Rush Hour Funkenstein

May 4, 2005 - Wednesday

Rush Hour Funkenstein

I have nothing against the homeless. Or the mentally disturbed. In fact I've had interesting conversations with combos of the two (much to friends' dismay).

But when you get a homeless crazy with BO from Hell on your morning subway ride...oh my GAWD somebody just shoot me and put me out of my misery!

This...behemoth...and there's no other word to describe her...got on circa 145th street on the A train headed downtown. Crowded rush hour morning. She was easily about 6', 6'-2", maybe 250lbs. I'm absorbed in my PSP (Need for Speed, baby!) so I didn't notice right away.

Then the smell hit me like a fist full of quarters. I mean, it was one of those INVASIVE odors...the kind that'll make you stand up and get the spirit: "Oh Lord, what the hell is THAT!?" Forget coffee to wake you up; one whiff of this and you're wide awake, shaking in the corner pleading for someone to cut your nose off your face.

The doors close...and she starts crying. Yes, crying. We're talking about loud, moaning bawling kind of crying. The kind that, if she were a kid, you'd slump over from exhaustion and frustration and just want to scream "What do you want?!?!" Over and over and over and over. "Waaaah. Waaaaah. Waaaaaah."

Holy mother of god.

Then out comes The Cup. You got it, this was blatant extortion. She doesn't even move around the car (thank god!), she just reached out with that damn cup as far as she could to whomever was close by, and waited for them to put money in it. The woman next to me (if I catch you, you're DEAD! DEAD!) decided to play nice, so I got this big meaty, smelly arm put in my face so she could get to Ms. Generosity.

I'm holding my breath, thinking "oh for the love of every god that ever existed, PLEASE hurry up and get that damned dollar out of your purse!"

We pull into 125th, and I'm praying. I swear I'll go to church, synogogue, temple, I'll even drink the grape kool-aid and wait for the mother ship to pick me up - whatver the fuck, just let this woman get off this train!

Oh no. Too easy. A woman gets up...and she plops her elephantine ass right down in the vacant seat.

It was like turning on the lights in the kitchen at 2am, and watching the cockroaches scatter for cover. I've rarely seen New Yorkers move so quickly in a crowded subway car as everyone around those seats did. It was like a Warner Bros. cartoon; there was a crowd, then suddenly a whole set of smoke trails leading away from Funkenstein's Bride. People are squished up against the doors, the windows; I swear I saw one guy crawling under the seats, trying to find some clean air.

If any of you take the A train downtown, you know what happens next. The A is an express train. From 125th...to 59th.

By the time we pulled into the station I'd lost vision in one eye, boils were popping up on my skin and there were heat vapors rising from the seat where she'd squatted. People were passed out on the floor, the paint in the car was peeling off the ceiling. The metal walls had buckled from the building vacuum of a hundred people all holding in their breath at the same time. Men in biohazard suits should have been waiting on the platform to take us all into quarantine. The National Alert should have gone to Orange just from the fumes wafting out of that subway car.

When the doors opened, I'd swear a green cloud spilled out onto the platform with us. People coughing, stumbling, trying to find a sense of balance. There was a baby crying in the background. Or maybe it was the mother, I couldn't tell. I saw this scene in a movie, maybe Outbreak. Or Volcano, or Earthquake...some disaster movie.

Okay I've exaggerated. A *little*.

But I'm going to start keeping a gas mask in my backpack. Just in case.