Author’s note: For 10 months I traveled to work in New York City from my home in southeastern Connecticut. Notice I used the word “traveled” and not “commuted.” The difference, to me, is mileage and duration. My daily “commute” was three hours each way, including a 45-minute drive, an hour-and-40-minute train ride, and subway rides across and uptown. Occasionally, I took notes on the people sitting around me on the train. What follows is the third of several stream-of-consciousness entries I made in an untitled journal.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

“How long until the train is above ground?”
Maybe he’s waiting for daylight to throw himself off.

My personal space is of no concern to him. I’m using an eight-point font because he’s watching me type. He didn’t mind being in physical contact while he dressed and ate his bagel, half of which fell from his lap onto the floor.

“Should I pick it up and eat it?” I could see him thinking. Part of me wanted him to do just that. It would have been as good an excuse as any to lose control of my judgment.
Why on earth does he not move a bit to his right? Does it not bother him that we’re uncomfortably close to each another? It does me. He’s one of these people who cannot sit relatively still. His every fidget invades my personal space. I hope he can read this fine print: I’m going to lose my temper the next time you touch me.

Maybe I ought to increase the font size of the previous sentence.
The gentleman sitting across from the man next to me is abiding by the understood rules of commuter etiquette. He is sitting almost sideways with his legs together, allowing my would-be victim to spread his like Sen. Larry Craig. Indeed, this insensitive bastard’s got a “wide stance.” He’s broken every plane of space demarcation with his legs and arms, if not his nosy eyes.

He is listening to music on his iPod, like so many others on this godforsaken train.

He just felt the need to rub his nosy eyes with his palms, pushing his eyeglasses to the top of his head to do so and pushing against my right arm in doing so.

It is my birthday today. I am 38. I get a wish, don’t I?

Indeed, one wish, though it’s supposed to remain a secret as a requirement of its “coming true.”

Now the asshole is whistling softly. Does he know that he’s driving me to the brink of madness? Does he understand that every man has a breaking point? I have never acted on my violent thoughts. I am too smart for that. Still, if I could have one wish on this day …

But we’re keeping those thoughts private, aren’t we?

Yesterday I missed the train I usually catch because someone on the subway required medical attention.

I congratulated myself, literally, for taking the situation in stride. I am not in such a hurry that another’s suffering is an imposition.

Were the man sitting next to me to suffer a grand mal seizure, massive heart attack, or stroke, however, I would find myself in the throes of schadenfreude.

He is asleep now, his legs akimbo, head back, mouth wide open.

I am fantasizing about elbowing him in the throat.

Finally. I am typing now in a 16-point font. The train stopped and many people got off allowing me to change seats. I am five rows away from the man now. There is no one sitting immediately next to me. I can feel an internal pressure subsiding.

Larry. That is what we will call the unevolved commuter, after Sen. Craig and his “wide stance.”

We are crossing a train bridge and have been above ground for over an hour. Larry did not force open the train doors and hurl himself to the water below.

Would they have stopped the train? Probably. Passengers would have been interviewed. The authorities would have wanted to spend some time with me, trying to divine some insight into Larry’s state of mind, behavior, and disposition.

“At first I thought he was some kind of paranoid freak,” I’d have told them. “He had an accent of undetermined origin. I didn’t hear enough to make an educated guess. He spoke only once, to ask as we were leaving Grand Central Terminal, ‘How long until the train is above ground?'”

I will get off this godforsaken train now and drink a few martinis. Larry will be in my thoughts.

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