Traintards: Freaks That I Have Seen On The New York Subway

There's an expression in New York City that the Subway is the best show you'll ever see for two bucks. Taking the train to and from work everyday, I've learned how true this is. I've seen religious fanatics and tales-of-woe beggars of every stripe. This is not a page dedicated to their stories. They're too standard-issue to be worth remembering. There were a few times, however, that something truly unique and unnerving happened. Below is an account of my subterranean run-ins with the Dregs of the Earth.

Updated June 22, 2007

A middle aged black guy was walking up and down the train car screaming for 50 blocks about how black people had discovered America and that history books ignore the fact that Christopher Columbus was black. He ranted about how blacks had invented the internal combustion engine, made the first television and the first telephone, among many other things, and that white people had stolen the credit. As he walked back and forth, he banged his cane on poles to ensure that he had everyone's undivided attention. Then he saw a tiny Asian girl in the corner by the doorway. At ninety pounds she didn't look very imposing, and he didn't hesitate to single her out. As he cornered her, he waved his index finger and shouted, "And I'll NEVER forget the Jap sneak attack at Pearl Harbor!"
Up until now, the train had been quiet other than the sound of this guy's ravings. People sat in silence, exchanging uncomfortable glances. But now there was a new sound and it was full of determination and scorn. "I'M KOREAN, YOU DUMB SHIT!" All around the train people were chuckling. The guy didn't make another sound, and at the next stop he got off the train with a mask of utter mortification frozen on his face.

It was about 11pm as I was going home, tired and irritable after a long day at work. The second stop after I got on the train, a family with five kids, all aged between three and nine, got on the train. They were all filthy, the fronts of all of their shirts caked with what must have been days or even weeks worth of dribbled ketchup, mustard, chocolate, you name it. The kids all came through the door screaming and wrestling and bumping into people, with their mother and father behind, seemingly paying absolutely no attention to their horde, carrying big Burger King bags. At the first shrieks of this clamor, my headphones went on, playing "Fun For Me," by Moloko in an attempt to simultaneously block out the racket and anarchy of the hellions and boost my mood. I have very good headphones. They cost nearly two hundred bucks from Sony. They are capable of ruining your hearing for the rest of your life in a few short minutes of use. They fell short, however, of drowning out the noise of these brats. The family had taken up the last remaining seats in the car, making it impossible to get up and move to another seat. If I got up now, one of the large and growing number of people standing would snag my seat and I'd end up standing on my already sore feet for the next hundred and fifty blocks. The creature that was next to me (most of the time) was about eight, and was wearing a Spiderman backpack. I specifically remember it being a Spiderman backpack because it hit me repeatedly every time he got out of his seat, which was about once every three seconds, as the kids wouldn't quit fighting or running around or quarreling over who got to sit where. The parents talked calmly between themselves, never once calling their trolls down for being obnoxious. It was as though they were in a soundproof bubble and were completely unaware that the kids were there at all. Moloko wasn't cutting it, so I switched to Ministry's "So What." At this point, the little hyena children started pestering their parents for food, and out came all the Kid's Meals from the big Burger King bags. This opened a whole new realm of idiotic fighting and bad behavior, as they all started battling each other over who got the best prize in their meals. The punch line to this one is that all the bags had the EXACT SAME FUCKING TOY in them, but nonetheless, the kids fought, screaming and pulling and bumping into me and everyone else. The parents showed absolutely no emotional response to the chaos around them. Finally the brats took a break from screaming and beating on each other to stuff their faces and give their shirts a fresh coat of ketchup. The kid with the Spiderman backpack plopped down next to me and promptly dumped about half of his french fries in a greasy avalanche down the side of my left sleeve. As I lifted my arm to inspect the damage, he started picking the fries up off the seat from under my hip and eating them. He didn't even think to apologize, and his parents didn't even think to stop him from eating off the bench, which was probably some bum's bed the night before. Then again, none of them really seemed like thinkers. At this point, I was reaching the boiling point and started searching my iPod for anything angrier than Ministry. Then the kid did something so bad that even still I grapple with the concept that it really happened at all. He opened a ketchup packet and poured some on what was left of the fries in the box in his hand. Then, visibly, he realized that he didn't have a free hand with which to pick up the fries and needed to do something with the packet to free one up. His little light-bulb-like head scanned his surroundings, then he determined that the best solution to this problem was to put the packet down on the seat next to him with the open corner about two inches from my pant leg. I had just come from work and was wearing a business suit. Ketchup in that kind of close proximity to my pant leg was enough to give me a burst of adrenaline. In a half a second I would need every microgram of that boost. As the kid's hand withdrew from the packet, a great evil stupidity in him caused his arm to rise up and I saw his hand flatten out. Then, in an instant, his hand plunged down as though he was trying to slap a fly. My reflexes took over. I dodged the flying ribbon of ketchup that leapt from the packet as though I was dodging a bullet in The Matrix. With the last surge of adrenaline, I heard my voice cry out. "WHAT THE FUCK?!!!!"
Finally the mother was awakened from her antireality cocoon, although she instantly leaped to the defense of her child, before she even knew what he had done. "What? What? What? He ain't done nothin' wrong! He ain't done nothin to you!" I pointed at the red stripe of ketchup that spanned across the entire seat. "So? It didn't get on you! What's your problem?"
As it turned out, I still had plenty of adrenaline left in me to deal with her. "You need to teach your kids how to act! They behave like goddamned animals!"
I didn't feel bad cursing in front of the kids, as I was quite sure they were accustomed to it, as she proved in her retort. "Who the fuck are you to say that shit, white motherfucker!"
"Who am I? i'm someone who doesn't want his suit to look like your kids' filthy fucking shirts!" The father looked at the floor and tried to pretend that this had nothing to do with him. *Dad uses a scroll of invisibility.*
This guy with a garbage bag full of old newspapers would sift through them and cackle as he straightened out the crumpled pages. Then he would start reading old, expired news, classified ads, horoscopes, public service announcements and obituaries out loud, and when I say loud, know that I mean LOUD. Occasionally he would stop to put the paper on the seat next to him as he huddled over it and wrote notes on it with a pen that he held in his fist. Occasionally he would take a break from informing us of the important events of weeks past for some good, old fashioned rambling. "Why do you keep popping up? Because I know where everybody's at! No negotiations! HAHAHAHH! There's a war! Thank Jesus! HAHAHAHAH!"

