THE RIDER
Text & Photos By Walter Cessna
The newspaper he held in his gloved hand was from yesterday and the coffee spilling out of the cup precariously placed on the jiggling subway
car seat next to him tasted like it was from last week. He wiped the winter sweat that sat on his forehead away with one hand while the other
rested with the paper on his lap. He grabbed the java and took a hearty swig, ignoring its white-hot temperature as it burned its way down his numbed
throat. "What day is it?" he wondered silently as he picked up the paper again and looked at the date in the right hand corner of his New York Post. It said
January 1, 1995. He glanced quickly at the headline, which read "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" and then threw it back down on the filthy floor where he had
first found it a half hour ago.
Had he slept through New Years Eve? He tried to remember last night, but even the sight of trampled party hats and noise blowers failed to
stir his still stunned memory. Then it all came back to him. The drunk kids whom he had gotten into a fight with and how one of them tried to break
a Jack Daniel’s bottle over his head. It didn't shatter his skull but it did knock him out. He had awoken this morning covered in confetti and his shoes were
missing for the fourth time that month. His head was probably one of the only ones in New York City that was pounding without the help of too much
booze. Well, at least they didn't set me on fire he thought with a slow sad chuckle kept entirely to himself.
He glanced around the half-empty subway car and noticed that the faces had changed yet again, just as they had countless times before on this
unendable journey he had embarked upon exactly ninety years ago. He had been the first passenger on the Manhattan subway system when it opened in
1906. He was only ten years old. Today was his one-hundredth birthday and he would spend it just as he had for the past ninety birthdays. Observing.
Watching. Looking. Absorbing. Mentally jotting down every last bit of descriptive data that his still wired brain could transmit, compute and store in his
memory forever. It seemed everyone was oblivious to his presence, only choosing to acknowledge him if he was the one making the effort and wishing to
be noticed. He was forever riding one train after another, day in and day out, year after year. He was The Rider.
He only got off the train once a week or so to change clothes at one of the shelters he frequented, take the occasional bath and once every two
months cut his hair and trim his beard. He lived on food he found or was given by the sporadic kind stranger. He traded in his clothes every month for
new ones at the Salvation Army, not because they were worn but to please his enormous vanity. No matter how grungy he might get, he still carried an
undeniable charge of style that percolated through him like fine, imported brandy.
He took another long sip on the coffee and then placed it on the floor between his feet where he had found it lying next to the newspaper. During his
long tenure as the subway passenger with the most frequent rider miles, he had seen just about everything imaginable to the human mind. From grisly
murders to beautiful childbirths, almost all of it was a continuous study in opposite reactions stemming from unsurmisable situations. The more far out
something seemed during it's time the less serious it would appear after it's initial impact. It was as if everyone upon entering the system checked their
souls at the turnstile and signed on for the ride of their life...or death.
The current passenger roster was rife with contrast needing contemplation. An ancient Korean grandmother with her legless infant grand-
daughter sitting upon her polyester pant suited lap is screaming at the child in a high pitched yet nasal tone, simultaneously smacking the cry baby on
the side of the head with a pair of chicken-fried rice covered chopsticks that she alternately dips into a take-out carton every few seconds. A few free
seats away from her sits a young, black hip-hop hoodlum, looking fierce in his oversized Karl Kani tan leather coat and his almost matching, huge and
typically unlaced Timberlands that were resting one on top of the other against the pole sticking up straight in front of him. He caught The Rider’s eye and
flashed him a big gold "fanged" smile and then pulled his headphones out of his pocket, placed them over his ears and cranked up the volume so loud that
the people in the next car could probably make out each blaring Fushnicken lyric along with him.
Across from them sat a young, obviously horny couple that was performing everything short of felatio upon one another. The girl’s legs were
intertwined with the boys like two twisted pretzels made from extremely malleable dough. Their lips were crashed into each other with a sloppy wet
thud and their hands left trails over every inch of their bodies. He was whispering something to her but The Rider couldn't make out what the boy was
saying so he read his lips instead.
