Maybe someone out there can answer me this: on the red line at Park, why does it take so long for the doors to open onto the middle platform? Does it have to do with some antiquated system of pneumatic sliding doors? Is it a security feature of red line trains? I mean, both sides open at Park, but why should the one side consistently open first? Is it not possible for them to open simultaneously? It’s very important that I have an answer as soon as possible. I’m losing sleep.

Speaking of the middle platform of the red line at Park, yesterday’s commuters were treated to the soothing samba-inflected sounds of acoustic guitarist John Patton. The buskers on the middle platform there are usually pretty good, I have to say. Mr. Patton’s guitar is magic.

My green line adventures yesterday were kind of interesting somehow, I guess. There was a blond kid with a fauxhawk onboard, and a woman who looked like a muppet. She was wearing about fifteen different types of fake fur. Like, muppet fur. Her hair was done up kinda muppety, too, and then she had this scarf that looked like she’d gone and skinned Elmo and these gloves that looked to have been made from poor old Paddington Bear’s hide. Before I moved down the car, I heard her say breathlessly to her traveling companion: “she stripped down in front of everyone!”

Then I bumped into a woman who had this look on her face like she was smelling something really awful. And I mean, really awful—if she’d turned to me and rasped “I smell dead people!” it would not have surprised me in the least, let me tell you. But I think she just always looked that way, poor dear, because sniff as I might all around her, I could smell nothing amiss. And it wasn’t me, if that’s what some of you were thinking. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays are my bath days. And no one else was holding their nose or looking similarly stricken.

She was standing above a mother of two mischievous moppets. These boys were both perfectly lovely, and so was she in what looked to be her sort of Prozac haze. The boys both had mop-tops, which are coming back, apparently. Six year olds can carry it off. They were about that, and playing with this “20-questions” gadget. Somebody got Itchy one of those for Christmas. You’re supposed to think of a word and then the gadget asks you a bunch of questions (not limited to just twenty, unfortunately), and taunts you until it has guessed the word. But after you’ve done “poop” and “booger” and “boobies” and “butt” and so on, it gets a little old. I mean, give me one of those magic eight balls any day. (Although when I asked mine if I was cool, it said, rather too unequivocally for my taste: “my reply is no.”)

Later in the day I was meeting a friend at Harvard Square. I had a few minutes to kill and hung around the newsstand there, where I saw the most exquisitely bizarre magazine: Haute Doll (”for dolls who love to shop”). Inside were slick, Vogue-like photo-spreads of dolls in haute couture doing all the fabulous things real, live people in haute couture do. Not that I would know, but I can imagine. Very creepy is all I can say. Whatever the Haute Doll Agenda is it’s way scarier than anything commies, gays, feminazis, or whoever could dream up.

As for Harvard Square, I’m not a big fan of The Pit. But if you stand there long enough you sort of get sucked in, don’tcha? There was a schizophrenic doing laps around the newsstand. He kept going around and around, having a very animated argument with himself. There was a cubby bear yacking on his cell phone so all the world could hear. If there was any doubt he had just come down off of Brokeback Mountain, it was dispelled when he started shouting detailed directions into his cell to Christopher Street, where he promised whoever was on the other end would find not one, not two, but three piano bars. Eventually a friend of his came up and handed him a little packet of crack or crystal meth or something and he went away.

That was all on the lip of The Pit. In The Pit proper were four or five of those black-clad clichés that are always hanging out there, trying desperately to make a spectacle of themselves, alas, to little or no avail. Tolerance, an indisputable good, also breeds a certain amount of inanity, let’s call it. The greater the freedom we enjoy the greater the forbearance it requires. People understand this implicitly and go about their business, for the most part ignoring these walking cries for help.

