My Decent Into the Depths of Hell, or the NYC Transit System (Summer 2004)

I started the morning heated as it was, so maybe this rant is unfounded. Last night was cool and crisp following a brief yet violent thunderstorm, so I left the air off and opened my windows. This, following frying up several eggs, my apartment and my body elevated several degrees. The Weather Channel claims low 70's as today's high, chance of rain. Thinking nothing of it, I jumped into a warm shower. By the time I was finishing getting ready, I was sweating due to the lack of circulation supplemented with the added heating factors.

I exited my apartment to hit a wall of murky humidity, be it as it was, at least there was a breeze cooling my already perspiring forehead. Knowing no true relief would come until I got to the office with my two desk fans' help, I pressed on to try to catch the bus sitting at 14th and Ave A. I did, but not without effort. Predictably so, the bus was packed, standing room only. The thing about the buses is that it is only as cool as the driver wants it and lucky me our driver was Jamaican and loved basking in a sweatbox. By 2nd Ave, enough people must have complained because he turned on the air. Too little too late, the bus wouldn't cool before 5th Ave so I was SOL. Didn't matter anyway, it would take a coffin of ice to lower my body heat at this point. The forehead perspiration was uncontrollable, wiping it off with my hand and then on my pants was a fruitless struggle. My undershirt had become saturated and I was praying that it wouldn't soak through my dress shirt. Finally the bus pulled up to Irving Pl/Union Sq stop. I stumbled out of the bus and scramble to the stairs for the subway.

Swiping my MetroCard, I can see the 5 waiting at the platform. I rush to the stairs caught behind people looking for the local obviously not in a hurry. I make it to the doors just after the conductor closes them with a noticeable smirk in my direction. I was too much of a mess to consider getting worked up over this, so I blow it off and try to find the one fan on the platform. I stand under it and instead of being immersed in humid 90 degree plus air, humid 90 degree air was being blown all over my body which actually had a counter effect making me more uncomfortable. I walk to the edge of the platform looking down the track into a vast black void, no train in sight, great. My eyes glance down, a small stream of the most vial substance on earth trickles along the track. A cat-sized rat is eating an empty package of beef jerky laying on the uptown tracks. My trace is snapped by the shrill of the 4 trains breaks as it approaches the platform. Screaming break noise becomes louder as the train pulls up, a small child next to me cups his ears with his hands and looks longingly at his mother for help, she ignores him.

Suddenly the train stops and the doors open. As today would have it, I get one of the old school 4 trains which have an air-conditioning system just about powerful enough to cool a forth of a car. Not my forth.

Lucky me, the train was not too crammed. No sitting room of course, but I propped my self against the adjacent doors so as not to be surrounded by other smelly, sweaty commuters. The doors were hot, like the train had just made it back from the center of some volcanic activity. Both my shirts stick to my back, reassuring that I was "One of those guys" who looks like they didn't dry off after their shower. I try to zone out by reading a book I just started. For some reason, Jules Verne's "Journey to the Centre of the Earth" really didn't help matters. The whole issue of descending to the earth's core isn't a cooling thought. On a positive note, I was on an express. Well good and bad, good because 59th is only two stops away, bad because when I get there, I am three more flights underground than the local train and the escalator only works half the time. Gazing around at all the other commuters, I realize we are bonded in misery. I now know what Dante must have felt during his trip through the Inferno. Looking at people in anguish and turmoil, looking anything but their best, just waiting for it all to end.

Finally it did. The doors opened, the escalator was working and I was actually looking forward to the office.

I know New York is a Hell of a place, but this is just too literal.