"I love you in a way that devours it's own consequence."
The Rider read her lips, which were forming a reply.
"And the Pope is a fuckin Jew!"
To which the boy replied...
"Your so fucking unromantic...can't you just go along with it once? You never know, I might just be able to get you to finally fuck me!"
And she said...
"I hate you and your fucking Romeo and fucking Juliet theatrics. If you wanna fuck me why can't you just say so!”
To which he spit out...
"I wanna fuck you!"
And they practically did, right there in the goddamn subway car in front of everyone. Is nothing sacred anymore The Rider thought to himself
as a rare police officer that had just entered the car walked over to them and strategically placed his nightstick between the two panting youths. Once
order had been restored the cop exited the car along with most of the other passengers at the next stop. As each person made their way out another
replaced them. New faces slicing out the memory of old ones while they waited for their own seemingly instant replacement.
The Rider lost himself in a brief interlude with his own reflection appearing before him in the fingerprint and scum stained window across the
car. His fright white hair was still pretty much on the full side and he wore it just as he had for nine decades, sticking straight up about an inch and a half
from the scalp. His eyebrows were extra thick and colored salt and pepper (heavier on the pepper). His height was lost upon those around him unless he
stood up to his true six foot five existence. These days he spent a lot more time sitting on his tired old rump compared to the days before the accident,
when he would wander through the subway system as stealth-like as a cat. He ruled the trains in his youth, a silent unwanted prince. Stalking people for
their image and its memory in his picture jammed mind, sacrificing all communication so as to satisfy his self created destiny as a watcher. A recorder. A
messenger to his own mind and imagination, never sharing it with anyone, sometimes not even himself.
His body was hardly a testament to his age and he really hadn't varied in appearance since he turned sixty. That was the year of the accident, the
year "all hell fucking broke lose" as he semi-fondly remembered. It was 1956 and he was riding the elevated Jamaica L train bound for Richmond Hill
through East New York, finally ending up in Manhattan. He was new to this train since he typically rode the subways in the city or the Flushing IRT but
boredom had enticed him in this direction and there was no turning back.
He was being crushed backwards against the just closed car doors when the sardine like train began it's trudge up a steep hill of tracks that
ended in a tight curve before the path once again went straight. Just as the train had finally climbed it's perch and was about to wind it's way
around the curve, an electrical explosion rocked the tracks from beneath it and forced a momentary power surge through-out each car. Without warning
the train came to an abrupt halt and several random car doors triggered themselves open forcing anyone not holding on to something or leaning too close to
the doors to fall out and land on the busy street about eighty feet below.
The air outside was freezing and as The Rider felt his body fumbling with the icy wind he knew things didn’t look too good. Before he hit the
pavement he looked at the other hapless souls falling around him, not hearing their screams but forever seeing their faces twisted out of shape from
sheer fright. When he opened his eyes again it was three days later. His vision was obscured by white fluorescent shock and there was a stench of hours
old urine spilling out of a bedpan that had been crudely shoved under his ass permeating the air.
He had broken his leg, several ribs and fractured his back. He spent the next month in bed eating shitty hospital food and making erotic
sculptures out of the endless cups of flavorless red Jell-O they tried to make him eat with each meal. The second month was spent undergoing
physical therapy and thanks to a lot of willpower and an overly concerned nurse, he made a miraculous recovery. They tried to find out his name since he
had been found with no identification, but he had lied and said he couldn't remember anything. The city was scared he might sue so they told the hospital
to give him whatever he and the rest of the train victims needed. The rider wasn't interested in lawsuits. He just wanted to get the fuck out of there before
they shipped his supposedly amnesia stricken butt off to some scary institution. He had other things on his mind. Like getting back on the train.
