My workday was over and I packed up my desk. It had been a very busy day, starting off with an 8am meeting and dragging me along with it to 515pm. After work there was a basketball game featuring an unlikely appearance by my college team in the NCAA Sweet 16. Excitement for this game and incessant phone calls, expense reports and coffee kept me awake all day. As I rushed downstairs to meet my beautiful black girlfriend I thought about our trip to hot yoga the previous Tuesday. It was so new and different, difficult. I loved it and wanted more. She was looking her glamorous self and we met with a brief embrace and kiss in front of the CVS underneath my office. She was gym-bag-less so I realized there would be no after work yoga today. We decided that it would be prudent to head home and enjoy the silence and peacefulness of a Thursday evening in bed.
I work in midtown Manhattan and live in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn. The quickest and most cost effective way for me to travel from my work to my home is to take the subway’s green line and transfer to the blue line. I have been in my current spot for about three months and previous to my tenure here I was living in an apartment in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. Where I take the C train into Brooklyn now, I took the A train then. My place in Bed-Stuy was off an express stop and my current place is off a local stop.
Today however the train wouldn’t take us back to Brooklyn. We began our journey in earnest when we entered the 51st street stop of the 6 train, headed downtown. An older black man in a button up shirt and tie and adjustable baseball cap asked aggressively for a dollar. “Don’t you have a dollar? I need to get home.” We didn’t have a dollar, we don’t carry dollars. As we made our way past him onto the train’s platform we heard him mutter. “That’s fucked up when the black people wont help each other out…” His voice was lost in the clamor of the train station. Nothing about the man seemed credible. I am usually unmoved by the pleas and cries of beggars in the subway, and where most choose passive pathetic-ness this man chose aggressive disappointment. We are not a couple to let slings and arrows fester too long so we discussed the event. Our consensus was that the tie, button up shirt and need for a ride home were a ruse. The call for dollars a hardheaded scam and the outburst was an insignificant cry of frustration from an unskilled con.
The downtown 6 train arrived and was crowded and not a little smelly. We boarded and stood for the one stop ride to Grand Central station. Here we disembarked and walked to the other side of the platform and waited with the mob of people who numbered three or four deep to the platform edge. When the express 4 train arrived there was a commotion and our placement relative to the doors meant cramming in hip to hip with a train full of impatient commuters. One good look at each other decided us against pushing into the human mass. We weren’t in a hurry; we were taking the day off from the frenetic pace of New York.
The next train came uncommon quickly and we boarded, me pushing ahead as my longer time spent in New York has implanted the pushy instinct in me. We stood next to each other and the train was quiet. I made a few jabs at small talk. A large and bald black man stood behind my girlfriend. He faced out the window and his ears pointed at my mouth. I soon stopped talking. The train pulled out of the station and we rode in silence. We pulled in the Union Square station and seat became available. Sitting next to each other she and I both noticed at the same time a young boy with beautiful almond shaped eyes and honey colored skin. From his immediate features I figured his ancestry to be Asian and black. I marveled at the boy, his long black hair reminded me of my father’s. He talked with his friend about cards or some other stupid kid shit. My girlfriend motioned to me to me and began a sentence “somebody’s…” “What” I interrupted “Somebody farted?” “Never mind, I’ll tell you later.” I let it go, which is rare for me, and went back to listening to the stupid little kid conversation. I was lost for a moment in time, happily on my way home. Then a voice began, loud and clear.
“Oh hell no, I can’t let this go this shit is fucked up. You black bitch you whore, how are you gonna fuck with a foreigner like that” My scalp became taught and my ears got hot. Rants on the subway are common, but this was directed at me and it was cruel and immediate. “That’s how we got AIDS, don’t ever let me catch you on Eastern Parkway or I’ll fucking kill you, you whore” A tall white lady with red hair moved away. I glanced over, not wanting to escalate the situation with eye contact; I prayed from my gut that he would run out of steam soon. He was a tallish dark black man, looking not healthy. He had a red and black leather jacket on and short hair. His eyes were yellow as if he had jaundice and he was skinny, his cheeks sucked up into his teeth. The train was pulling into our transfer station. I was uncertain if the aggressor was completely fixated with us or merely in a schizophrenic rant. I grabbed her hand and we walked purposefully out of the door furthest from him. “Fuck that, I’m not even getting off.” I was relieved; we walked along towards our transfer to the C train. She looked behind and saw him. “Oh my god, he’s following us, I don’t feel safe” I glanced behind us and saw the man, staling behind us, deadly quiet. He was grabbing in his jacket. We walked quickly along the yellow part of the track. She walked a little ahead of me, my body between the two; she would have been invisible to him. I did not look back and braced for the feeling of a fist to the back of my head, prayed there was no gun. We walked down the stairs to our transfer, I felt safe in the crowd, felt we had lost him. Then from up above a bottle glanced my right shoulder, struck it coming across from left side. I did not look back. This was bad; he was completely fixated on us. We rushed down the stairs, the people around us looked up at the man. I didn’t knowing already who it was and not wanting to fuel his hate with a connection, we kept it moving. My girlfriend states; “Baby I don’t think we should go on the C train, lets get back on the green line uptown.” So we turned up the stairs nearest us and thank God there was a train pulling in right then. The doors opened and we rushed in past the outgoing crowd. There was loud pop, my heart raced. I looked behind me and saw a glass bottle sliding, shattered across the platform. The man came up and we cowered behind the pole by the middle door. She ran up towards the forward door of the car, I stayed put. He followed her along the outside of the car, she ran back. He poked his head in the car and stared down at us. The moment was like Jurassic Park, he the Velociraptor. She ran back towards me and a Latin man was standing up, she hid behind me. The black man pulled his head out of the car and the doors played the closing game, closing and opening and closing and opening. “Please close the doors”, it was the first thing I had said since the incident began. They played a little more and closed. The train pulled away. Somebody said “You guys should duck” and I squatted as small as I could get. The man was standing outside the train, glaring in at us intensely but confused.
The car was mostly empty, people had filed out during the confrontation. We found a seat and she sat in my arms crying. A woman said “Calm down now, its over.” A kind asian woman, Joyce came and offered us consolation. She returned to her seat and then came back, handing us a piece of paper with her and another woman’s information, offering themselves as witnesses in any potential criminal trial. A Latin woman came and handed us her card and made the same offer. She went back to her seat and the black man sitting next her turned and started talking. I overheard him say; “Y’know I don’t like to see that interracial shit either, but I don’t go crazy like that.” “Thanks for your opinion.” The Latin lady said. I turned my face down and petted my girlfriend’s hair, trying to sooth her. She had already pulled herself together. We rode in silence.
