COINAGE & KARMA. I got a free ride yesterday from JFK and I still don’t know why, but I wasn’t gonna ask. The token lady was outside her little booth, standing at the open gate, and I had my dollar out to get my token, but I guess she didn’t want to go back into her little booth to get me one just then. I consider it karma for a wait I had a couple years ago on the orange line, for which I wrote an email to the MBTA to get my fare reimbursed, and was told to go fuck myself.

THE EYES HAVE IT. I have definitely noticed that now that we’re officially into Spring, people are perking up a little. There’s been more eye contact out there in the last few days than there’s been in the past six months put together. People are funny. It’s still tentative, sometimes slightly teasing, rather curious than cocky at this point.

I spent many years in Budapest, and people there always make eye contact, and often stare brazenly on the subway. The staring used to bug me, but you get used to it. The eye contact on the street always gave me something to think about, though. On the one hand, it gave every outing an air of possibility, because each little interaction was a tale of its own, pregnant with possibility–visions of romance and violence, fantasies of intrigue–where did she come from? Where is he going? Was that an invitation in her eyes? Was that a threat in his? That’s what I have always loved about city life–that’s what’s missing from the suburbs. Fact is, in the suburbs, even if you make eye contact it’s in a familiar and thoroughly domesticated setting, like the supermarket or the post office, or the drive-thru from the safety of your car–and lacks that primal frisson of connection—and that vertiginous moment of “right now, if I look again, everything could change. Right now if I don’t look away, everything will change.”

Returning to Boston, I found it bugged me that you’d be passing somebody on the street and you’d be looking at them and they’d be looking at you, but you’d get about to where they were in focus, and they’d shift their gaze to the sidewalk. This is before there was any possibility of making real eye contact, mind you. Of course, in primates, the sustained gaze is a sign of dominance, while avoidance is a submissive or deferential gesture.

But here it seemed a sort of wholesale conflict-avoidance. The fact that the potential interaction was aborted seemed also to argue that people you encounter on the streets of Boston, for the most part, feel that conflict is the most likely outcome of interaction, at least with strangers on the street. Which is not so surprising, seeing as Boston is a city with a population widely stratified along social and economic lines. There also seems to be a lot of self-segregating due to race, class, and age, which is not so unusual, either. I think there’s probably more eye contact amongst strangers in cities that are racially and economically less stratified, more homogeneous.

Of course, psychologists and sociologists have a lot to say about these things. Scientists at the University of Wisconsin –Madison studying autism found that “in autistic subjects, the amygdala — an emotion center in the brain associated with negative feelings — lights up to an abnormal extent during a direct gaze upon a non-threatening face.” It could be that Bostonians have hyperactive amygdalas. Only compulsory mass MRIs can tell us for sure.

In New York City, in the days after 9/11, some psychologists-about-town, and at least one journalist(“gawker” Alex Kuczynski) noticed something: “In acts described by psychologists and sociologists as subliminal bonding consistent with wartime, instead of averting gazes when a stranger stood close, many New Yorkers made eye contact. The cultural historian Neal Gabler, who walked Manhattan’s streets for three days after Tuesday’s attack, said that New Yorkers have always cultivated the blank face. “It is an immunity mechanism, an emotional tax that you pay when you live in New York City,” he said. “Now, people have left it behind and are looking at each other with a different kind of civility, looking for some kind of contact.”

Kuczynski quotes Dr. Gordon Bower, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, on the result of millions of years of evolution in facial expression: “We are now able to pass on an emotional contagion, where one sad person can through their body and facial language pass on sorrow and grief to hundreds of other people,” he said. “It is an empathic, imitative response that even little children have.” Indeed, eye contact is so elemental even newborns seek it out.

But, yes, there are real dangers—but mostly inconveniences—associated with eye contact. I can’t deny it. I remember when I lived in Portland, Oregon. There was this big pockmarked homeless Indian in my neighborhood. I was working nights and he used to hang out in a doorway on my way to the bus stop. He was usually three sheets to the wind by the time I was getting to work. He was always very aggressive, demanding money or cigarettes, and because of his usual state of inebriation and his formidable stature, I found him threatening. I crossed the street to avoid him when I could. Whenever he accosted me I flashed him a look and grunted something. But one night I decided to just ignore him completely. This is something a lot of people do with beggars and bums on a crowded city street, but the less crowded it is, the more likely you are to provoke more of a reaction by ignoring them than if you just go ahead and acknowledge them. This was definitely the case with the pockmarked Indian. He flew into a rage, cursing me, throwing an empty bottle, shouting “Hey! HEY! I said ‘HEY!’” Demanding I acknowledge him. I didn’t. I hurried off to the bus stop, and made a note to try a different route from then on out.