One night he simply walked out of his room and found the janitor's closet. He donned one of the ill-fitting green zip front jumpsuits and pulled
on a pair of clunky yellow rubber boots, the kind with handles on the side. He heard the rattling of change in his pockets and dug his hands deep in them
for a quick look. Luck was on his side. He came up with a fiver, a few filthy singles and a bit of change. Then he walked out of the closet, mop in hand,
and casually cleaned his way out the first door he came across.
He miraculously made it out of the hospital without drawing too much attention to his strangely attired self. He walked and walked down
endless unfamiliar streets until he came across a Salvation Army about a half hour later. Using the money he had just stolen he purchased a simple green
ribbed turtleneck and a pair of lean, tapered hounds tooth trousers that stopped just shy of the top of the size thirteen side zip Florsheim boots swimming
around his size ten feet that he had just pulled from the shoe rack. He found an almost new looking gray corduroy Pierre Cardin jacket with suede lapels
and elbow patches. His final find was a slightly oversized purple and yellow wool plaid poor boy cap that he placed as rakishly upon his head as possible.
He had to ask a salesperson to help him get dressed because his arms simply weren't functioning as well as he'd like. He stopped the salespersons curious
questions regarding his injuries by solemnly staring into space and muttering something about an auto accident.
Once dressed he paid for his new look and headed for the first subway station he could find. As he rode the train into Manhattan the city lights
filled his vision and strangely soothed his nerves. He was back where he belonged, for better or worse. Not knowing what was to come,
expecting nothing and everything at the same time. The Rider had returned.
He stored the memories of his past once more under mental lock and key. Recessed to the back of his mind for further observation. He got up at
the next stop and shuffled slowly across the platform to catch the train going downtown. He looked at a clock, which read eight thirty and then tried to
figure out exactly what train he was about to get on. A sign hung up high said it was the A, so The Rider sat down on the scuzzy steps leading to the exit
as he waited for the train to pull into the station.
"Move yer ass mister!" It was a fat Czechoslovakian looking women in a way too tight purple wrap sweater that barely wrapped. She was about three
hundred pounds and her badly dyed red hair was tucked under a paisley babushka.
"I said move yer ass, what are ya, deaf or somethin?"
"I'm not in your way, walk around me."
"What do I look like? Fuckin Twiggy? Mover yer goddamn ass or I'm gonna move it for you!"
The louder she got the more pronounced her accent became, forcing her words through a verbal Cuisinart on overdrive. She became enraged and a
thick blue vein bolted from her forehead, pulsing at a manic pace while her fingers curled into fists and the skin on her hands turned from blotchy pink to
sheet white. She rushed forward down the steps knocking into the side of The Rider as rudely as humanly possible. When she was finally at the foot of the
staircase she spun around and screamed some indecipherable obscenity at him and gave him the finger. Needless to say, when the train pulled in each
made it a point not to sit in the same car.
He sat his old, tired frame down and rested his head back against the map he was sitting in front of. A Wall Street slave in a dull, gray
pinstriped suit was leaning over him trying to figure out some set of misbegotten directions he had jotted down on an Au Bon Pain napkin that
he was crumpling between cheese danish stained fingertips. The man’s tie kept slapping The Rider in the face so he grabbed it with one hand and gave it a
good tug forcing the guy to look him right in the eye.
"That's really annoying."
"I'm sorry sir..."
"Thank-you, now excuse me. Please!"
The stockbroker dude stood straight up and walked towards the far right sliding door. Before he opened it and walked into the next car he turned around a
looked at The Rider.
"Fuck you asshole!" he said and then turned around and slid the door open. As he walked through the entry way however, it slid closed behind him on
his right pinstriped leg. He fumbled with it for a few seconds before finally releasing himself. The Rider just looked at him and laughed so hard he gave
himself such a bad stomachache that his eyes actually filled with tears and he had to stroke his sides for a good ten minutes.
