This morning, having defused my alarm clock without really having awoke, I was forced to eject my ass out the door at a normally undesired rate of speed. I grabbed what I could, made sure I was clothed and nothing that might get me arrested or slapped was hanging out of my pants and charged the subway station to make my daily commute from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

I have a personal rule of always riding in the very far front or back cars of the trains in New York City. My theory is two-fold. First, the middle of a train is always the most crowded, much like how when entering a subway car, people take two steps in and stop completely, therefore crowding the entrance while leaving the rest of the train quite spacious. This is due in large part by the fact that people in general are fucking brainless sheep and deserve to die. We of the smarter elite should eat them, but that’s another post. My second reason, by virtue of the first, is that if ever there was a bomb or some crazy-ass motherfucker (aside from my innocent self, of course) decided he wanted to kill a bunch of people, all that shit’s going to go down in the middle of the train because that’s where you can cause the most damage. Call me paranoid, but its a habit I picked up in 2001 for what, at the time, I saw as a very good reason and to this day, I don’t really see a need to change.

So, when the train pulled into the station, I hopped into the very last car. Usually, the train is moderately crowded at it’s ends during the morning rush hour, so I was surprised to find an empty seat available. I looked around and saw at least four people standing nearby. If you get on a train during rush hour in NYC and there’s an empty spot with people standing nearby, understand that something is up.

I checked the empty seat. No spilled coffee or sketchy foreign smears of unknown organic nastiness. No half-eaten chicken wings. Nothing wrong there.

I checked the other occupants of the bench. Two middle-aged Asian ladies speaking mandarin and elderly white man in a ratty tweed coat, knit hat and serious case of ear-hair who appeared to be snoozing. I can handle that. I sat down next to the man and after settling my bag and getting out a book, I started reading. About two minutes later, I was startled by a sound to my right.

“Nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuungh!”

It was the old man next to me. I looked over, noticing that his eyes were still closed and aside from the outburst, he still seemed to be sleeping. Whatever, I thought. Old people make fucked up noises all the time—it’s part of being old. I fully intend to make a shitload of disturbing exclamations in my sunset years, so who am I to take offense at his? I went back to my book with part of my brain painting rosy pictures of a withered and ancient visage of myself screeching profanity at children and whipping my catheter tube around like a dangerous weapon.

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