friday night in the mta

subway stories

a cool, calm night and the car is crowded but full. Across from me there are two Shibuya Japanese girls with wrinkle-nest supertans and white eyeshadow, arms laden with classy shopping bags from pricey shops. Daddy's credit yen goes a long way in America. They are smiling, smiling happy and two boys in Fubu t-shirts are flirting hardcore with them without being gross and pushy, leaning back in their seats with arms rising up and down in the air. You're so cool, fool

Something a boy says perhaps sends one of the girls into a volley of giggles, stomping her feet up and down (she is wearing incredible high heeled hollow-soled sandals, contorting her small, ultra-tanned foot nakedly for us, on display), and the boys giggleshriek, jumping up and down and almost falling into the cuties' laps. The silliness spreads, slinkyesque, and a gigantic blue bottomed woman with incredible flopping curls shrieks, "Roach! Roach!"; almost throwing her baby stroller down the aisle to its death as she jumps in a corner trying to make herself as tight and unattackable as possible. A giant macho long haired gypsy boy pops up and hops up and down spinning on one foot beating the roach out of his hair; it flies! Its gauzy roach wings flapping as it bounces back and forth, dazed. Chaos ensues: the whole train is screaming and laughing and pounding its feet up and down on the floor like a pep rally.

"Oh my God!" a granny screams, tears rolling down her face.
"Oh my God!" the Fubu boys shriek. "Oh my God!" I yell for the sake of it, clapping my hands wildly on my thighs. "Oh my God!" we all scream at once, and we're all this close from standing up and dancing and singing and ripping our clothes off in this dreary little car hurtling into cement tombed oblivion.

One of the Shibuya girls arises, teetering, handicapped furthermore by the Prada shopping bag, runs surprisingly fast across the length of the car and stomps down hard, knee-rattling mean! ( the force travelling up her platform soles and through her knees and out of her brains in waves of invisible gas blue fire) She turns and faces us with a lopsided grin (we're too silly to realize yet we have just WON), stepping aside to reveal one very squashed, very juicy roach corpse spreadeagled beyond its limits beside a posed, tanned foot. She triumphantly struts back to her seat to our applause, and I could almost kiss her and sigh, "My hero..."