It seems that all the subway
tales I hear have to do with bodily
by-products of some form or another. My favorites involve
pee. My most
excellent first-hand pee tale involves the 145th Sreett 1/9 station. Anyone who's ever spent the
time and
effort to make that
train your
friend knows the
evil red line
designers decided that simplicity was not the best answer to
rush hour in
Washington Heights. No
sir. So they came up with something called Skip-Stop. What skip-stop means is that the 1 & the 9 alternate station stops after a certain
point... I always forget what point that is, probably because I've only lived up there briefly, and on a
floor for that
matter, and haven't put the effort into learning it, but
certainly by 145th they're in full
swing.
So: the whole key to this tale and the reason I'm describing this travesty of judgement is that 145th is not an express station, but it does have trains skipping the station. The difference you ask? In an express station there are two (sometimes more) middle tracks that the trains skipping the station run on... this is to avoid the train flying past people standing two feet away. 145th ain't got this, and lordy was it taken advantage of one fine Monday morning.
There I am, stuck in a turnstile thingie trying to talk the MetroCard reader into saying something other that Please swipe again when all of a sudden I hear a train approaching... Frantically hurrying my efforts to get past the devilish device (you love it when it works, you curse it when it doesn't) only results in Too fast, please swipe again. As I begin to whimper, the train begins to fly through the station... Relief washes over me - the train is skipping - I couldn't have caught it anyway... Unngh... It worked, I'm through...! Happily smiling to myself I reinsert the trusty card into my wallet and look up in time to watch the most stunning sight imaginable to my feeble pre-coffee eyes... Some rakish looking gentleman, grinning like mad, standing between the cars as it speeds by the platform: cock out, very noticable stream of urine extended from his happy member, splashing every single last sad and dejected commutter waiting for the train to stop - some, i'm afraid, right in the face.
And then it's gone.
Followed by stunned silence, and one solitary moan, "Oh my god."
And then a long line of people turning away from the platform to go home and change.