He looked around the train as his belly ached, but in typical New York fashion almost every passenger was immersed in their own void. He
tried to make eye contact with one preoccupied person after the next but each bold stare was met with a stony silence. He got up and walked through
the sliding doors hoping to come across the young Wall Street lad and rile him up again but he had gotten off a few stops ago. The Rider took his sweet
time until he reached the middle of the car and sat down between a skinny Hasidic man whom was sacrilegiously not wearing his hat and was reading a
Danielle Steel novel in hardcover. On his other side was a cheesy looking blonde guy who probably made his living starring in dandruff shampoo
advertisements. His smile was so wide it seemed to go past the borders of his perpetually petulant and pouting puss.
Across from him sat a gaggle of young "grungettes," obviously not older than fourteen but carrying on as if they were twenty-five. They wore
layer after layer of faded black Lycra separates mixed with a trendy spattering of day-glow plaid, rainbow argyles and putrid colored Dr.
Martins in varying degrees of lace lengths and height. They were all listening to a radio, which sat on the grungiest girl all the way at the end’s lap. It
was playing a song sung by a girl who sounded very strung out and seemed to be highly upset about something.
"I dig this new Portishead record!"
"Yeah...It's the fucking shit."
"I hate it! Play the Offspring!"
"That song is so fucking tired. Next thing you'll be asking for is Urge fucking Overkill!"
"You're just a trendy fucking bitch! How come you can't like something for longer than three seconds? Have you ever even tried?"
"Yeah I tried once...and I didn't even like you for three seconds so why don't you get the fuck out of my face with your shit ass smile!"
"God! You’re so negative. You should take up meditation."
"You should take up shutting the fuck up!"
And with that last comment the girls continued listening to the trance-like music, each of them silently wounded by the verbal assault, their
eyes staring off deeply into a dream filled space. The Rider discontinued his observation and turned towards a bare chested teen-age crack addict who
was worming his way from one end of the car to the next. Back and forth, over and over again. He kept muttering inaudibly the same two sentences;
"Please someone help me. I don't know how much more I can handle. Please help me before I die. I ain’t got nothin no more man. I swear I'm not
gonna use the money for no crack and I know I don't look like I eat much, but I'm really hungry and I just wanna get a hot dog or a slice of something.
OK?"
No one on the train dares make eye contact with the kid except for The Rider. He stops in front of him and scratches with cracked fingernails
an imaginary twitch in the middle of his malnourished looking chest. His eyes are still brilliantly blue, but they are most likely the last vestiges of life
left in his quickly deteriorating body. There was a string tied tightly around his neck that looked like it had come from a discarded bakery box. His feet
were shoed in several pairs of socks and his pants hung so low on his waist the top of his blonde pubic hair was visible. The blonde hair on top of his head
was so filthy it looked like warm vomit gleaming in a fluorescent sun.
"Please...can you help me? I ain't got nothin no more man."
The Rider looked up at him and extended his hand towards the boy who took it in his own only after debating the matter for a good thirty
seconds. He pulled the kid down on his knees in front of him and forced the boys head into his lap. As the kid started to cry he stroked his dirty
locks and hummed softly to himself. The Hasidic man sitting next to him mumbled something about "crazy drug addicts running the subway!" and got up
and moved his seat. The dandruff shampoo dude looked at The Rider in disgust and pretended to brush off an invisible layer of soil from his pants before
he too got up and stood at the other end of the train.
As the subway pulled into the West fourth station, The Rider lifted the boy up with himself and placed him in his now vacant seat. By this
point everyone in the car was staring at them, temporarily jarred out of their own secret realities and desperately trying to share his. But instead of
giving them anymore of a show than they were already getting, he leaned down and kissed the shocked kid's forehead before he spun around tortoise-like
and crept out of the car as soon as the doors slid open. He looked back through the streaked car door window which had just shut behind him and
smiled at the boy once more before the train rumbled back to life and left him standing in it's wake, lost in a thought that he hoped he would
remember forever.
