How to ride the NYC Subway

Oversleep. Contemplate destroying alarm. Remember alarm is your precious phone device.

Cross your fingers that one of several roommates is not monopolizing the shower. Use cold water only. Step on to wet bath towel.

Determine which black shirt and black pants you will wear. Get dressed.

Press play on anxiety-inducing poiltical podcast.

Enjoy four glorious minutes of pristine clean before sweat starts.

Prepare to make eye contact with no one ever.

Frogger in front of barrelling cement truck. Sprint past concrete plant to L train. Avoid mysterious cloud of instant emphysema dust.

Tread thru unknown liquids. Soak up strange liquid with your untied shoe. Hope it’s water. Descend to the Ninth Circle.

Refill MetroCard. Answer deep existential question: Add Value or Add Time?

Walk far enough down the platform that you’re far away from someone but not too far. Scan for pillar to lean on. Avoid other pillar-leaners. Note that “The next……..L train……..will depart……in approximately…..74……minutes.”

Rewind podcast to catch part drowned out by approaching train. On the opposite track.

Jostle for position next to door. Stand on the yellow. Get way too close to the still speeding train. Scan right to find no seats or space. Choose left side to stand next to intoxicated man on bench in fetal position. Notice his Guinness World Record fingernail length. Try to forget.

Ignore Peanuts classroom teacher PA announcement from the conductor. Check the collective passenger grimace. Determine it must be an “investigation.” Enjoy “slow cruise” mode all the way in.

Button your Canada Goose all the way up to avoid contracting hypothermia under A/C vent.

Balance on the in-between car door handle. Wonder how much ACL surgery would cost after sudden turn.

Leave your backpack on your back always. Use as bumper car buffer to shield yourself from others. Pretend not to know.

Switch from podcast to Kindle. Hold Kindle behind pretenious fancy canonical book to appear literary.

Hear loud strange scratching noise. Absolutely do not glance at Morning Blackout Man tearing into the palm of his hand with his nails. Pray it stops. Repress memory. If you see something, remember nothing.

Watch new riders ramble in at each stop. See them gaze left. Watch their hopes rise at prospect of an open bench. See their spirits drop as they notice Morning Blackout Man. Watch them storm off.

Notice Morning Blackout Man uncanny ability to jolt awake. Watch him wobble when he sits up. Turn music up to avoid hearing return of Telltale Heart scratching noise.

Notice the wild collection of mystifying tattoos. Wonder why each person got them. Think about what you would want to get. Convince yourself to seize the moment and get your own. Forget about it before the next stop.

Wonder why Morning Blackout Man has pulled his arms inside his sleeves. Start mild freak out when he pulls his head down into a human tortoise shell.

Feel superior over hipsters getting on at Bedford Av. Remind yourself to work on your attention span. Make it one paragraph on Kindle page before scanning the car again.

Get kicked by intoxicated zombie man. Prepare to lose your shit. Hear him apologize sincerely. Relax. Say “That’s OK.” Wonder how strange it is to say “It’s OK that you kicked me.”

Prepare for the cattle transfer from L to NQR. Loath yourself for picking the wrong door. Jostle for position to ascend stairs. Take a step toward the left side. Merge inevitably back with right hand line.

Don’t look up to realize your face is in line with a stranger’s butt.

Switch to Radiolab. Curse that the arriving train is an R train. Acknowledge that it goes the same place as a N train. Feel like the world is out to get you anyway for sending you this R train.

Get bumped by human. Try not to ponder why her hair is dyed gray in her 20s. Do question her paperback book choice. Admire that she’s reading a real-life book.

Ascend stairs. Stop at the top of the landing to block the way and gaze at skyscrapers.

Plug ears with buds before walking one block. Gain access to all songs in the universe for $9.99 on Spotify. Lash out for not downloading 22, A Million already.

Scoff at slow walking tourists. Balance beam between scaffolding and the street. Dodge halal carts along the way.

Clench nose to avoid inhalation of any air.

Buy $7 coffee. Jostle for seat at communal table. Get lukewarm reluctant approval.

Sip your coffee. Join the WiFi. Write this down.

Find deep gratitude to commute in the greatest city in the world.

Get excited to do it all again the next time.