I understand the impulse that motivates them, though. In our society there is nothing as reviled and revered—and can we have the one without the other?—as the outsider. But people are mistaken if they think that simply dressing funny, talking too loud in public, and laughing too hard at their own unfunny jokes makes them outsiders. What it makes them, of course, is smack in the mainstream. No matter how many clothespins you’ve pierced your cheek with, whether it’s a mohawk or a fauxhawk, and even if your underwear is made of Elmo fur, you’re just like the rest of us. Sorry.

Still, the Pit is a pit. And I can’t help reflecting, whenever I’m there observing its denizens, on these words of Yeats: “The wrong of unshapely things is a wrong too great to be told.”

Last night at 10:03 I spotted this chick on the train from Harvard Square wearing flip-flops. December 30th and wearing flip-flops. People. I don’t know what to say. Should this person reproduce? There ought to be a law. You wonder what kind of positive reinforcement these people are getting, because they must be getting some from someone somewhere.

Sometimes I look at people like this and think, “they’re among us.” Maybe she just landed, or Scottie just beamed her down, or she just hatched out of her pod and she doesn’t understand that human beings with half a brain DON’T WEAR FLIP-FLOPS IN BOSTON AT THE END OF DECEMBER.

Yes, I saw it with my own eyes on my way home yesterday afternoon. The kid was with his sister and his papa. He was probably four, which is a little old for the oral phase. I mean, Freud said it begins at birth and lasts eight months. And the licking phase doesn’t kick in until adolescence.

Anyway, it’s funny what parenting does to you. You get totally desensitized. I mean, one thing kids do is condition you to choose your battles. Papa’s looking down at the kid licking the seatback and thinking, “well, it could be worse. He could be licking the floor, or the old woman next to him, or something.”

I went putt-putting with my brother and sister-in-law and their kids a while back. It was my nephew’s eighth birthday. He’s a handful, got ADHD and God knows what-all. So we’re eating pizza after our eighteen holes, or however many there are. By then he’s out of his mind, spinning so fast he can’t slow down. Everything becomes so immediate and urgent. He might as well be tripping.

The pizza’s fresh out of the oven, and you know what happens when you try to gobble it up when it’s piping hot like that. My nephew didn’t have the sense or simply the patience to blow on it, he just shoveled it in. Of course it burnt his tongue. So what’s he do? He spits it back out, onto the pizza we’re all eating. I mean, he was in too much of a hurry to bother with a plate of his own.

But not just once. The next bite was too hot, too, so he spit that one onto the pizza as well. And the next one. And no one seemed to even notice, or care. And that’s what happens after eight years of child-rearing. You’re like, “regurgitated pizza? Not a problem. Could be a lot worse.”

I didn’t see anything else of note on my journeys yesterday. This week’s commuter crowd seems very subdued, at least on my little route.

A NOTE TO MY GENTLE READERS: Before I begin, I have to admit something. I was waiting on a friend last night. We had dinner plans, but he wanted to go to the gym first. I thought, well, I’ll use the time to write my blog, and I did. And just as I was finishing–and this was the “Kublai Kahn” of blogs, I’m telling you–I hit something, dunno what, on the keyboard–must’ve been some combination of keys–and *poof* my IE window was gone! Vanished! Without a trace!

I’m no evil genius but I’m hardly computer illiterate. I just have big clumsy fingers, I guess. And while this rarely happens, whenever it does it’s always the masterpieces that go up in smoke. I wanted you to know that what follows is a pale, withered, anemic copy of the brilliant and spontaneous original. I feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day when he’s having that snowball fight for the umpteenth time, and trying to act all spontaneous. I thought you should know. I owe you that much.

There was a porcine young man with not unpleasing features leaving JFK just as I was getting there, screaming into his cell phone: “tell me you LOVE me!” Well, that’s one way to go about it, I guess. You know, my philosophy is, say what you want. If you love me you love me. What I hate is when you say it, and then whoever you say it to is like, “oh, um, yeah, I, um, I love you, too, um, of course, heh heh. Is it hot in here, or is it just me?” Or when women say it to you, you know what that’s about, don’t you? They just want to shame you into saying it back. If you say, “yeah, me too,” nine times out of ten they’ll be like, “then why don’t you ever say so!” And you’re like, “because you always say it first, lambkin!” And they give you that little pout, and those eyes, and they’re like, “well, that’s because I love you. If you loved me you’d say it first!”

