Enter Label: The Dark Knight rides

The egg crate Batman

Dear Companions,

The Hunter subway station, just twenty stories down, is an open wound operated on by the City’s street surgeons. The excavation begins at 10pm every night, a cacophony of jackhammering, banging, beeping, and swishing from an apocalyptic, mechanical provisorium—all orchestral members of a nightmare ensemble, which, in turn, inspire hundreds of fliers from building management to rally against the madness. As if we can do anything about it!

But it is the subway traveling through the station that captures my imagination, that connects an intricate network of pissed on vertices. Essentially it is a floating log carrying people through Splash City with all their thoughts, transmuted to all their music, in all their ear buds. Each jackhammer sound jjaaajjjing up to my window accentuates the question: when will I ever go back underground?

It is hard to fathom its been three long years since I was on the subway, I think since the time I met with Stephon Marbury at Slam Magazine. I was 8 weeks pregnant and my morning sickness was just kicking in hard. Afterward we all went to the McDonalds. I experienced first-hand what a legend Marbury is in this City as nearly everyone stopped to give him a high-five. I rode the subway home in bliss, swimming in the City’s throat.

During the past 22 months, I often thought of getting on the subway, but the thought of infections, mobs of people, the lack of air, and my overall pain response concerned me. This past Friday, I ended up breaking the subway seal after a mistaken trip to Soho in pursuit of a discounted item that no longer existed in-store (does anything?). I decided to make the misadventure purposeful.

I dropped down into the station at Lafayette. The smell of piss is so strong I look at my feet to see if I am standing directly in a puddle of urine. Spiritually, I always feel close to the source—a penis. As I wait for my ticket to print, I take one more long breath, gagging, thereby successfully engaging the vagus nerve as prescribed by my functional neurologist, and put my mask on. I select the music for the ride: Hans Zimmer’s Dark Knight Rises Soundtrack (@1:05 captures my soul fully).

I notice few people are wearing masks. I feel embarrassed by my cheeks spilling over the egg crate on my face. But why feel humiliated down here? A jazzy busker makes eye contact with me. A man performs stretches, a brown paper bag at his feet. The floors, the elevator buttons, the signs Downtown and Uptown—everything is scuffed up, blotched, sullied, and smudged. Down here, It’s always summer, dingy, and sweaty. So what about my mask? Every football player has a helmet, an astronaut a bubble. I am the egg crate Batman overcoming my curse.

Coo coo ca choo

Soon the train swishes by. I only notice later that I enter the wrong one. In my exuberance, I forget there are multiple services on each line. But, I’ve done this plenty of times in my life, more times than I have hopped over a turnstile. Once inside, I make a quick calculation, and dart toward the seat furthest from other people. Under the florescent lights, the lint on my pants shine. I swish my bum on the seat, back and forth, as if warming a nest. I notice the ads are a lot worse. Where are the condom ads?

One man is slumped on a stanchion, another man sits with his legs spread across three seats, a smaller woman directly across from me has her feet turned inward. The sleepers, the just-the-eyes-closers, the office workers, the students, the homeless, the maskers and me. In the subway going uptown. Resting. Mostly men it seems. Two people enter, somewhere in Midtown, discussing genetics, the difference between editing genes and turning them off through methylation. I turn my music down to listen to them. “Crisper on, Crisper off,” I note to look up later. Only in the City.

I feel strange urges as the music crescendos. A micro peak experience. I want to stand up and announce to all 12 people in my car: I am an ant here in this colony too. I am your worker. I will carry a seed and share it with you. I’m productive, I’m alive with you. Do you feel this? The train is an energy. An electricity spreading through our nerves. It’s not so bad friends! My eyes bulge, I’m electrified by the terrible lighting, the faint buzzing in my head grows.

My stop approaches quickly. I do not remember the 6 train being so fast! This is when I realize I’m on the M. So it’s not really my stop but it’s the closest stop anyway. Nobody knows about my mistake because I stand up casually. My phone catches a signal. The Dark Knight track below starts playing. I step out of the train, and head above ground, re-entering through the wound like a stubborn splinter, dropping my mask accidentally somewhere along the way.

With much love from the Healingverse,

Rebecca