Since that unpleasant incident, however, I always make it a point to acknowledge beggars, but I still don’t give them money. For many of mendicants it’s kind of a “gotcha!” game. If they can catch your eye, even for an instant, you lose, and owe them a buck, or whatever. This may be because of the empathy that eye contact seems naturally to engender. But I’ve been on skid row myself and never resorted to begging, so I feel like my empathy for the situation they’re in does not preclude a certain lack of sympathy for the solution they seem to have come up with.

Another danger in the city is that it seems like it’s mostly crazy people who aggressively seek out eye contact. I passed a mischievous-looking guy near the Pru yesterday, and knew I was in for something if our eyes met (but probably even if they didn’t). All it took was a glance as he was passing, and he barked: “John Lennon! Imagine!” at me. I laughed, and without breaking my stride, shouted back: “Double Fantasy, baby!” and passed without incident. He shouted over his shoulder back at me: “You got a fat wallet!” But what he took for a wallet was actually my leather-bound Moleskine notebook, which I often keep in my back pocket.

IN OTHER WORLDS. Anyway, at JFK there were two Asian students, one looked like one of those happy fat Buddhas, talking with great enthusiasm about some computer role-playing game. The whole way to Park Street. You know how people who are really into that sort of thing are. I mean, they can bang on forever about the different characters, their morphology, and their magical qualities. And listening to them, you’d swear it was all very real.

At Broadway, it probably was, an interesting character got on. He looked like he was maybe a Vietnam Vet, wearing what looked almost like a sort of paramilitary uniform. He had on those strangely-fitted pants your school custodian used to wear, the ones that were made out of indestructible rayon. Sensible shoes. A black SWAT-like vest, with some sort of walkie-talkie-like devise attached that would issue bursts of static at fairly regular intervals, prompting him to minutely adjust the volume with controlled competence. He wore a black baseball cap with the emblem of the Dept. of Public Safety Texas Rangers on it, pulled down so low you could not see his eyes, and, in fact, his bearded face was completely obscured. He may have been wearing Unibomber shades, too. Still, I felt like he was on our side, somehow.

Watching him, I thought, aside from the fact that his trousers are too short, and are exposing his white and red-striped (but matching) tube socks, he’s in an absolutely airtight world of his own construction there. OK, to some extent we all are, but his was hermetically sealed, with its own set of signs and symbols intelligible to none but him.

Then, the next stop, a mother got on with four little boys, all around fivish, sixish, sevenish. I think three were hers, because they looked just like her. And they were all lovely. Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Squirrely, but in a Beatrix Potter kind of way. The crazies shrank from them immediately, of course, but the boys themselves were so completely good-natured and innocent, they didn’t shrink back from the crazies.

You could tell riding the T was this big adventure for them. And they were bold explorers, watching the goings on with fearless, utterly unselfconscious, good-natured curiosity. And genuinely cute kids are few and far between, let me tell you. But all four of them were delightful.

10,000 JOANS.After the gym I dropped into the Boston Public Library. There’s an exhibition, 10,000 Joans, upstairs in the McKim Building through June 15th. The exhibition, consisting of Joan of Arc memorabilia I guess you’d call it, hints at something, but with no program, brochure, or guide accompanying it, and very little explanatory signage, you’re left to sort it out on your own. There are guided tours, and I’m interested enough in the subject matter to take time out for one. (The exhibition’s title is a bit misleading, though. The number of Joans on display is in the hundreds, not thousands. I think the ten thousand figure comes from the complete collection, impossible to display, obviously, all at once, in the gallery space available.)

Because, truly, the story of Jeanne d’Arc is such a compelling one on so many levels: religious, yes, but cultural and political even more so. Americans don’t always get the deep, enduring significance of national saints in Europe. Sainte Jeanne is, of course, patron saint of France, and as such a symbol of French history and identity on some levels. Does the exhibition explore this? I couldn’t tell.

One thing the exhibition hints at is the incredible appeal and the richness of the material devoted to her story. Up to the present day. But here again, an exhibition of this size can’t even hope to scratch the surface. It did not include any reference to the French military’s helicopter Carrier that bears her name, Jacques Dror’s distinctive Art Nouveau-inflected church in Nice (that has been nicknamed “the meringue” by local critics), or depictions of her by cheeky French artists Pierre et Gilles. This is partly a limitation of an exhibition of an idiosyncratic private collection rather than a more systematic exploration of any certain theme. As a collection of artifacts it’s interesting enough, I guess.