This guy used a pen to write all this gibberish all over his newspaper, all the while rubbing his head and looking at his watch and acting exacerbated as though he was trying decode some hidden meaning in the articles to avert a nuclear attack, and he seemed very frustrated by how slowly the train was moving. He would stop scribbling, look out the window to see where we were, rub his forehead in an agitated manner, and then dive frantically back into the paper, as though there was a dire need to decipher the puzzle before the train reached a certain destination. I don't think he was even really reading the articles. He was just going from article to article crossing out lines and making weird symbols over the paragraphs, often retracing the lines and symbols many times until the newsprint below was barely visible. I was standing up over him, holding the pole and watching what he was doing. At one point he made a big gibberish symbol over most of a paragraph and I made a "what the fuck" face. This girl who was also standing over him and watching him from a different angle apparently saw me make the face and she poked my hand to get my attention and we both shared a laugh.
As I was getting on the train, I was finishing up the last few bites of a hamburger. This girl with really bad cyst-like acne and jagged, broken front teeth noticed me getting on and said to her friend, "Look at this motherfucker eating on the train." She spent the entire ride spitting a big bubbly puddle on the floor and using the window as a mirror to pick her zits. She also wore a baseball hat that said, "I Love Jesus."
I was on the train reading. Standing near me was a short, fat man with more hair on the back of his neck than I have on my entire body. He made a sound like, "Buh-JAH! Buh-JAH!" I didn't think it was directed at me so I didn't say or do anything. After a few seconds of him shuffling around in front of me, I glanced up and saw him thoroughly scoping me out, looking out of the corner of his eye as though he intended not to be noticed. He didn't realize that I had seen him peering at me, and he apparently thought I had intentionally snubbed him because as he turned away he stuck his tongue out, puffed his cheeks, and sneered in the way kids make faces behind their moms' backs when they've been scolded as an invisible "last word." When he carefully turned around to get a second look, he was met with direct eye contact and my cruel, icy glare. His eyes immediately dropped to the floor. At the next stop he hurried off the train as though he was being chased.

