Monsters, Inc.

subway confessionals.

one of the odd things i miss about new york is the subway. crazy ray, screaming about how jesus saved him from his crack addiction on the f train at 7:30 in the morning was as essential to waking up for high school as coffee was.

since i went home for fwt i got to ride the subway into work three days a week.

and i cannot believe i forgot to recount some of my favorite tales. here are a few:

one:

my friend from college and her boyfriend share a love for r. kelly’s ‘trapped in the closet’. they don’t think its good, they think its funny. last term she shared this delightful example of rap gone wrong with me, and we bonded over it.

even without this context i think the story is funny on its own.

i was riding the subway home after work one day, listening to my i-pod. i have those in-ear-semi-sound-canceling-ear-buds, so when my music is on, i can’t hear much else.

a man got on the subway at delancey with a boom box. thats right. a boom box. no i’m serious. really. this guy clearly thought it was the 80s. i took note of this and chuckled to myself, because this was really weird.

it gets better.

after i initially saw him i stopped paying attention, thinking about my plans for later. then i started noticing people on the train looking in his direction with very uncomfortable expressions on their faces. still i did not pay too much attention. when the song i had been listening to was over, i could hear what was going on on the train, though it was muffled. and the first thing i heard was ‘oh my goodness, i’m about to climax!!!!!!!’, which is one of the ridiculous lines from r. kelly’s ‘trapped in the closet’. i immediately pulled out my ear buds and looked over.

the guy was sitting a few seats down on the opposite side of the car. he had the boom-box blasting ‘trapped’ as loud as he could. his eyes were lowered and he was swaying and tapping his fingers and feet to the music. even more disturbing was the fact that he was humming along drunkenly, saying some words louder and more clearly than others, mumbling the rest, yelling some of the more intense moments of the rap opera, all while drooling a bit.

perhaps the strangest part of this whole thing was that he was dressed in a really nice suit. like really nice.

everyone on the train was staring at him and looking very uncomfortable. and i was choking on laughter because it was just too strange a coincidence. i got off the train before him, but i still can’t help but wonder where the fuck he was going.

the best parts of ‘trapped in the closet’:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBdapcN7608&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxjEh_GuSlw&feature=related

b:

one morning i was going to work, again listening to my i-pod. as i have mentioned before, i’m really klutzy, add exhaustion and a moving train, and i’m pretty shaky when it comes to walking. i was walking though the train, which was pretty crowded, when i accidentally bumped a woman’s leg, causing her to drop one of dozens of shopping bags she was surrounded by. she was much older and very unkempt.

i stopped and started to apologize, reaching for the bag when she looked at me and began to scream. ‘boo! boooo! bow to the queen of slime! queen of filth! booooo! muck! grime! crap! booo! booooo!’

i jumped back and then realized that she was yelling the speech the old crone yelled at buttercup in the princess bride. but i was too terrified to process it. so i apologized again loudly and switched to the next car. i took a minute to calm down and then i started laughing uncontrollably, because it was just too unreal.

iii:

this one is not from fwt. this one was from my freshman year of high school. i live in brooklyn, and my parents were/are pretty over protective. since i went to school within walking distance of my house, i didn’t ride the subway alone until i started going to high school in the city.

while i was perfectly capable, and told my parents it was easy, for the first few weeks of high school, taking the subway alone was so cool, but also nerve-wracking.

so about a month in, i was still pretty new to it. one morning i was transferring to the b train. i got on and looked around for an open seat, hoping to finish some math homework. the car was not crowded, but all the seats were taken and there were some people clustered around the pole at the end of the car i had entered. i looked at the other end of the car and saw the outside seat of a two seater open. so i eagerly walked to the other end and went to sit down. when i got to the seat i stopped short.

the guy sitting in the window seat with his back to me was wearing a hospital gown, and nothing else. no shoes, and judging from the opening in the back of the gown, no shirt or underwear. he was very thin, kinda smelly, and he had a hospital band around his wrist. his forehead was pressed against the window and he was drawing circles on the glass. perhaps the scariest thing was there was red stuff splattered all over the gown. looking back, i’ve decided to give this guy the benefit of the doubt and say that there is a good chance that it was ketchup.

but still. i mean really.

i remember looking over at the woman sitting closest to him on the three seater, she looked up at me, her mouth tightly closed. she slowly closed her eyes, and shook her head a little, which said to me: ‘just walk away. just walk the fuck away before its too late’.

so i slowly backed up and switched cars. i was still shaking a little when i got to school. partially from laughter, mostly from shock.

i can’t wait to get back to new york this summer and collect some more experiences.

See Post tags #nyc #strange #subway #r kelly #trapped in the closet #princess bride #mental patient

Dear The MTA,

Thank you. Thank you for making me miss the Super Secret Comedy Show at the UCB tonight, which I had been looking forward to all week. Thank you for making it take 45 minutes to get from 9th Street 7th Ave to Jay Street Metro Tech. Because that totally makes sense.

Suck my big black cock.

Love, Manderz.

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See Post tags #mta #subway #new york #f train #park slope #jay street #ucb #super secret comedy show #suck a dick