The Meticulations* of the Subway
2
She brushed past me like she was scuffing the lint from my coat. Our bodies pressed against each other momentarily and there was that long, lingering rub. Her exquisite scent was diluted by the fetid mixture of so many other smells that I barely noticed it, but it was like a fishhook that tugged at my nostrils. The subway was crowded. People were pressed and rubbing against each other in every direction, jostled from side to side, bucked forward and back. There was never a steady moment while the subway was in motion.
I tried to turn enough to see her but I caught only a glimpse of long brunette hair. Heads bobbed between us, shoulders banged together. The noise of the subway roaring ahead obliterated any other sound. Even the coughing of someone next to me was muted by the rush of steel upon steel.
No one saw anyone else. There was only the glimpse of angles and profiles, portions of people. Just to find a place to stand was good fortune, to find some unobstructed view of anything was only fleeting. Hang on, try to flow with the momentum of the car only to find yourself jerked back into a crowd of bodies as each stop arrived. Then the acceleration again that swept you into another group like the undertow of the sea as the car lunged ahead.
I looked again for her, but she was gone, vanished. I had no idea if she got off at the last stop or if she had just disappeared into the abyss of humanity. This was the morning rush hour and it felt like falling down a funnel that dripped human beings into a container of glass that was smudged and opaque. It was as if escape would never happen. But, it always did – somehow – when the doors opened at the next stop.
People surged toward the doors like snow being pushed by a plow. Great masses of strangers, dressed in every way that could be imagined – colors blurred by movement, sizes twisted together like pretzels, hair and hats askew, motions knotted, streaked, mixed discordantly – each pushed forward while others stepped into their place.
I moved closer to the exit. The next stop was mine. I could feel it by the rumble of the tracks beneath my feet, the smells of the neighborhood businesses, the rattle and squeal of the car as it approached 44th Street. Then the long sway forward as we pulled to a stop.
I grumbled my way forward like a bear in a pack; a buffer of movement ahead, others pushing persistently from behind. I could smell the odors of disembarking as new, pungent, outside air mixed with old, stagnant, inside air, and I felt the thrill of emancipation as my pace quickened and the forced familiarity between me and the others became estrangement again.
*meticulations – (coined) the act or process of describing minute details about events or experiences.
by Carl Conrad