END
Text & Photos By Walter Cessna
The newspaper he held in his gloved hand was from yesterday and the coffee spilling out of the cup precariously placed on the jiggling subway
car seat next to him tasted like it was from last week. He wiped the winter sweat that sat on his forehead away with one hand while the other
rested with the paper on his lap. He grabbed the java and took a hearty swig, ignoring its white-hot temperature as it burned its way down his numbed
throat. "What day is it?" he wondered silently as he picked up the paper again and looked at the date in the right hand corner of his New York Post. It said
January 1, 1995. He glanced quickly at the headline, which read "HAPPY NEW YEAR!" and then threw it back down on the filthy floor where he had
first found it a half hour ago.
Had he slept through New Years Eve? He tried to remember last night, but even the sight of trampled party hats and noise blowers failed to
stir his still stunned memory. Then it all came back to him. The drunk kids whom he had gotten into a fight with and how one of them tried to break
a Jack Daniel’s bottle over his head. It didn't shatter his skull but it did knock him out. He had awoken this morning covered in confetti and his shoes were
missing for the fourth time that month. His head was probably one of the only ones in New York City that was pounding without the help of too much
booze. Well, at least they didn't set me on fire he thought with a slow sad chuckle kept entirely to himself.
He glanced around the half-empty subway car and noticed that the faces had changed yet again, just as they had countless times before on this
unendable journey he had embarked upon exactly ninety years ago. He had been the first passenger on the Manhattan subway system when it opened in
1906. He was only ten years old. Today was his one-hundredth birthday and he would spend it just as he had for the past ninety birthdays. Observing.
Watching. Looking. Absorbing. Mentally jotting down every last bit of descriptive data that his still wired brain could transmit, compute and store in his
memory forever. It seemed everyone was oblivious to his presence, only choosing to acknowledge him if he was the one making the effort and wishing to
be noticed. He was forever riding one train after another, day in and day out, year after year. He was The Rider.
He only got off the train once a week or so to change clothes at one of the shelters he frequented, take the occasional bath and once every two
months cut his hair and trim his beard. He lived on food he found or was given by the sporadic kind stranger. He traded in his clothes every month for
new ones at the Salvation Army, not because they were worn but to please his enormous vanity. No matter how grungy he might get, he still carried an
undeniable charge of style that percolated through him like fine, imported brandy.
He took another long sip on the coffee and then placed it on the floor between his feet where he had found it lying next to the newspaper. During his
long tenure as the subway passenger with the most frequent rider miles, he had seen just about everything imaginable to the human mind. From grisly
murders to beautiful childbirths, almost all of it was a continuous study in opposite reactions stemming from unsurmisable situations. The more far out
something seemed during it's time the less serious it would appear after it's initial impact. It was as if everyone upon entering the system checked their
souls at the turnstile and signed on for the ride of their life...or death.
The current passenger roster was rife with contrast needing contemplation. An ancient Korean grandmother with her legless infant grand-
daughter sitting upon her polyester pant suited lap is screaming at the child in a high pitched yet nasal tone, simultaneously smacking the cry baby on
the side of the head with a pair of chicken-fried rice covered chopsticks that she alternately dips into a take-out carton every few seconds. A few free
seats away from her sits a young, black hip-hop hoodlum, looking fierce in his oversized Karl Kani tan leather coat and his almost matching, huge and
typically unlaced Timberlands that were resting one on top of the other against the pole sticking up straight in front of him. He caught The Rider’s eye and
flashed him a big gold "fanged" smile and then pulled his headphones out of his pocket, placed them over his ears and cranked up the volume so loud that
the people in the next car could probably make out each blaring Fushnicken lyric along with him.
Across from them sat a young, obviously horny couple that was performing everything short of felatio upon one another. The girl’s legs were
intertwined with the boys like two twisted pretzels made from extremely malleable dough. Their lips were crashed into each other with a sloppy wet
thud and their hands left trails over every inch of their bodies. He was whispering something to her but The Rider couldn't make out what the boy was
saying so he read his lips instead.
