Ode to Assface

The train was crowded on my way downtown tonight, and it's a given that when the train is packed, the ratio of Displays of Bad Subway Etiquette skyrockets. It's simple math: The more people who jam themselves into a train car, the more people there are who can rub their crotches against your ass, ignore pregnant women and refuse to give them seats, keep their bodies planted in front of the doors so commuters can neither enter nor exit without a maddening forceful collision, blast whatever on their iPods, and other various boils on the behavioral butt of society.

So I was grateful to get a seat, because I could just bury my face in my Entertainment Weekly (a shockingly interesting piece on the bursting of Jessica Simpson's Grand Ole Opry cherry and similar forays into country music by pop artists) and ignore the sneezers around me who didn't cover their mouths. If I hadn't had a magazine with me, I might have picked my nose and wiped it on a pole the moment before someone was about to grab it, just to fit in.

Upon hitting the 14th Street station, the two commuters on either side of me got up and left the train. A man in a dark grey suit who had been standing in front of me proceeded to turn around with his back to me, bend over so his ass was directly in my face, pick something up, and move to the empty seat to my left, whereupon he sat, spread his legs as wide as he could, pushing me over to teeter on the ridge between the seat I had been in and the one next to it, and open his newspaper fully (instead of folding it in half or quarters, which is proper subway etiquette; takes up less space). He was totally oblivious to his egregious violation of any social code, and if you live in this city, it behooves you to have some idea of the code we all live by. Or not. Ignorance is bliss, and then everybody hates you. C'est la vie.

Anyway.

So I'm sitting, well, not in my seat but on the narrow between-the-seats spine that did the very opposite of containing my substantial posterior or my balance, and I'm stewing. And I start staring at him. And then I catch sight of his right hand.

There was a pink Hello Kitty Band-Aid on it.

I softened.

So then I started to think: He's in a responsible grey suit. He's carrying a briefcase. He's on his way downtown, toward the Financial District. Or he's on his way home from Midtown, where one can find many, many of the glass office buildings of the elite moneymaking set. He's reading the Business section. He's paying absolutely no mind to others around him. Holy Hell, I thought, he must work for Lehman Brothers. Or Merrill Lynch. Or AIG. Or [insert bankrupt/festering/defunct financial institution here]. And he's totally stressed out. And when he got home from work last night, he sunk into his favorite easy chair, head in his hands, bemoaning the uncertainty to come. And his four-year-old daughter tugged at her mother's shirt, and the man's wife bent down to their little girl and said, "What is it, sweetie?" And the little girl said, "Mommy, why is Daddy so sad?" And the wife looked at her forlorn husband, her heart aching for him, and said, "Daddy has a boo-boo and he can't make it better yet." And the little girl ran to the bathroom, dug out the Hello Kitty Band-Aid, and quietly tiptoed up to her father. He slowly looked up when he felt her tiny body standing next to him and said, "Hi, button." She unwrapped the bandage, put it on the top of his hand, and said, "There, Daddy. Now it's all better."

I loved this man. This man who, 30 seconds previously, pushed his ass in my face and shoved me out of my seat with the power of his right thigh.

We got to the next stop. The doors opened. He hurriedly shoved his newspaper under his arm and disembarked.

All that for one stop. And we were nowhere near any of the neighborhoods I'd decided he was going to to live the life I'd decided he lived. He probably sold watches or something and had 50 cats.

And there I'd been, creating a sad little scene that might have actually happened to an awful lot of folks in the past two days, and I got pissed all over again. Gah. Wasted sympathies: so frustrating. At least I was able to shift back onto a full seat once he left. Sitting on the ridge-thing makes your butt go numb.

It did make me recall this post, about the gorgeous Adonis with the ugly shoes and whimsical candy. How do you decide if you adore someone you don't know but who has let you down terribly with bad taste or bad manners and then makes up for it with fun accessories? Do I malign the suited fella for his space-assaulting ways, or do I love him for his cartoon Band-Aid? Maybe he did work for Lehman Brothers. Who the hell knows. I know it's surprising for me to do such a thing, but I'm really overthinking this.

So: To the man in the grey suit, if you work in the financial sector or were screwed by the financial sector and sport the Band-Aid to soothe your anxieties, you have my sincere sympathies. And if you are just a douchebag who exercises no courtesy to your fellow commuters and wears a Hello Kitty Band-Aid because you picked a mole off the top of your hand while you were watching porn, suck it. I have a bottle of lemon juice and I'm not afraid to use it.

In other news, apologies for the sparse (or, really, not at all) writing lately. I just got back from a truly excellent trip to San Francisco to meet Stacy's son, Bass, and dontcha know, I have pictures. They'll land on this here page toute de suite.

And speaking of this blog, I suppose I should say something about Sarah Palin, because everybody and their mother who has a blog has written about Sarah Palin. And I imagine there's nothing new I could say that hasn't been said, and I'm also sure you folks don't come here to read about politics (I have deduced this because you read my blog, and I have never written about politics; I is shmart). And I hate talking about politics because it makes me violently angry, which I also suppose completely conflicts with the fact that I'm writing about it at this very moment. And I've created this blog in the spirit of very few heavy things being discussed ever. In any case, it shouldn't surprise you that I'm pretty liberal and proud of it, so I guess I'll just say this: Don't vote for Sarah Palin. She's a twat.

Oh! Alan Alda is on Craig Ferguson right now! And Ferguson said "fucking cock" on air! Double attractiveness and an embrace of blue language! My hormones are going berserk. I'm unreasonably happy. May you be as well.