8/31/01: Subway Ride 5000

I'm heading back home from Tent and Trails on the Six train, lugging my new internal frame backpack. It's huge but it will transfer the weight from the pack to my hips really well. And I have it in a huge plastic bag so that it will be protected from the elements until I'm sure I want to keep it.

I manage to get myself a seat on the edge of a bench, so that my bag and I won't take up too much room. The guy standing near me, making mild headbanging motions to his walkman music, doesn't seem to mind. I settle in to read my Thruhiker's Guide, making notes in the margin in pencil.

At Canal Street, two women get on and sit down next to me and continue what must have been an ongoing conversation.

"It's complicated, though," says the first woman, the one right next to me. She has a thick Bronx accent. "See, the mutha, right? She got pregnan', and she was going to have a abortion. But, the sista, that's my girl, she said, no, let me have it. And she and this otha girl, right? They raised it togetha."

"Why was the otha girl there?" asked the second woman.

"Oh, my girl, she was gay back then, and she and the other girl were gay together. Since then, my girl went back to men."

"Oh, okay," says the second woman. I try to keep looking at my book.

"So then the otha girl, not my girl, the otha girl, she got um, arrested? For stealing a car? I dunno, somethin'. And then my girl got a boyfriend. And then the mutha, she changed her mind, wants the baby back. And then the otha girl got out of jail. And everybody wants the kid. But they ain't getting him."

"Yeah," says the second. "They have to keep him, uh, with his, you know."

"The people he knows," finishes the first. "Yeah, I think my girl will be okay."

"I hate getting girls," says the second. "They make the dumbest choices about men. I just want to smack them half the time. Say, 'Damn! You are so stupid!'" They laugh. "You can have my girls."

"Gee, thanks," says the first woman. "I don't want 'em eitha."

Still laughing, they get off the train at Fourteenth Street Union Square. A middle aged Hispanic woman sits down next to me. She is covered in glitter in a way that suggests that it was not done on purpose. The glitter is big-grained, for lack of a better term for it, and there are bits of it in her hair and on her face and on her clothes and on the parcels she is carrying.

Between this stop and the next is what Kathy and I call "the ghost station." It's a station at 18th Street that was closed when they lengthened the track at 14th Street. You can still see it if you press your face against the window -- it's spooky, covered with large 80s style graffiti. I wonder why no one else ever tries to look at it. Do they not know it's there? Would they care if they knew? Maybe the headbanger next to me would get a kick out of it. Maybe not.

At 23rd Street a girl gets on -- she's maybe high school or college aged, and she has an LL Bean classic nerdsack covered in Pissed Off Alternative Rap Rock Bands patches. Wow, she's really trying. I look back at my book. I wonder how many miles I can do a day through the Smokies. I'll really have to scale my estimates down, but then again, I'll only have seven days before the permit expires, so I have to work to do at least 14 miles a day.

"Fuck!" says a happy female voice near my ear. I surreptitiously look to my left. LL Bean Alternative Girl is talking to my headbanger! Now this is amusing. "Fuck!" she says. She sounds very pleased. "Is that the new [some band Loretta has never heard of] CD?"

"Yeah," says the headbanger.

"Hey dude, can I see it?" With a soft schwa sound, he hands her the CD case. "Wow, is it good?"

"Sreallygood," says the headbanger.

"Yeah, I can't fucking wait to hear it." She turns the case over in her hands, reading the songs. Apparently, one of them is named "Fuck and A!" and another one of them is called "_Fuck_ _Me_!" and another one is called, simply, "Fuck!" From all over the car, heads turn, as if on their own accord, to see the face that goes with this clear female voice. She hands the case back to the headbanger, who says, "See the liner notes?" Fuck, yes, she wants to! I have a moment of clarity: this must be what it's like for other people when I curse.

"Thanks, buddy," she says, handing the liner notes back to him. "Have you seen them live?" He says he has. "At fucking [some venue Loretta has never heard of], the crowd was fucking a pain in my ass, they fucking didn't do anything but fucking stand there, I fucking wanted to just smack them all." The headbanger agrees.

"Well, buddy," she adds, "it's my stop." Grand Central. I wonder for a moment if she's going to go home to the subburbs on a Metro North train, then wonder at what point I earned the right to be snobby to subburban people, then stop wondering at all because I have noticed something else.

Sitting directly across from me is a normal looking guy, maybe 40 years old, wearing corporate casual. He's holding a hard covered book in one hand, and with the other hand, he's rubbing back and forth on his inner thigh. I look away, then look back to confirm I saw what I thought I saw. ... I did. Maybe it's not -- that? ... No, I'm pretty sure it is. God, I wish I had better vision so I could see what he's reading. From here it looks like a library book or something. But apparently, he's really enjoying reading it. Gawd.

Thank heavens, it's my stop. Time to transfer, anyway. Fun to lug the huge bag through the station to the N train. Everyone who sees me and bothers to care must be thinking, "What does such an obvious fan of white eyeshadow see of interest at a store called Tent and Trails? And for that matter, I didn't know there was such a store in this city. Hmm, I guess should be getting out more. And drinking less. And comlimenting my family more often. God, my life is a lie."

The N train is pulling in the station just as I get there, so that's something. Just four subway stops separate me from my