There are two kinds of coughs you’ll hear on the T, and you can tell the difference. The first is the real thing, and we all know what that sounds like. But there is another kind of cough, referred to in the literature as a “psychogenic cough,” and most patients with it “harbor an intractable fear of serious underlying medical disease.” But these are more the people you hear coughing in church. That’s why they’re in church, because they harbor an intractable fear of serious underlying medical disease. T-riders have a different motive, of course. And we all know what it is: Keep away or I’ll spew on you! If you sit next to them they will turn to you and ack-ack at you, but they’re mostly harmless. How to react? Mock them. Ack-ack back. They may not know they’re doing it, but if you mock them they will. If you can get your friends or fellow-commuters to join in in an intervention, everyone coughing on the offending party in the same mocking way, they will be shamed and traumatized into changing their behavior! QED!
In other news, there is a big glacier outside JFK, on the Sydney Street side, of course. I mean, when you leave the station, you have to walk down about 37 flights of stairs, first of all, then under these two overpasses through an absolutely desolate, shadowed parking lot, and before you get to the street, there’s this three-feet thick ice slick that’s been there since the first snow. It’s right under the “JFK/U-Mass” sign, so I don’t think it’s a matter of whose responsibility it is to clear a path. But probably there’s some bureaucratic battle over that parcel of pavement, since the rest of the path under the overpass is clear.
Sunday I was in JP visiting a friend. I haven’t been on the orange line for awhile, and it was a very nostalgic ride there and back. I love that fake wood-panel look they’ve got going on in those orange line trains. What is it made of? Contact paper? You know that sticky stuff your grandma lined all her kitchen drawers with, for some reason. I found the pattern they used in the orange line trains here at $3.49 per 18” X 9’ roll (or it could be the Ultra Honey Oak, here, at $6.69 per 18” X 15’ roll, although I’m not sure which is the better deal—whichever isn’t is the one they chose, I’m sure). But it was probably a lot cheaper in the seventies, and bought in bulk. I think it’s time the orange line had a makeover, though. May I suggest the Hunter Gingham contact paper with a Neochrome II Soft Peach naugahyde seat covering (from www.naugahyde.com )? The Classic Fruit contact paper would also be lovely, and in keeping with an orangey theme. But I would go with Spirit Millennium artichoke naugahyde for the seat covering in that case.
Have you any ideas for an orange line makeover? Send them in, and I’ll forward them to my main man Dan. (That’s Mr. Grabauskas to you!)
Later in the day Sunday, after taking in the Ansel Adams exhibition at the MFA and having brunch on Boylston, I got on a green line train at Copley. There was a scrawny, Charlie Manson look-alike (no match for my unibomber, but still), who lit up in the train. It was a tobacco cigarette, not a joint, but still. That’s the first time I’ve ever seen that. I mean, come on. It’s just adolescent provoking behavior, isn’t it? Here somebody nobody loves making himself all the more unlovable. Can you say, cry for help?
Almost as offensive was a woman on the red-line on my way back to JFK wearing—I shit you not—flip-flops. In Boston. On December 18th. Haven’t we already been through this, people? She got off at South Station, which means she was probably on her way to the airport via the silver line, but still. I mean, even if she was on her way to Margaritaville. At least wear jellies.
I saw a poignant scene on the T this morning. This power couple, both with coffees in their mitts, got on at Andrew, I think it was. It was an already crowded train, and by squeezing into my section they made themselves a nuisance. She had her back to me, but I could see him. And he was this type—I was thinking—who people say is handsome, but who isn’t. Like Mitt Romney. Romney looks like a used car salesman who got a bucket of Brylcreem for his birthday. This guy was one of these office eunuchs that work down in the business district, totally emasculated, no sexuality whatever. So his Stepford wife got off at South Station. They parted without emotion. Then he rode to Downtown Crossing, and as he was making his way to the door, another Stepford blonde who obviously worked with him saw him and shouted, “HEY HANDSOME!” with such unwarranted and unguarded enthusiasm the dude’s butt plug probably popped right out. He muttered something barely audible in return (and it wasn’t “hey there yourself, mamacita!”) and let her go ahead, and then deliberately hesitated before stepping off himself, obviously hoping she would get lost in the crowd. I could see her through the window as she looked back, expecting to see him there, suddenly crestfallen before being swept away in the crowd, just as he had hoped. He clearly didn’t want to have to walk all the way to the office with her batting her eyes at him and showering him with false compliments.
On the last leg of my commute to “work,” on the green line from Park, I saw a man reading my op-ed piece in the morning’s Metro. He looked horrified and not a little disgusted. I could not take my eyes off him, though. I needed to know if it was what he was reading or if he always looked like that. Luckily he finished before we reached Arlington, and looked up and around him, in horror and disgust. I was so relieved.