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?