"I love you in a way that devours it's own consequence."
The Rider read her lips, which were forming a reply.
"And the Pope is a fuckin Jew!"
To which the boy replied...
"Your so fucking unromantic...can't you just go along with it once? You never know, I might just be able to get you to finally fuck me!"
And she said...
"I hate you and your fucking Romeo and fucking Juliet theatrics. If you wanna fuck me why can't you just say so!”
To which he spit out...
"I wanna fuck you!"
And they practically did, right there in the goddamn subway car in front of everyone. Is nothing sacred anymore The Rider thought to himself
as a rare police officer that had just entered the car walked over to them and strategically placed his nightstick between the two panting youths. Once
order had been restored the cop exited the car along with most of the other passengers at the next stop. As each person made their way out another
replaced them. New faces slicing out the memory of old ones while they waited for their own seemingly instant replacement.
The Rider lost himself in a brief interlude with his own reflection appearing before him in the fingerprint and scum stained window across the
car. His fright white hair was still pretty much on the full side and he wore it just as he had for nine decades, sticking straight up about an inch and a half
from the scalp. His eyebrows were extra thick and colored salt and pepper (heavier on the pepper). His height was lost upon those around him unless he
stood up to his true six foot five existence. These days he spent a lot more time sitting on his tired old rump compared to the days before the accident,
when he would wander through the subway system as stealth-like as a cat. He ruled the trains in his youth, a silent unwanted prince. Stalking people for
their image and its memory in his picture jammed mind, sacrificing all communication so as to satisfy his self created destiny as a watcher. A recorder. A
messenger to his own mind and imagination, never sharing it with anyone, sometimes not even himself.
His body was hardly a testament to his age and he really hadn't varied in appearance since he turned sixty. That was the year of the accident, the
year "all hell fucking broke lose" as he semi-fondly remembered. It was 1956 and he was riding the elevated Jamaica L train bound for Richmond Hill
through East New York, finally ending up in Manhattan. He was new to this train since he typically rode the subways in the city or the Flushing IRT but
boredom had enticed him in this direction and there was no turning back.
He was being crushed backwards against the just closed car doors when the sardine like train began it's trudge up a steep hill of tracks that
ended in a tight curve before the path once again went straight. Just as the train had finally climbed it's perch and was about to wind it's way
around the curve, an electrical explosion rocked the tracks from beneath it and forced a momentary power surge through-out each car. Without warning
the train came to an abrupt halt and several random car doors triggered themselves open forcing anyone not holding on to something or leaning too close to
the doors to fall out and land on the busy street about eighty feet below.
The air outside was freezing and as The Rider felt his body fumbling with the icy wind he knew things didn’t look too good. Before he hit the
pavement he looked at the other hapless souls falling around him, not hearing their screams but forever seeing their faces twisted out of shape from
sheer fright. When he opened his eyes again it was three days later. His vision was obscured by white fluorescent shock and there was a stench of hours
old urine spilling out of a bedpan that had been crudely shoved under his ass permeating the air.
He had broken his leg, several ribs and fractured his back. He spent the next month in bed eating shitty hospital food and making erotic
sculptures out of the endless cups of flavorless red Jell-O they tried to make him eat with each meal. The second month was spent undergoing
physical therapy and thanks to a lot of willpower and an overly concerned nurse, he made a miraculous recovery. They tried to find out his name since he
had been found with no identification, but he had lied and said he couldn't remember anything. The city was scared he might sue so they told the hospital
to give him whatever he and the rest of the train victims needed. The rider wasn't interested in lawsuits. He just wanted to get the fuck out of there before
they shipped his supposedly amnesia stricken butt off to some scary institution. He had other things on his mind. Like getting back on the train.
