New York Stories: The Third Rail

In my last year of college, I completed a novel called Window Shopping, which was so nauseatingly preachy and over-stylized I barely noticed when my hard drive fried its only copy. Its protagonist, boldly, was a vain, myopic college kid who becomes so bored with being normal that he takes to drastic measures of distinguishing himself. He starts fights, runs into traffic, even jumps off the Brooklyn Bridge-between many unbearable descriptions of clubs and disillusionment.

Three years later, though I've gotten a job and continue to water-down the post-collegiate bile with dinners out, my attraction to danger-which reflects both a desperation for something interesting to happen and a cynicism which maintains that nothing will-occasionally rears itself after that bipolar sort of drinking where things seem so fine as to blow.

I began the evening with dinner around 10 in Brooklyn with Leah. Now, Leah, regrettably, is my best friend. When I think of her, I spit on flowers. The warm wind flits her thin brown hair as the table wobbles between us low on Second Avenue.

"There's this mime in Washington Square Park who reminds me of you," she says.

I want to be her mule, her pacifier, her stitch and the wound it closes. She checks her watch and sighs thoughtfully, probably outlining her defense. To our left, a feeble pine writhes like a swinging corpse. What a future.

Two hours later, I'm not quite spinning. We ended with a hug I could have gotten from my mother (so long as she was drunk). On the train I'm intoxicated with the idea of never being seen again. If I cannot make love, I will mythicize myself to her, and so at the 59th and Lexington stop, I pass into the tunnel's hot shadows and set out for Queens or wherever beyond.

Possessing the perfect balance of nihilism, joy, self-loathing and arrogance, I crouch carefully but quickly along the narrow platform to the right, four or five feet above the tracks. The train will come towards me, which is how I want it. It always seemed there would be just enough space to stand aside. I won't know until I'm safe or scrambled. Until then, one step to the left will send me tumbling against myth and onto, perhaps, the third rail, whose validity I've always doubted-that cynicism I spoke of earlier.

It's very lonely here and dry and noiseless. There are no rats, no mole people, no underground bandits, no vandalism. The tunnel is faintly lit with small hexagonal spotlights. The handrail to my right evokes images of a tip-top upbringing since polluted by sentience and grace. What makes me rebel against it-indecision? Vanity?

Every noise is flattened to an echo. Occasional clearings and a short staircase lead to: What? A passage under the river? I don't check. Except to take one great trembling piss, I don't stop, don't think or shudder or notice I am breathing. I just want to finish this, my only distinction. Things will be different hence. I'll be fortified, validated. A cold sweat drips into my eyes. Fear, vertigo and claustrophobia infuse each step. My silly faux army jacket and gussy jeans are black with grime. $228 shed and counting. My appearance means naught; my lack of fuck compels me.

When I fall, I'll not recall what last image knotted my head before it smashed the ground. Only darkness. When I wake, seconds or minutes later, a train is crawling towards me from around 40 feet away, allowing plenty of time to scramble onto the ledge and erect myself cylindrically against the wall. I am spared an inch from its screaming windows, in which I see a sleepy young man with an iPod, the complacent automaton I hitherto was, the one I long to be should I survive this. After it passes I collapse against the wall, beaten and asphyxiated and nearly hysterical, my heart throbbing in my ears. Starting again, my leg nearly gives on its first step; my ankle, I fear, is broken.

My entire right side throbs excruciatingly and a warm trickle of blood falls from my temple. The track widens only to constrict and darken again, again and again; my steps grow heavier, my balance grows ever more precarious. Christ, maybe I'll die in here. Slowly and anticlimactically and with a maudlin clutter of last thoughts.

But I carefully limp with one hand blindly brushing the wall for any obstruction that would send me tumbling again onto the tracks, into which the walkway eventually merges, to no electrocution. I dance all over the tracks in spite of my wounds and they don't do a goddamn thing. Self-important cowards! As the sky emerges above me, I pant and laugh and drink the cool air, a gold piece of this treasure chest. I wonder if she's sleeping...