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.
Christmas without the T this year. I’m sure it was festive. I heard they served eggnog.
I still have no plans for New Year’s Eve, which is not unusual. In fact, usually I’m in bed by ten and sleeping like a baby. See, I’m not a big fan of hordes of drunken marauders. Mind you, I have nothing against drunken marauders individually. In fact, some of my best friends are drunken marauders.
Last New Year’s Eve was poignantly pathetic. A dreadful dinner and a dreadful drink at a dreadful, deserted little Back Bay bar with a couple of friends and the dreadful friends of one of their dreadful boyfriends. I clocked out at ten, as usual.
I got on the T at New England Medical Center. The train was packed, but the crowd was fairly subdued, those who were conscious, at least. Those who were not were very subdued, which was good, because there’s nothing worse than unconscious people making a nuisance of themselves. They can be very heavy, first of all. It’s amazing how heavy unconscious people become. Dead weight. It’s also amazing how almost utterly useless unconscious people are. They’re too big to use as doorstops. Too small to make a Georgian Bureau Bookcase out of them. Chindogu is what they are. Complete and utter chindogu.
There was a young woman passed out across from me, and a middle-aged man, who was apparently not with her, kept shrugging and assuring fellow passengers that she would just ride the train back and forth all night, until she finally woke up. He seemed to think he owed us some justification for not intervening on her behalf. “She’s not going to be abducted, gang-banged, and left for dead by drunken marauders! She’ll just ride the train back and forth until she wakes up sometime tomorrow afternoon, right?” Everyone smiled politely. A handful may have nodded.
Next to her was an overweight frizzy-haired brunette with her boyfriend, I assume, who was patting her on the back, and massaging her shoulders tenderly. I couldn’t see her face, because she was slumped over with her puke-encrusted hair hanging down over it. Love those highlights, girlfriend! She was swaying back and forth, slightly, and just before I got off, he handed her a plastic barf bag (it was blue, but see-through), that she’d apparently been using for the ride. There was half a gallon of vomit in it, I’d say, and she was puking up some more. And it wasn’t even ten-thirty! I went to bed immediately. God, having mercy, created sleep.
I’m very much looking forward to this New Year’s Eve. Last year’s experience set the bar pretty high, though.
At Park this morning the big thing was to stand on the yellow line with your mates and pretend like you’re going to push them in front of the train. There was a group of young Vietnamese in gangsta drag, wearing their ball caps all cockeyed like they do. Now, that’s annoying. Why look any more moronic than you have to, is my question. And I think it’s a reasonable one. The thing that gets me is, here they’re playing Jackass on the tracks and, you know, people are trying to mind their own business, but understandably it makes you nervous.
Boys, it’s not about whether you get splattered, really. I mean, you get splattered, you get splattered. There’s plenty more where you came from. Haven’t you heard? There’s a glut. It’s more about whether or not we’re in the mood to see you get splattered. Do you ever consider that? Do you kids ever consider us?
I know the answer to that, of course. We all do. Kids that age pretend—and not very convincingly—that they’re not doing it all for our benefit, but like in the age-old adage: if a teen falls in the forest (or a T station) and there’s no one around, does he make a sound?
Anyway, it’s all fun and games until someone gets decapitated. Haven’t you kids read Bulgakov?
Later there was another of those poignant silent-screen style dramas on the red line platform at Park, on my way back home. There was a man about my age who stepped up to the very edge of the platform, leaned forward and looked down longingly at the third rail. That makes you nervous, too. I mean, when an adult does something like that this time of year. But he looked like a wiseacre. He was trying to get his girlfriend—for her sake I hope she was not his wife—to pay attention to him. They’d probably been out shopping and he was being his usual self and she’d obviously had it up to here. She was standing several feet back and refused to look at him. So he came right up to her and stood on her foot. And she still refused to look at him. Now, that’s cold. I have to admit, I started taking notes. I was impressed.
He stood on her foot and stared at her for two or three minutes, at least, and she acted like he wasn’t there. And then, when he released her, she walked away. Slowly. She sort of sauntered off and studied the transit map on the wall near the entrance to the platform. Still not giving him the time of day. I wanted to cheer.