Manhattan-Bound C Local Train, 9:30am on December 11th, 2017
Today, at the 42nd Street Port Authority Bus Terminal, a man tried to detonate a homemade pipe bomb in an underground passageway, injuring three people, as well as himself. No one around me seems alarmed or scared. Frustration, exhaustion, and impatience are the only feelings I sense. We are all late to work/class/appointments/meetings. We all deal with the MTA delays on a daily basis while the holidays and icy weather further test our patience. But today is different. One person caused all of this, the third attack in New York City since the start of the fall semester, the second in only two months. A failed terrorist attack does nothing but piss New Yorkers off.
My hand grips the metal pole as the subway jerks backwards and forwards, snapping my arm in and out of place. They don’t warn us that riding NYC public transportation can cause bodily harm. The passengers around me are far too close for comfort and the floor of the train car is nowhere in sight, with riders practically standing on top of each other. The tall man shoved up against my left arm smells strongly of deli meat, while the rest of the train smells like sweat and coffee. A woman whose bag has become entangled with my own makes no eye contact as she unhooks herself. My fingers feel as though they’re breaking from the weight of my backpack: two notebooks, a textbook, and a laptop feels like 75 pounds pulling down on four fingers. Two people carry a loud conversation a foot away from me. I can hear the volume on someone’s headphones increase significantly. I try my best not to breathe down the neck of the man in front of me as the train screeches along the tracks. Before getting on this train, some strangers had an argument on the platform. You could cut the tension in here with a knife.
Our train finally pulls into the next station after stopping countless times in the tunnel. I shift awkwardly, unable to find comfortable footing as I turn to see a crowded platform outside the train doors. I am not sure how we could fit another human being into this train car unless they crowd surfed over us. The doors open up and collective groans can be heard inside the train car. People on the platform are yelling and cursing at one another. I see only one man get out and four people shove in. Our female conductor announces, exasperatedly, “Ladies and gentlemen, if you cannot fit on this train PLEASE wait for the C train behind us!”
At the next station, only one woman is able to push into the train car. “I’ve been waiting here for over an hour and a half,” she says. “I just had to push in.” She is met with awkward laughs and grunts; empathy is all we have left. Some passengers are more patient than others since there is not much we can do to speed along a process that is out of our hands except complain about it, which we do – loudly and often. The woman to my right pushes deeper into my side, making it more difficult for my 5 foot four-inch body to reach the overhead handlebar. All I can think of is the 7 more stops ahead of us. We screech out of the station and the train car starts to smell like garbage or sewage, I can’t tell which because I hiked my scarf up over my face. Ultimately, it’s the smell of defeat. The MTA has broken us.
After weeks of observing my fellow passengers on the C local train back and forth to Brooklyn, today marked the strongest levels of irritation during the morning commute. The final nerve has been laid out on the track and run over, severed by a 340.8 ton Kawasaki R160 C-train.
