Part of the Ride

Yesterday after school I went over to my cousin, Susie’s place who’s in Manhattan for a couple of months. I went over there to babysit her kid so that she and a friend could go to a show. When they got back they mentioned that it had just started raining pretty hard as they came in the door. I didn’t think much about it though because I figured I had an umbrella and would be fine; how bad could it be? In fact, I’d all but forgotten about the rain when reached the building’s lobby an hour later after talking with Susie. Sure enough it was still raining, and raining hard. I only needed to walk 3-4 blocks to make it to the subway station but within only one block I was soaked from my waist down. After another block or so it started to rain under my umbrella as the water had made its way through the fabric. I thought about stepping into a restaurant and getting something to eat while trying to wait out the rain. I was tempted but I figured I was already soaked and couldn’t get much wetter. The streets flowed like rivers and the taxis were followed by rooster tails of water on the near empty streets. I tried to avoid the big puddles and the spray from the cars but once you’re wet you’re wet. I could feel the water sloshing around in my shoes.
The subway station had water dripping from the ceiling in some places but it was nice to be out the rain. Service at night is greatly reduced so I ended up waiting for 15-20 min. for a train. The MTA train was fairly empty, maybe only 10 people in the car I was in, which made it easier for the two homeless people covered with coats and dirty blankets to lay on the benches not to be disturbed. I guess it’s like a two dollar hotel room that keeps them out of the rain.
The MTA train doesn’t take me into Jersey so I had to transfer to the PATH train. The PATH trains runs even more infrequently than the MTA at night, so there were a lot of people waiting on the platform when I got there, but I still had to wait for another 15 minutes for the next train.
I haven’t said specifically what time any of this was taking place but it’s important to fully appreciate the next part of my voyage home last night. It was about 1:30 am when I arrived at the PATH station, apparently the perfect time for people to be leaving work, shows, or bars and heading home and those were the type of people waiting at the station. The subway is a great equalizer, there were guys in tuxes and women in evening dresses, but there were also others smoking and stumbling around the station.
I was able to get a seat on the train. The first thing I noticed was that sitting right across from me was two girls that had obviously been out partying and had too much to drink. One was passed out and laying in the others lap, I didn’t see her move until her friend dragged her out of the train at their stop. The other one was awake to start with and apparently let someone else know where they needed to get off because someone had to wake her up at her stop. Three collage aged guys drinking out of paper bags what turned out to be one liter bottles of beer started talking loudly about everything from politics to business to geography. Of course it was drunk talk so some of it was pretty funny and they even drew a couple of other people in the car into their weird conversation. Most people were doing a good job at ignoring or enjoying these guys except a large guy standing close to them who looked like he was ready to pop one of them in the face to shut them up, but nothing happened. The guy sitting next to me started talking with the drunk guys and I noticed out of the corner of my eye what looked like water dripping on to his sleeve. I looked up at the ceiling to see if there was a leak and was confused when I couldn’t figure out where the water was coming from. I looked back at the sleeve of his sweater to see if the drip was still hitting it and was even more confused to see that the drip wasn’t landing on his sleeve, the drip was coming out of his sleeve. It was the weirdest thing, to see drip after drip materialize out of his dry sleeve and then all of the sudden it stopped. I was a little grossed out as I tried to figure out what the heck that liquid was; it was like he had just sprung a leak. I was happy to get out of there when my stop came.
I finally got home at around 2:00 am. It wasn’t exactly what I expected to be doing last night but it’s all part of the ride.