There is a guy who thinks he's Bruce Lee as he "practices his kung fu" on the pole, then looks around the train at all the people like a shadow master sizing up a dozen ninjas who are about to rush him.
There was a lady calling out, "God is part of your body. Alcohol is slippery. When you drink alcohol, God slips out."

There was a drunk, smelly bum who hammered on the seat with his Miller Genuine Draft bottle and screamed, "The Lord PUT the diarrhea in me," over and over, throwing in the occasional "Kill all women!"
A guy was screaming what he calls "Truth Poetry." "What's the fastest way to Riker's Island? Take the D to 34th street and throw a brick through Macy's front window! Now that's deep!" Yeah, deep and poetic. After all, any gibberish that you scream in a lyrical way is poetry, don't ya know. By the way, I didn't make up the part about him loudly declaring his own poetry "deep."

A woman kept baring her teeth at people the way rhesus monkeys do when they're challenging each other.
A guy was screaming at the top of his lungs over and over, "I WANT ME A PIECE OF PUSSY!!! I DON'T CARE IF I GOTTA PAY FOR IT!!!" for about 100 blocks.
A filthy guy reeking of cigarettes was screaming at fucking 5am about how "They didn't knock down the pyramids in the Gaza Strip (he means Giza) - They knocked down the World Trade Center! God is older than the American dream, but that's why the Blacks gotta be a team! They try to make us scatter, but you can kick a dog once. You can kick a dog down twice. You can kick a dog down a whole bunch of times, but when you see those fangs get pen-e-tra-ble, you'll say 'We love Mister Universe! We love Pope John Paul!' That's a cold slap in the face! I'm sorry to disturb you, But you should be concerned! See, we welcomed a wolf, and when it grows up it becomes a pred-a-tor. And it sees us run when it knows we're ready. That's a cold slap in the face. Anyone happy they got the World Trade Center? Ain't no Osama on this train! That's a cold slap in the face! If your dad had a car and he left it to you, he only had one. He gave it to you. That's like the pro-di-gal son! If he had two sons and he gave it to you, that's too bad for your brother. All this is what he had, but you in-her-it-ed what's your Dad's. You drive off - but that's what you do. Anyone wanna help society (holds out his begging cup) Day of the Jackal! It's five thousand!" (I was taking it all down on my PDA as he "dictated.")

I was on the train and three black guys who were all maybe 19 got on and sat about ten feet away from me. They were all well-dressed and they were all carrying Bibles. They started talking LOUDLY in ghetto slang about how their choir practice had gone and how great their church was. This segued surprisingly fluidly into a conversation about girls they had fucked, what was done in graphic detail, and who they were trying to fuck. "Yeah, yo! That bitch sucked my dick!" (Laughter and similar bragging all 'round.) They were talking loudly enough that their voices would have been audible on the outside of the train if the doors were closed even though they were no more than two feet from each other. Conveniently, that day I had bought a copy of "The Long Road Out of Hell," the Marilyn Manson biography. I pulled it out and began reading, holding it in a position where they could easily see the cover picture of his unmistakable face. Immediately they started whispering amongst themselves, looking in my direction. If I had screamed "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" which was my first instinct, I could not have rendered them silent so efficiently and completely. Their voices didn't rise above a whisper for a hundred blocks as they murmured among themselves, judging who among us was unclean.

A five year old girl shook her doll "shaken baby" style really hard for 50 blocks while playing both character voices. "AAAA NOOO!!!" "I'll kill youuu! Ha Haaa!" "NOOOO! STOP IT! YOU'RE KILLING MEEEE! AAAAAAA!!!" "Ha Haaaa!"

A woman was talking very loudly (projecting intentionally so her conversation would be overheard so she could broadcast her very own Jerry Springer show) about how she's "not a bad mother just because I went to jail. I did my time and closed the door behind me. I ain't NEVER goin' back. I paid my debt. They try to act like he's not my son, just because he was raised by white people, but he is. What are YOU looking at?! Ain't nobody talking to you, so you need to get a life and stop copying people's credit cards and living off the land! Rich people think they're so smart. Maybe I should do that and get a nice place in Florida." Incidentally, she was the mother of the girl who was shaking her doll.
A guy with no front teeth was standing on the train with headphones that could be heard easily from twenty feet away saying very forcibly over and over, "KING ALLAH.... B.... KING....B...... B.......B.... KING.......B!"

