The subway is my living room. I sit next to a woman doing her makeup, wait for a train alongside a man clipping his fingernails. As we ride, ladies take off their shoes and plunge their hands toward the soles as their fingers search for that one irritating lonesome pebble or piece of lint.
One day, a large man sits next to me, his thigh touching my thigh. “Would you like a fig?” he looks past me and asks the man to my left. The other man shakes his head and reveals a quiet grin of confusion. I look down and see that the large man has a branch of dried, brown, prune-like fruits dangling on a diagonal off a vine, like the veins on a leaf.
“Those are dates,” I offer. The man looks at me with surprise then down to the fruit.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“I’m sure,” I confirm. I notice that below his wreath of dates is a box of date-filled cookies, the cover showing yellow round biscuits surrounded by the wrinkled fruit.
“See?” I say, motioning to the package.
He smiles and cries out in shock. “It is a date! I should know that,” he declares. “I’m a food writer.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Well I didn’t get this figure from nothing,” he says, running his hands down and under his rotund belly. From there the conversation continues. I learn his professional history. He is currently a minister, slash food writer; formerly a basketball player, slash hip-hop artist. “Google me,” he insists.
Another day, a smaller man sits beside me after bounding through the doors at Twenty-Third Street. He ruffles with a plastic bag between his feet.
“You know, I just bought this cologne and I don’t know if it’s any good. I drive a cab, so I always want to smell good,” he begins to tell me, without introduction. He pulls out a still-plastic wrapped brand name cologne I have now forgotten. He looks to me for approval. I shrug. I tell him I don’t know it.
He unwraps the box and pulls out the glass container, spritzing a small mist on himself. “What do you think?” He questions. His torso ends just inches below mine, so I can see most of his balding crown. Another passenger across from us looks on in amusement.
I lean to my left, nose bowing ever so slightly and I inhale. “You smell lovely,” I tell him.
The man nods, and satisfied, puts the cologne away. He thanks me for my input, and I can tell he feels better about his purchase. The next stop, I exit, saying a quick goodbye.
After Hurricane Sandy, my living room was dark. It was filled with water, and I imagined fish navigating its hallways, speeding past South Ferry along State and Pearl, the black and white mosaic of tree branches transformed to waving seaweed, bending with the rippling water. Even though I sat in my perfectly undamaged apartment, I still felt a small pang of loss. Not only of mobility and convenience, but of space, of refuge.
Spotted, molding, chipping walls; plastic bottle, potato chip bag, and rodent accessorized rails; piquant whiffs of urine or vomit that are not all too uncommon. But everyone in the subway experiences the same sensory assaults. As travelers, we are in it together. Like the funky odor the family car often takes on. It’s a familiar stink, a familiar rocking and squealing of motion.
I was relieved when I could finally return again, bounding down the steps at Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn, book in hand, ready to enjoy my half-hour ride, my productive time of underground commuting. It was like someone was handing me a ticket home. Like tasting my mother’s chocolate cake after one too many months without it. It was back. My living room, restored.