One of my favorite books that takes Joan of Arc as its subject is Michel Tournier’s Gilles et Jeanne. By the way. In fact, I’d recommend about anything by Tournier for a good read.

My, but this has turned into some kind of lengthy discourse, hasn’t it? I will have to save my observations of my orange line journey home for another time. Until then, au revoir, mes petites grenouilles.

I have been trying to keep my bad mood to myself these past few days. I tend not to want to, like, inflict it on innocents. But obviously your mood colors your perception of things. I get in one like this, the world starts looking like something from a James Ensor or Otto Dix painting. Which is what it really does look like, I’m sure, only most the time I’m willing to overlook it.

Today it wasn’t quite as bad as all that, but it was still ridiculous. People looked like something out of a Dickens Materpiece Theater miniseries. Like from this latest one, Bleak House. They looked like they should have names like Dedlock and Bucket, Smallweed and Skimpole and Snagsby and Mrs. Pardiggle. I’d much rather they looked like characters from F. Scott Fitzgerald or Hemingway. You know, with names like Jake (everyone in Hemingway was named Jake) and Nick and Daisy. Instead you get Hortense there in those disturbing pea green leggings and Little Esther in her grubby uggs.

And on my way home, a genuine Bumble the Beadle sitting right across from me. I mean, I got on at Downtown Crossing, and there’s this rotund Level III on the other side of middle age with creepy seventies-style sex-offender glasses and a disarmingly windswept pompadour sitting across from me digging into a bag of popcorn, like he’s watching me like I’m a blue movie. Seriously.

I guess I’m as bad as the rest, when it comes to being looked at. Sometimes I like it, but sometimes I don’t. It depends on who’s looking, and how. I don’t know if every society and civilization has some taboo about looking. I mean, I think there’s probably some version of the evil eye in every culture, but the evil eye is about looking with envy at someone.

There’ve been a number of cases recently about looking. That seems to be the whole justification for the military’s DADT policy. Soldiers don’t want to be ogled in the showers, like ogling ever hurt anybody. The internet is another thing–there are people, like in the Big Brother reality show, who consent to be watched 24 hours a day, even by night-vision cameras. They seem to have embraced life in the panopticon.

But it’s the invisible audience that emboldens them. Unseen is the key. Can you imagine Big Brother (or any of these reality shows) with a live studio audience? It would defeat the purpose, wouldn’t it? Still, there are those for whom even an invisible audience is anathema.

Back in 2002, according to the New York Times, a federal judge in Chicago ordered a group of individuals and video companies to pay more than $500 million to 46 athletes who were filmed in college without their knowledge by cameras hidden in locker rooms and showers. The lawyer for the “victimized and embarrassed” (and now millionaire) athletes (who were, of course, granted anonymity by the courts) claimed that the tapes had been sold as pornography. “They clearly were trying to appeal to people watching these films for sexual satisfaction.” Each was to receive a cool eleven million— $10 million in punitive damages and $1 million in compensatory damages —for their trouble, which makes them all tied for the best-paid porn star in the history of porn.

And since the advent of the internet there have been numerous bans on camcorders at high school athletic functions, because, as one soccer mom explained a few years ago to the Guardian, video of their kids could end up on the internet, and some sicko could… well, you know, use it for private, untoward purrposes. The child and his or her parents may never know. Here the image is the victim. The image is our doppelgänger. But once unleashed on the internet, it’s on its own.

I just think it’s interesting, the power of looking.

And I was feeling it, with this creepy old Level III looking at me like in those old cartoons where someone’s starving and they look at someone else, who suddenly turns into a giant fried chicken leg, or a big ol’ T-bone steak or something. That’s what I felt like sitting there across from him. Like a giant slab of meat.

Which is why I’d just spent an hour in the gym. Which is the irony of it, I guess.

WOW. What a spectacularly depressing day. Much more depressing than the 24th. To hell with what Dr. Arnall says. But it’s my own fault. I stopped taking my St. John’s Wort when I was in Florida, because you don’t have to worry about Seasonal Affective Disorder when it’s sunny and warm and wonderful out. But I started again today. I was gonna try life in Boston without it, because I’m really too lazy to be popping pills, but it’s just too depressing not to. It’s like The City of the Undead out there. But you know how zombies usually come out after dark? It was right around noon when I found myself in a train-full of ‘em. But, to be honest, I fit right in.