Ah, love. It’s something different to everyone isn’t it? But if you have to beg or order someone to say it, is it really love, by anyone’s standards? Rochefoucauld, the famous 17th century French wit, once wrote, “There are people who would never have loved if they hadn’t heard others speak of love.” And that’s the truth. For most guys, a warm body on a cold night will do. Don’t tell me you love me, because then I’ll have to take you to dinner to make up for the fact I didn’t say it first. Tell me you want to have sex with me! I promise to take you to dinner sometime afterwards. One day.

That’s probably what this bloke meant, wannit? Tell me you want to blow me! That’s how most guys know someone loves them, innit? If you love me, love my mini-me!

Boy, those Greeks had it all figured out didn’t they? They had three flavors for love: philia, eros, and agape: loosely translated as friendship, sexual love, and love of God, respectively. We moderns aren’t particularly good at any of these. We’ve mastered the malignant self-love of Narcissus, but we have some work to do on the others. Personally, it’s my conviction that all true love is, in the end, agapic love. As Buber had it (to paraphrase shamelessly): God is revelation that arises from relation.

Philia is probably the truest and most enduring form of love. Agapic love is the hardest, because most people’s idea of God is as someone or something with a separate consciousness, who can’t be seen, by definition, except by schizophrenics, who can also see the devil (and sometimes the devil pretends to be God, tricky little so-and-so, and maybe God pretends to be the devil, too). But eros. Eros is the most misunderstood, I think. It is not synonymous with sex, as is often thought.

Adler gives us food for thought on the dual nature of eros. “The word that we must examine in thinking about love is ‘desire,’” he writes. “There are two modes of desire, acquisitive and benevolent, desire that leads to getting and desire that leads to giving. The word ‘love’ is misused if it is used for acquisitive desire and, in that connection, carries the connotation of sexual desire.” He goes on: “It is only erotic or amorous love that involves sexual desire and activity, but even erotic love is benevolent in its concern for the enjoyment of sex by the loved one. Sexual activity devoid of benevolent impulse is not love but lust, and lust, like greed, is a mortal sin.” Just something to chew on.

When I got to the station, there were several people milling around waiting for the buzzer or the whistle (the buzzer’s for the Braintree side, the whistle’s for Ashmont, I think). There were a couple of menchen who’d obviously never been there before. And it can be confusing. But that whistle blows, there’s no question what’s going on. Immediately everyone shuffles, zombie-like, towards the Ashmont platform. But when the whistle blew, the more neurotic of the menchen, who was wearing his yarmulke pushed forward, rather than on the crown of his head, blurted out: “that means it’s coming??” His friend, gave him a look, and shrugged. Then they trudged zombie-like down the stairs like the rest of us. At the bottom of the stairs they found a lovely and very helpful young woman to give them detailed directions to wherever it was they were going. Those menschen are clever, I’m tellin’ ya.

I was going to the gym myself. I won’t be able to go again until Tuesday. Not that it breaks my heart, but I like to keep up with it, you know. People get all lazy in the winter, because they figure they’re wearing layers and no one can see them under all those shirts and sweatshirts and sweaters and fleece pullovers and whatnot, and why not pack it on for a little extra warmth? But those are the sods that come rushing in all panicked come April, crowding up my gym, likes their blubber’s my problem, too. Got news for ya: Poor planning on your part is not an emergency on my part.

This time of year, the place is deserted. It’s wonderful. Except there always seems to be some old fart lurking in the sauna. Never seen him in the weight room, but always seems to be in that sauna, sort of lasciviously positioned like a geriatric version of the Barbarini faun.