A guy tore up his entire newspaper, page by page, into pieces no bigger than two square inches and put the pieces on the seat next to him in a big pile.
A guy was rambling to himself, saying, "That's what's wrong with the world today! Not enough people are following Jesus! Ain't nobody comin' to God except through Jesus!" Meanwhile, over a span of about 50 blocks, he dropped a brown paper bag, a tissue, an empty coffee cup, a plastic coffee stirrer, and lid on the floor. When I said, "You dropped something," he said, "Oh, sorry," and kicked it all under the seat.
There was a guy with a small cat that stood on his shoulder like a parrot and howled.

A huge, morbidly obese woman was wearing a skin tight baby doll t-shirt and a short-short miniskirt. As she sat stuffing cookies in her mouth as fast as she could chew them, I looked over and noticed the large tattoo on her tree-trunk like calf. "Big Sexy."
One morning a lady screamed out, as soon as she got on the train, "Today is the first day of Spring, so nobody try to talk to me because I need to get in synch."

I saw a guy on the train today with a cheap black suit jacket that was two or three sizes too big, khaki slacks that looked like they came from Sears, a Polo type shit which was short-sleeved so his wrists were bare under the jacket sleeves, and knock-off black Converse All-Stars - and no front teeth. When girls would get on the train, he'd wait for them to sit down, then he'd smile at them with his no-incisors, pull a cheap cigar out of his inside pocket, run it under his nose to smell it, then put it back and keep smiling at them.
A guy was on the train with little sores on his skin. He spent the whole ride scratching himself all over, then chewing on his finger, constantly humming and singing what sounded like Prince or James Brown, but without any real words, rhythm or melody, except for a few occasions when he went, "Oh Lord have mercy," and "Yabba dabba doo - now whatcha gonna do." The rest of the time it was all an unintelligible mishmash of "oww - uhhh - uhhhhh" and an occasional high pitched "Wooww" in the voice Prince used in "Kiss."

There was a bony woman in a short sequined tube dress eating lemons and smacking her mouth VERY loudly. Her dress was cut mid-thigh length, which revealed a truly gruesome looking surgery scar that went from mid-calf to mid-thigh with stitch scars dotting either side. When she finished smacking on the lemon, she reached in her bag, pulled out a nail clipper and proceeded to clip all of her toenails. This woman exemplifies class.
A homeless lady was begging on the train, going from car to car singing "The Greatest Love of All." Her crackling throat belched out words of optimism, determination, promise, self reliance and hope for the future. She'd be rich if there was a market for EXTREME IRONY.

A guy was sitting across from me putting his forearms under the bottom end of his shirt, so his fat belly was showing. I thought, "The air conditioner's pretty cold. I guess he's trying to keep his arms warm. It would be nice if he had enough class to keep his beer belly hidden." Just as this thought crossed my mind he showed me just how little class he had. He raised his shirt up to his face, burrowed his shirt-covered index fingers in his nose thoroughly for about a minute solid, then blew his nose loudly. When he lowered his arms, the front of his shirt was covered in viscous snot. It looked like he had been attacked by a giant mutant snail.
A woman with all gold teeth yelled at her crying one year old baby, "SHUT UP! YOU'RE STUPID LIKE YOUR FATHER!"

There was a woman on the train today pretending to read a book. She would quickly move her head and eyes side to side while going "Bss Bss Bssss" and making little lip-syncing motions with her mouth. Every couple of seconds she would puff her cheeks and make a "whew" sound. Then at the "end" of every page she would look around to see who's watching her and turn the pages quickly so they would make a flapping noise. She would only spend about 5-10 seconds per two pages. Sometimes she would turn the pages backward and usually she would turn four or five pages at a time. The cover of the book was well-worn around her fingers, so she may have been "reading" this book for months.
A guy next me on the train was bragging about the movies he just bought as he waved two dvd's at his friend. The movies were "xXx" and "Blue Crush." I think that liking those movies enough to see them, like them, buy them and then brag about them definitely qualifies as mental illness.

An old man was doing "the wave" with his arms as though he was in Breakin' 2: Geriatric Boogaloo. When I looked at him, he stopped and had an embarrassed and annoyed expression on his face as though I was interrupting him. When I looked away, he started again almost immediately, as though something was compelling him to do it.