My favorite T-zombie of the day was the drunken bum in the big, puffy Eagles jacket. He was pretty pimped out, but then there’s this shrunken head sticking out of that big, puffy jacket, and on closer inspection there were a lot of bodily fluids all over it. He was ripe, the reek of malt liquor and stale smokes, but his essence was mixed with the scent of cold rain, so it wasn’t unbearable. He was just riding from station to station, looked like. He got on at Andrews, got off at Broadway. I saw him sit down on a bench and take out one of those handmade cigarettes–you know the ones. I call them Medley 100s. Because they’re made from the tobacco of hundreds of butts painstakingly gathered over hours, days, weeks, and all rolled into one.

Then there was this other T-zombie who wasn’t a bum, but was painstakingly dressed like one. I think he must have been a student. A fashion geek. He was worried his hair didn’t look greasy enough, and kept licking his palm and slicking it down.

The other day I saw a very good-looking, well-dressed buppie around my age picking his nose on the T. It wasn’t this quick, sort of surreptitious swipe you see occasionally. It was brazen, almost defiant. But what I admired most about the gesture was his technique. He used his pinkie finger, which gave the whole procedure a refined, even dainty air, making the activity seem almost cultured.

Of course we have laws—in the form of social taboos—meant to discourage rhinotillexis (the clinical term for nose-picking). In fact, we have taboos against all such extractions and bodily emissions. Anything that comes out of the body, from mucus to menstrual blood, from saliva to semen, even our exhalations are taboo. Solids, fluids, gasses, doesn’t matter. (See Wm. Ian Miller’s The Anatomy of Disgust for an interesting, if occasionally misguided, discussion of all of them—I have to disagree with his conclusion that semen is the most polluting bodily substance, when it’s well-known all traditional societies have explicit taboos for menstrual blood, and very few have any such taboos for semen—but I have discussed this elsewhere).

At any rate, this much is clear: anything that’s been inside somebody else, we don’t want to have much if anything to do with. With pretty good reason, I would say. Especially on the T.

Now I am not in the practice of discussing rhinotillexis ordinarily, but you knew it had to come up here at some point. Let me be very clear about this: while I do not condone nose-picking, I understand that it is sometimes necessary. I know it seems, in some cases, the most efficient and effective manner of extracting dried mucus, which may be obstructing nasal passages. But beware: it can be dangerous, too. According to the experts at damninteresting.com:

“If the skin inside the nose is broken while picking away, the veins in that region are situated in such a way that sometimes an infection can migrate inward to the base of the brain and inhibit the blood flow, a serious condition known as cavernous sinus thrombosis. This condition can also be caused by squeezing zits on or around the nose. Because of these risks, the triangular area of the face from the corners of the mouth to the bridge of the nose is referred to in the medical community as the ‘danger triangle of the face.’”

And of course, regardless of its efficacy, efficiency, or the strange, inexplicable pleasure and pride people seem to get from producing all manner of bodily substances and noxious emissions, no one wants to see you do it. It can have a negative impact on your social standing. Some adults, perhaps because they were too enthusiastically encouraged in their potty-training days, still seem to think there is something marvelously fascinating or funny about their bodily functions. All I can say is it’s a pity your fondest childhood memories took place on the potty. It is a very fine line, parents. Encourage your children to dispose properly of their bodily waste, but do it in a businesslike way. To be sure, mastery is a praise-worthy accomplishment, but it’s not like winning the World Series. Calm down.

As always, there is a larger issue. Knowing the negative impact of public rhinotillexis, why on earth do otherwise respectable people, who obviously put a premium on appearances, do it where they are sure to be seen? It’s the paradox of public spaces at work again. People feel liberated in their assumed anonymity to do things that they would not do in front of anyone they knew. This, too, is a social problem of epidemic proportions, and our society encourages it. With ipods and a host of products that force the private into the public realm, and subordinate public mores to private whims, people have forgotten what manners are for.

Think of that horrifying ad from Amp’d Mobile where this geeky guy with a foreign accent’s on the bus, and he’s controlling everyone. He points to a big black guy and a skinny little old man and says, “you and you: fight!” They go at each other. Next he turns to a skinny white guy sitting with a boombox on his lap, and says, “you: turn the radio up!” And the guy turns it up. Then he turns to a black woman with a big bottom. “You: shake your junk!” She gets up, grabs a pole and shakes her ass. He turns to two conservatively dressed women. “You two: make out.” And, of course, they go at it with gusto. The message: “Have the power to entertain yourself.” God help us.

But this isn’t really so much of a stretch–you already see it to some extent in the way people behave in public, as if those around them are somehow less real than they themselves are. If they could control them for their own entertainment they surely would.

So what does this have to do with picking your nose in public? Well, we’re as real as anyone else in your little world, and we don’t want to see it any more than they do. So cut it out.

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.