So at the gym, over the sound system, they were playing one of those satellite radio stations that the FCC doesn’t have any regulatory authority over, apparently. I think this one was called XM radio. Maybe there are several genre-oriented stations in the XM network to choose from, I don’t know. Ever since I started with the saint john’s wort, I just listen to The Sound of Music soundtrack, over and over again, day and night. I can’t stand DJs, is my problem. I can’t stand people yammering on all the time, trying to be funny or witty or smart when they’re not. Morning radio is the worst. It’s always two blokes and a bird laughing uproariously at their own jokes. (Remember in Patrice Leconte’s Ridicule when the Charles Berling character is being instructed in the do’s and don’ts of life in the court of Louis XVI? The most important “don’t”: “Never laugh at your own jokes.” Sage advice.) But that’s on FM radio.

On satellite radio it’s two chicks on one dude, and there’s this (en)forced vulgarity. Because they can, you know, they must. Not too imaginative, but there it is. But if you have to try to be vulgar, just give it up and talk nice instead. I mean, I think the producers have a quota, because the DJs were throwing in these forced “fuck”s like they had a gun to their heads.

And then, of course, the dude was always commenting on the chick’s tits. But it was totally joyless. It was like they’d forget that the contract says every twelve minutes there have to be at least four references to “tit(s)” It was like clockwork. “Oh, by the way, it’s time to tell you your tits are looking really fuckin’ big today,” the dude would say. And the chick was like, “Yeah, my tits are so fucking big! And I’m wearing a really tight, wet tee-shirt! Hee hee hee.” It was like bad phone-sex.

Then they play this awful, awful thing by Korn, cleverly called “A.D.I.D.A.S.” (I looked it up on the web when I got home). The lyrics were “All day I dream about sex/all day I dream about fucking,” (repeat ad nauseam). OK, and? I’ve got an acronym for you: T.M.I. But seriously: you want a medal for thinking about fucking all day? The only time guys aren’t thinking about fucking is when they’re fucking. And then they’re either thinking about the grocery list, what’s on TV, or something like, “God, when is this gonna be over so I can start thinking about fucking again?”

No, the point is, it’s not authentic vulgarity. They’re trying too hard. And have you ever tried to work out to Korn. Jesus God, it’s… just indescribable. Whatever happened to ABBA??

On my way to the Fenway to buy some last minute nonesuch, I saw my waiter from Abe & Louis, where I had brunch Sunday. He was very tall and thin. Not to say cadaverous. But friendly and helpful. One member of our party of four is a little picky. I’ll eat whatever is put in front of me, I’m just happy to have something to eat, after all those years in the Romanian orphanage eating boiled cabbage three meals a day. But in dealing with my picky friend, my star waiter here not only had a can-do attitude, he told us exactly how he was going to enter her unorthodox order in the computer so that the chef would be able to fill it properly. He was like, “I’ll just punch it in as such-and-such, but substitute so-and-so for such-and-such.” TMI. But whatever. He was a good waiter.

At Park Street he had his nose stuck in a book by a writer I have seen a lot of people reading on the T: Nelson DeMille. I’d never heard of him, but a quick google search confirms that he writes crime mystery thriller type books. My waiter was reading Plum Island: “Wounded in the line of duty, NYPD homicide cop John Corey [a recurring character] is convalescing on rural eastern Long Island when an attractive young couple he knows is found shot to death on the family patio.” Happens to me all the time. I just don’t go writing all about it.

So I get on the green line train headed for the Fenway. There’s a respectable-enough-looking woman of a certain age in a fur hat sitting across the aisle. She’s reading the day’s Herald. And I’m sneaking a peak myself. There was a headline I thought was funny and kind of clever: “Left behind: Pastor’s wife kicked off airline flight.” I moved a little closer, trying not to alarm the woman in the process, but I wanted to read the short article. Well, I only got to about the middle of the second paragraph when she saw me encroaching from the corner of her eye, and abruptly snapped the paper, pulling it closer to her, and turning slightly so I couldn’t see the article anymore. Hmph. She paid a quarter for that damn paper, and she wasn’t about to have some bum on the train reading it for free!