One night he simply walked out of his room and found the janitor's closet. He donned one of the ill-fitting green zip front jumpsuits and pulled
on a pair of clunky yellow rubber boots, the kind with handles on the side. He heard the rattling of change in his pockets and dug his hands deep in them
for a quick look. Luck was on his side. He came up with a fiver, a few filthy singles and a bit of change. Then he walked out of the closet, mop in hand,
and casually cleaned his way out the first door he came across.
He miraculously made it out of the hospital without drawing too much attention to his strangely attired self. He walked and walked down
endless unfamiliar streets until he came across a Salvation Army about a half hour later. Using the money he had just stolen he purchased a simple green
ribbed turtleneck and a pair of lean, tapered hounds tooth trousers that stopped just shy of the top of the size thirteen side zip Florsheim boots swimming
around his size ten feet that he had just pulled from the shoe rack. He found an almost new looking gray corduroy Pierre Cardin jacket with suede lapels
and elbow patches. His final find was a slightly oversized purple and yellow wool plaid poor boy cap that he placed as rakishly upon his head as possible.
He had to ask a salesperson to help him get dressed because his arms simply weren't functioning as well as he'd like. He stopped the salespersons curious
questions regarding his injuries by solemnly staring into space and muttering something about an auto accident.
Once dressed he paid for his new look and headed for the first subway station he could find. As he rode the train into Manhattan the city lights
filled his vision and strangely soothed his nerves. He was back where he belonged, for better or worse. Not knowing what was to come,
expecting nothing and everything at the same time. The Rider had returned.
He stored the memories of his past once more under mental lock and key. Recessed to the back of his mind for further observation. He got up at
the next stop and shuffled slowly across the platform to catch the train going downtown. He looked at a clock, which read eight thirty and then tried to
figure out exactly what train he was about to get on. A sign hung up high said it was the A, so The Rider sat down on the scuzzy steps leading to the exit
as he waited for the train to pull into the station.
"Move yer ass mister!" It was a fat Czechoslovakian looking women in a way too tight purple wrap sweater that barely wrapped. She was about three
hundred pounds and her badly dyed red hair was tucked under a paisley babushka.
"I said move yer ass, what are ya, deaf or somethin?"
"I'm not in your way, walk around me."
"What do I look like? Fuckin Twiggy? Mover yer goddamn ass or I'm gonna move it for you!"
The louder she got the more pronounced her accent became, forcing her words through a verbal Cuisinart on overdrive. She became enraged and a
thick blue vein bolted from her forehead, pulsing at a manic pace while her fingers curled into fists and the skin on her hands turned from blotchy pink to
sheet white. She rushed forward down the steps knocking into the side of The Rider as rudely as humanly possible. When she was finally at the foot of the
staircase she spun around and screamed some indecipherable obscenity at him and gave him the finger. Needless to say, when the train pulled in each
made it a point not to sit in the same car.
He sat his old, tired frame down and rested his head back against the map he was sitting in front of. A Wall Street slave in a dull, gray
pinstriped suit was leaning over him trying to figure out some set of misbegotten directions he had jotted down on an Au Bon Pain napkin that
he was crumpling between cheese danish stained fingertips. The man’s tie kept slapping The Rider in the face so he grabbed it with one hand and gave it a
good tug forcing the guy to look him right in the eye.
"That's really annoying."
"I'm sorry sir..."
"Thank-you, now excuse me. Please!"
The stockbroker dude stood straight up and walked towards the far right sliding door. Before he opened it and walked into the next car he turned around a
looked at The Rider.
"Fuck you asshole!" he said and then turned around and slid the door open. As he walked through the entry way however, it slid closed behind him on
his right pinstriped leg. He fumbled with it for a few seconds before finally releasing himself. The Rider just looked at him and laughed so hard he gave
himself such a bad stomachache that his eyes actually filled with tears and he had to stroke his sides for a good ten minutes.
