The two of them were nose to nose. The man was screaming at her “Why don’t you listen to me? I said get your titties out of my face.”
At this point, a large looking white man standing a few feet away stepped in. If I had to guess, I would say he was in his forties. He was a large man, tall and broad, and dressed rather suavely in a suite and tie. Clutching onto his briefcase, he yelled across the train
“Sir? Sir! You need to settle down.”
The black man turned away from the girl and shouted back “Who the fuck asked you, you son of a bitch!”
“Sir! Settle down!” the white man yelled back. “Do I need to call the cops?”
“Call whoever you fucking what!” the black man yelled, “just get this bitch’s fucking titties out of my face!”
At this point, we pulled up to the next stop. A large number of people left, including the white guy, leaving the train almost empty. The black man seemed a bit calmer, and returned to his seat beneath the subway map.
After the doors shut and we began moving again, the woman moved back to the map, and once again leaned forward, letting her titties dangle precariously above the man’s face.
I sat on the edge of my seat, waiting for the man to completely loose his mind. I waited, but much to my surprise, he sat their silently. His lips were pursed tightly together, and it looked as if he was truly fighting back the demons inside. The woman seemed utterly clueless, closely examining the map. I thought to myself “she must be really, really, really lost.”
At the next stop, the woman got off. The scene was over, and I sat there amazed at what I had just witnessed. In my head I debated as to which one was crazier. Was it the man for yelling, or the woman for standing there and taking it? Clearly, they both something seriously wrong with the both of them.
And as I sat there, planning on how to best relive the scene for my friends and coworkers, an Asian man sitting next to the crazy guy got up to leave. The look of fury returned to the crazy man’s face, and he screamed “Mother fucker! Don’t hit me!”
The Asian man looked back, confused and concerned, “I…I didn’t hit you…” he stuttered.
“Don’t you fucking hit me mother fucker!” the crazy man shouted again. The Asian scurried out, and there I sat, just me and the crazy dude. I looked down at my book and though “this is why I love New York.”