Of course Johnny Damon’s all over the papers. I managed to score a Globe on the red line train on the way into town this morning that showed before and after shots of Johnny. People are rightly obsessed with his hair. As I’ve said elsewhere, I think he made the right decision switching sides, especially if it means he’ll finally cut his hair. Here’s what he looked like when he came to Boston in ’02. Like a perfect little gentleman. I mean, aside from the gum-chewing. He’s a handsome bloke, isn’t he? A big, handsome blokey bloke. Mmm.

With the beard (which obscured a remarkable jawline) and all the hair, some thought he bore a striking resemblance to a certain Messiah with whom you might be familiar. But recent scholarship would seem to contradict this. According to a number of sources, Christ didn’t actually have long hair. Unfortunately Pagans and Gnostics infiltrated early Christianity and spread lies about His do. And they stuck. In the 4th century AD, Epiphanius of Salamis broke the story:

“These impostors represent the holy apostle Peter as an elderly man with hair and beard cut short; some represent holy Paul as a man with receding hair, others as being bald and bearded, and the other apostles are shown having their hair closely cropped. If then the Savior had long hair while his apostles were cropped, and since by not being cropped, He was unlike them in appearance, for what reason did the Pharisees and scribes present a fee of thirty silver pieces to Judas that he might kiss Him and show them that He was the one they looked for, when they might themselves or by means of others have determined by the virtue of His long hair Him whom they were seeking to find, and thereby without paying a fee?”

Well, I’m convinced. I mean, it makes sense. And I very much like the idea of a crew-cut Christ, I have to admit. But as for the question of Damon’s Christ-likeness, what you have to ask yourself is, of course, What Would Jesus Do? I mean, if he were playing for the Sox. Would he play center field? I don’t know the answer myself. I have meditated on it. Anyone have insight?

It was rush hour when I went out, and that’s always an adventure.

Nothing much happened on the way there. On the T I sat next to a blonde who was reading The Secret Life of Bees. Do bees have such fascinating, secret lives? I mean, once I saw a documentary that showed how the chosen drone is ripped apart after inseminating the queen. In order to photograph it they had to rig up this doohickey about two meters off the ground, because that’s where the bees do it (My roommate Chuck and I saw two birds doing it on the roof across the street earlier in the summer, but I don’t know where educated flees do it). They somehow fastened the queen to this thing attached at a 90˚ angle to this two-meter pole that spun around and around, because apparently they have to be going a certain speed. There was a camera attached to capture the whole thing. It was pretty gruesome.

On the way back I was next to a guy reading The Color of Water. A whole book about the color of a colorless liquid? This is the kind of crap people are reading nowadays. There was a skinny punky-looking guy across from me reading White Noise by Don Delillo, too. He was this antisocial type.

There were a couple of gay guys in the middle of the car. They hadn’t seen each other for three years, the one was saying, because remember it was at the B52s concert in 2000? That’s how I knew they were gay. I mean, the B52s. I would have been pretty sure, but that’s what clinched it. They were talking pretty loud. There was a big black kid with a strange face who kept staring at me. I was in my favorite gray tee, the kinda tight one, and I think he was looking at my big biceps.

Then, the funniest thing happened. These three freaky sisters got on at Roxbury Crossing. Three weird-looking black women in funky clothes, and they were talking about revenging themselves on someone, a man. They came busting into the car, and the wiry one in the ratty red sweater pointed in my direction and said, “there’s some seats.” So one fat sister plopped down on my left and the other on my right, and they continued to spin out the fate of this man who had wronged one or the other (or all) of them. The one in the red sweater sat across from me, next to the black kid who was staring at them now, though none had big biceps that I could see.