He looked around the train as his belly ached, but in typical New York fashion almost every passenger was immersed in their own void. He
tried to make eye contact with one preoccupied person after the next but each bold stare was met with a stony silence. He got up and walked through
the sliding doors hoping to come across the young Wall Street lad and rile him up again but he had gotten off a few stops ago. The Rider took his sweet
time until he reached the middle of the car and sat down between a skinny Hasidic man whom was sacrilegiously not wearing his hat and was reading a
Danielle Steel novel in hardcover. On his other side was a cheesy looking blonde guy who probably made his living starring in dandruff shampoo
advertisements. His smile was so wide it seemed to go past the borders of his perpetually petulant and pouting puss.
Across from him sat a gaggle of young "grungettes," obviously not older than fourteen but carrying on as if they were twenty-five. They wore
layer after layer of faded black Lycra separates mixed with a trendy spattering of day-glow plaid, rainbow argyles and putrid colored Dr.
Martins in varying degrees of lace lengths and height. They were all listening to a radio, which sat on the grungiest girl all the way at the end’s lap. It
was playing a song sung by a girl who sounded very strung out and seemed to be highly upset about something.
"I dig this new Portishead record!"
"Yeah...It's the fucking shit."
"I hate it! Play the Offspring!"
"That song is so fucking tired. Next thing you'll be asking for is Urge fucking Overkill!"
"You're just a trendy fucking bitch! How come you can't like something for longer than three seconds? Have you ever even tried?"
"Yeah I tried once...and I didn't even like you for three seconds so why don't you get the fuck out of my face with your shit ass smile!"
"God! You’re so negative. You should take up meditation."
"You should take up shutting the fuck up!"
And with that last comment the girls continued listening to the trance-like music, each of them silently wounded by the verbal assault, their
eyes staring off deeply into a dream filled space. The Rider discontinued his observation and turned towards a bare chested teen-age crack addict who
was worming his way from one end of the car to the next. Back and forth, over and over again. He kept muttering inaudibly the same two sentences;
"Please someone help me. I don't know how much more I can handle. Please help me before I die. I ain’t got nothin no more man. I swear I'm not
gonna use the money for no crack and I know I don't look like I eat much, but I'm really hungry and I just wanna get a hot dog or a slice of something.
OK?"
No one on the train dares make eye contact with the kid except for The Rider. He stops in front of him and scratches with cracked fingernails
an imaginary twitch in the middle of his malnourished looking chest. His eyes are still brilliantly blue, but they are most likely the last vestiges of life
left in his quickly deteriorating body. There was a string tied tightly around his neck that looked like it had come from a discarded bakery box. His feet
were shoed in several pairs of socks and his pants hung so low on his waist the top of his blonde pubic hair was visible. The blonde hair on top of his head
was so filthy it looked like warm vomit gleaming in a fluorescent sun.
"Please...can you help me? I ain't got nothin no more man."
The Rider looked up at him and extended his hand towards the boy who took it in his own only after debating the matter for a good thirty
seconds. He pulled the kid down on his knees in front of him and forced the boys head into his lap. As the kid started to cry he stroked his dirty
locks and hummed softly to himself. The Hasidic man sitting next to him mumbled something about "crazy drug addicts running the subway!" and got up
and moved his seat. The dandruff shampoo dude looked at The Rider in disgust and pretended to brush off an invisible layer of soil from his pants before
he too got up and stood at the other end of the train.
As the subway pulled into the West fourth station, The Rider lifted the boy up with himself and placed him in his now vacant seat. By this
point everyone in the car was staring at them, temporarily jarred out of their own secret realities and desperately trying to share his. But instead of
giving them anymore of a show than they were already getting, he leaned down and kissed the shocked kid's forehead before he spun around tortoise-like
and crept out of the car as soon as the doors slid open. He looked back through the streaked car door window which had just shut behind him and
smiled at the boy once more before the train rumbled back to life and left him standing in it's wake, lost in a thought that he hoped he would
remember forever.
END
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| The New York Optimist |
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| The Rider By Walt Cessna |