Trainwrecks:
The New York Subway
Alan Hanson
4, 5, R
I think there’s something womb-like about the thrum of the subway car and that sort of motionless motion — you know you’re moving rapidly, but unless you look out the window it can be a kind of swish, a big steel swaddling in a mechanical rocking chair. There’s also a bit of community in a subway car, a community based on “we all have to be here and we can not escape at the moment so here we are, naked as we came.” Which maybe creates a kind of privacy in public? We observe but don’t interact. Once I saw a woman crying and hopelessly trying to wipe her tears with just her hands. I had napkins in my coat pocket and wanted to offer, but I didn’t want to break that invisible force field the subway-cry creates, nor be That Guy. All the transportations have their thing I guess. Buses are for staring out the window and imagining, subways for crying and dancing, taxis for finger banging.
John D. Ersing
L, F, M
As any New Yorker knows, the subway is the second-next place you’re alone beside when you’re actually alone. Everybody’s paying attention to their own iPhones, books, children, whatever, and not to each other — save for the occasional yelling match or group of dancing teenagers. In short: nobody gives a shit if you’re crying. Which makes it the perfect place to do so, especially if something happens when you’re away from home. Something happens at work? You don’t have to wait an hour until you get back home to let it all out! You can cry for the hour on the way home in order to maximize crying time!
Not to mention the bittersweetness of crying on public transit: the Jack’s Mannequin “have you ever been alone in a crowded room?” sentiment where you’re surrounded by people and yet utterly lonely. It’s an awful place to be, but there’s a certain solace in it. Maybe I’ve watched too many New York City movies, but whenever I cry on a train, I feel like the protagonist in a film. All of a sudden, instead of being someone to be pitied, I believe I’m someone to be rooted for. And that makes me feel better. Besides, I’m not alone: crying on trains is something that many people do. We’re a tribe. After all, the cliché “you’re not a real New Yorker until you’ve cried in public” is a cliché for a reason.
Helena Fitzgerald
Q
I have absolutely lost track of how many times I’ve cried on the subway, or of which trains (it’s probably all of them) I’ve cried on since moving to NYC 13 years ago. I do remember distinctly an evening in 2013 when I was crying (about a text message from a dude, probably) and looked up and saw no less than four other passengers also crying. None of us acknowledged each other, not one of us did or said anything. But it felt like a bizarre kind of comfort, this reminder of the smallness, the banality, the ordinariness of my own crying, of the fact of being sad enough to not care that I was in public. Sometimes the fact that nobody cares, the fact that you’re not and will never be special, is the most comforting thing about New York. Little kids cry to get attention, maybe, or to get what they want, sometimes, but adults almost unilaterally cry for the opposite effect, as a means of privacy, of drawing some kind of invisible curtain around themselves, even in public. I think the hope is not that someone will ask what is wrong, but that everyone will look away more quickly, will allow one to be even more invisible than usual. I have felt less seen crying on the subway than I have crying alone in my apartment. This city, in its great, uncaring, anonymity, reminds you that your sadness is not the end of the world. There’s the world, going right on around, not remotely concerned that you’ve wept openly on a public train.🚇