Normally I suppose I would have been slightly mortified, but they were so funny and so full of life. The one in the red sweater caught my eye a couple times, and we shared one of those strange, kind, intimate moments. Then, just before my stop she asked, “do I have beady eyes?” In a very sweet, funny, earnest way. And, of course her sisters thought she was asking them, and they hastened to assure her that she not only didn’t have beady eyes but really they were bug-eyes. The truth is, she was asking me. And I looked at her and shook my head slowly but resolutely and smiled a smile only she saw, and she smiled a smile back that only I saw, and said “thank you,” in a voice nobody else heard.

When I got off I ended up racing one of the boys from upstairs home. I didn’t know it until we both ended up on the porch (I won), but it was the one whose underwear I am wearing at the moment. We share laundry facilities in the basement, see. [Note 12/22/05: I have, since this was written, been almost fully rehabilitated, and mostly wear only my own or close friends’ and colleagues’ underwear, except in extraordinary circumstances.]

He introduced himself. I think his name is Sam. He was very polite and deferential. He asked me if I liked living here. I said, it’s OK. Close to the T, I mumbled. He said, yeah, he’s only been here about a month, but he guessed he liked it so far. I wanted to ask him if I was supposed to like it, or what? I mean, it’s just a house. It’s nice to have shelter. Someplace to go at night, and when it rains.

When we parted at the head of the stairs, he said, “it was a pleasure to meet you.” That took me aback, as you can imagine. “Erm, you too, mate.” No one’s said anything like that to me in ages. Maybe never. I’ve read about such things happening, but I never thought…to me? He’s definitely a very kind of exotic-looking chap. Very round face, curly, sort of nappy hair, almond-shaped positively asiatic eyes, but blue as a Bombay Sapphire bottle, and skin as white as alabaster.

Then I met him again on the T this morning on my way back from the gym. His name is actually Tim. I got on at Back Bay, because I was all pumped up after my workout and wanted to walk down Tremont, showing off. [Note 12/22/05: I have since been almost fully rehabilitated in this department, too. I rarely wear that old gray tee (I have a blue one now), but I hardly ever stride up and down Tremont showing off my biceps, although they are even bigger now than they were two years ago.] I even thought maybe I’d drop into that Starbuck’s L– hangs out in, but when I passed it and looked in there was no one really in there worthy of my rippling musculature, and the help there is always so haughty, so in the end I didn’t.

It was a real coincidence, though, meeting Tim like that. I mean I stepped on the next to last car and sat down and there he was across from me, though I don’t think he recognized me. Wanting to avoid an awkward moment of recognition (we aren’t friends, or even acquaintances, after all, just neighbors who’ve only met just once on the front porch), I took my Globe out and pretended there was something interesting in it to read. Meanwhile he had taken out his Zippo lighter and was flipping it open in a most irritating manner. Zippos are great lighters, and you look really cool if you can take it right out of your pocket and flip it open and produce a flame in one fluid motion, and that’s what he was practicing. I thought, egad, what an obnoxious young person!

As we approached Stony Brook, I started thinking, of course I’ll have to greet him. And then we’ll have to talk all the way home, because otherwise it would be really awkward, since we were going the same place. Couldn’t be helped. He seemed surprised when I said hello as we left the car together, but was pleasant and chatty. So it was relatively painless.

There were some promising moments in this morning’s commute. The young man with the fuck-me look reading Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. And the other one, without any particular look, but one of those headband thingy’s that protect your ears from the cold while letting all your body heat escape from the top of your head, reading James Surowiecki’s The Wisdom of Crowds.

Now, if I had to pick which one was marrying material, it’s actually hard to say. The fuck-me look gets old if it’s the only one you’ve got. Bedroom eyes on the T at eight in the morning on a weekday? I don’t know what the heck that’s supposed to mean, or where it’s gonna get you. And reading Hemingway at his age (late-twenties, I’d say, and I’m feeling generous) in this day and age, well, it says something about a guy. Hemingway is for twenty-two, twenty-three on the outside. If you haven’t read him by then, it’s too late. But if you still want to, just to be able to say you have, which is understandable, because you certainly should have, then do it in private.

