I’ve written here before about how one tends to get really close to strangers in New York. From having to dodge someone else’s projectile vomit to ducking from nail clippings flying your way on the subway, you see most things that people deem ‘private’ in other places, publicly on display here. Usually people just turn their heads the other way and keep going about their daily business, but every once in a while it someone else’s public behavior accosts you in a way that is just too, uhm, in your face to avoid.
This recently happened to me. The subway was packed as I was heading downtown for dinner in SOHO and as the mass of people got off the train and shuffled towards the exit of the China Town train station, the pack slowed down – as it invariably does when the group reaches the stairs. One thing about New York subway stations is that most of them are underground and very few have escalators. In the Big Apple we mostly rely on our feet and legs to carry us up and down the stairs, streets, tunnels and bridges. So when a big throng of people all head for the stairs at the same time, there is invariably someone at the front of the pack who is at a slower speed than the rest of the crowd, so the group always…slows…down…
I was caught in the midst of this slow group and we started ascending the stairs up into the open air. Picture this – the stairway is pretty steep and when a group of people are on it, you move pretty slowly. For at least five seconds, you are literally nose-to-butt with at least one stranger directly in front of you while the upward shuffle continues. Now let me paint the picture for you. There’s me, nose-to-butt with some small Chinese man. I’ll slow this picture down even more. I don’t have my ipod in my ears (which is strange, because that’s my usual subway-getup…it protects the soul from the noise and the crazy people) and I’m inhaling the fresh air after being stuck underground for the past 40 minutes, tunneling my way from the Upper West Side down to trendy SOHO. A slow muffled pffffffffffffffffttttttttt makes its way into my ears, but before my brain have the time to register what it is, my nostrils are accosted by a smell too purid to describe in detail here.
The little Chinese man had just farted in my face. It was possibly a fart that he’d been holding on to for a while, not wanting to be mean to his fellow train passengers. Upon smelling the fresh air, the little Chinese man must have thought that it was finally safe to let that prisoner escape and he did. Straight into my face and up my nostrils, the sickly green smell reverberating off my sinus cavity walls and landing on the back of my tongue, making me pretty sure that he had some sort of fried pork for lunch that day.
The SOUND! I should have been a little quicker, just a little more ‘with-it’, but I was, for the moment, too caught up in the fresh air, the throng of people and thinking about the fact that I had a small Chinese man’s butt in my face, wondering about whether these types of things ever happened when it did. It actually happened to me.
I still get palpitations thinking about it, and it’s been a while since this happened. Soon I might even be able to talk about it. For now, writing will be my therapy.