The other bloke’s reading was relevant and respectable enough. Surowiecki writes for The New Yorker. But as much as I’d like to believe in the wisdom of crowds, it’s the Madness of Crowds that strikes you when you’re watching one from a distance (heaven forbid you find yourself in one). I have always thought of crowds as basically mobs waiting to be incited. And those fleece ear-warmers. They pose a question. Is it because he didn’t want to muss up his hair? There was definitely product in it. Everybody’s a friggin metrosexual nowadays.

Not that I’m looking. I’m all covered in the marriage department. But if I were, like, a matchmaker. I’m always on the look-out for my less fortunate friends, you know.

So, hmm.

I get to Park, and I’m walking up the stairs and towards track 4, I think it is. There’s this woman click-clacking her heels right behind me. You know, tailgating me. And those heels. Ladies, what on earth is that about? You like that sound? That awful clack-clack-clacking? Does it make you feel…official? Or what?All I can think of is, it’s the Gestapo! Quick! Hide! Seriously. It’s very insistent, strident you might even say. It’s worse when they’re behind you, of course, but it’s also annoying when they’re not. When they’re in front of you, it’s like a friggin metronome. I start humming all sorts of shit I haven’t heard in years, depending on the rhythm they’re clacking out: the other day it was “Do-Re-Mi” from the friggin Sound of Music. I had no control over the selection—that’s just what she was clacking out with her heels. But it could’ve been worse—and has been in the past. Still, then you’ve got that song in your head for the rest of the day, know what I’m sayin’? Feel like you’re gonna bust out in show tunes at the office, or something. Get your ass fired. All because of that chick in the click-clacking heels at Park Street Station.

Then a train pulls in and heads for the very end, but you’ve got plenty of time at Park, there’s really no need to run, and, as I’ve said before, you’re only humiliating yourself when you do. So there was a guy who saw the train pull in, and takes off running right along the yellow line, kinda flailing his arms a bit, too, and he comes up behind me—I’m moseying along, you know—I don’t have a care in the world since I started taking this Saint John’s wort—1800 mgs a day, and you’d be singing “Do-Re-Mi” all day, too, let me tell you. So he comes up behind me—a grown man, mind you—and mumbles, “get outta my way!” and scurries ahead to be the first to get on the train and scuttle to a free seat. The way he said it wasn’t to me, really, and it wasn’t in a nasty tone of voice, either. It was like I was a figment of his imagination, is all. It was like I was an obstacle in the video game of life. “My Life” for X-Box. If he’d had a joystick I’d have been toast.

So I moseyed along and got on the same train—with plenty of time to spare, and my self-respect intact. And I decided, well, I’m gonna find this guy and, I don’t know, like, congratulate him on catching the train, or something. You know, like, “Hey, guy, good job! You made it!” But when I found him, all I could do was smile at him, kind of knowingly. He had no idea what I knew, though.

Later, on my way back to Dorchester shortly after noon, I was down on the red line platform at Park. I had taken a leisurely stroll through the Common. The ice-skaters were out, and the song “Last Christmas” was playing. I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to ice-skating music. Waltzes only. Maybe an occasional Mazurka—by Chopin. I don’t want to be out there ice-skating to Wham. Sorry. So then it’s in my head (thanks to this friggin Saint John’s wort), and it just goes crazy in there, making minced meat of my mind! So I’m standing on the platform at Park and suddenly I realize it’s totally morphed into that song, “Nobody” that NOBODY’s heard since 1982! And I’m on the T platform. And what am I to do with this…revelation?

It was getting pretty crowded, too. But it wasn’t at critical mass yet. You know, how close people can stand to you and still respect your little caucasian chalk circle is totally relative to how many other people are on the platform. You’ll notice if there only two people on the platform, they will give each other a wide berth, at least six feet, if not sixty. But you get a few more, and people feel it’s socially acceptable to stand closer together, and it is, but there’s a formula. An algorithm. I don’t know what it is, but I sure can feel it when it’s still not crowded enough for someone to be two feet from me but they stand two feet from me anyway. And it’s like, “get out of my airspace!” And you know what I’m talking about. I know you do.

One last thing I saw on my way home (WARNING: I feel a rant coming on). After an interminable (23 minute) wait at Park: a proud mama and papa with a baby in a pram. Papa had a green Mohawk and was wearing a wicked gnarly leather jacket with the inscription “Stink of Oblivion” or something in Gothic script on it, with green flames and ghouls all over it. I noticed Mama first because she had several tattoos. On her face. People. Please. Later when I saw papa, he did, too, of course. I mean, obviously they met at the tattoo parlor. It was love at first sight. “I knew he was the one for me when I saw that spider web tattoo on his chin and ‘Rot in Hell’ written across his forehead!” She had a tattooed teardrop under her left eye. She was also wearing his cock-ring though her nose.

Everyone tried to ignore them, and rightly so. People who impose their face-tattoos on the rest of us should be ignored. I mean, they’re not the ones who have to look at them. We are. And then they have these looks on their faces, like, “why is everyone staring at us—what is everyone looking at?” AT YOUR FRIGGIN FACE TATTOOS. What do you think? I mean, don’t go out and get your face tattooed and act all surprised people are staring at you, some in horror, some in disgust or amusement. You brought it on yourself. No sympathy.

It’s like transvestites. I like a good old fashioned, no-holds-barred, balls-out transvestite as much as the next guy. One who you don’t dare talk back to for fear of being bitch-slapped. But occasionally you see a man in a dress and make-up out on the street, or at the drugstore, or what-have-you, taking his transvestitism for a test-drive, or whatever. But he’s still self-conscious, looking around in fear, thinking, “Oh God, everybody knows!” Well, of course everybody knows. But it’s not our fault you’re a poor excuse for a transvestite, is it? If you’re gonna go out and do it, BE FABULOUS! It’s all in the attitude. The world is a stage, but nobody likes a bad actor. People throw rotten fruit at you. You get booed off. You gotta convince us. Seduce us. Don’t expect us to applaud you for wearing a wig and pumps or for your stupid face tattoos. Big yawn. If you’re going to make a permanent spectacle of yourself, half-measures don’t cut it.

Anyway. I love all humanity, of course. Live and let live, I say. But if you’re going to live, then live, for the love of Pete. Schlubs come in all shapes and sizes, and tattoos or wearing women’s panties won’t make you any more or less of one.

So, literally weeks after the first dusting of snow, the chairs, boxes, and pylons marking those precious parking spots as “saved” are still out. As I said before, what bugs me, personally, is not so much that people do it the day of a snow storn, after they’ve labored to dig out their vehicle, thus clearing a spot, but that even well after the entire street is cleared they continue to claim that spot. This shows their true motives and mentality. They just feel entitled to a spot, period. And a little snow gives them a perfect excuse to claim it in perpetuity. You know, weather really brings it out in people. You want to see someone’s true nature? Lock ‘em out of the house in a downpour. Or lock ‘em out of the car in the cold. Then you’ll really know what you’re dealing with. Anyway, given the ridiculousness of the whole “space-saver” thing so early in the season and after barely a dusting of snow, I was enormously gratified to see on my walk home from JFK that someone had gotten fed up and done something about it, even if it was a little OTT.

The picture shows what’s left of the chair someone had set out to lay eternal claim to “their” spot. Actually, there were several more parts of the “space-saver” strewn about on the lawn of the house nearby, a bit hanging from the fence, and some other bits lying about here and there, in I’d say about a twenty foot radius from ground zero.

This was about a block from my place. Folks on my street are smarter than the average, or have learned from experience not to use materials that are too easily splintered into a million pieces by irate neighbors who get home from work before they do and aren’t Darwinian enough by nature or nurture to have saved a spot for themselves. My neighbors favor plastic or metal “space savers” that can’t be blown to bits except with the aid of, say, a Howitzer.

Do I need a special license for one of those?

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.

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