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Monday, November 06, 2006
posted by
Lady Penelope in
Foolhardy
 Oh how did I almost forget to tell you about this one?
Wednesday, 9:40 am, subway train: the door at the end swings open, and a noisy panhandler stomps in from the next car. I frequently give money to streetside beggars. They weather the cold for a living; like any good pinko, I’m not judgmental in the “get-a-job” sense. I’ve great sympathy for the homeless, and I don’t make a big hooey when some smelly guy lays across the handicapped seats. But I’m very skeptical of on-train panhandlers, who I’ve seen in Timberlands and/or with Gucci handbags, and are, I suspect, sometimes en route to their day jobs. The sales routines are all the same. “I just got laid off and I’m trying to support myself and my three children...” There are enough kids in Williamsburg using this “on-the-streets” experience to (ostensibly) write about in their journals and (more likely) make extra cash for vintage shoes. I resent it, really: it’s a bit like being proselytized in an elevator, and somebody who might’ve earned my sympathy and devotion in another location is less likely to when I’m sweating my way to my 401k-job. My heart may be cold, but it’s true.
I do give a buck or two to (talented) musicians, to the kids who do tumbling, and to the man who advertises his strip show. Something about them grabs me.
“Good morning everybody!” This one, he was really, super annoyingly loud. Its illegal these days to bring coffee or soda on the train. Anyway, I have a fatigue that won’t tire of me. Who isn’t miserable on the way to the office? I cry all the way there, I smile all the way home. I think I shot him a look. Oh what am I saying, at 9:40 am, I shoot somebody who walks in front of me funny a look. I shoot everybody looks. Evil eye, evil eye. I have such an evil glare that a former coworker used to buy me plastic eyeballs whenever he traveled.
Anyway, so dude goes on his spiel, really loud-like, as follows:
“Good morning, fellow passengers! If anybody here has a piece of bread ... Or a glass of water...” Funny you should mention that, in my pocket here. Who the fuck’s going to have a glass of water? Evil eye. I won’t type the man’s words in capitals, because that’s annoying, but assume that he isn’t using his indoor voice, that he sounds a little, eh, aggressive: “If anybody even has a piece of bread or a glass of water that they could give me, I would be very thankful! I have screwed up, I have! I admit I have made mistakes in the past! And I am sorry for them! And I went to the AIDS” (something something, mumbled, I think deliberately because I think he’s lying). “If you can spare it in your hearts! A piece of bread! Or a glass of water! I would also take a penny...” Oh but of course. A penny. Because none of us have bread and water to give you. “If anybody has a piece of bread, or a glass of water, or even a penny. I admit I have made my mistakes! I have been a terrible man, and I regret all of the bad things I have done, believe me. Not a day goes by when I don’t regret being me! A bread! A cup of water! Even a penny!”
Okay, so he gets me here. “When I don’t regret being me.” Yes, I wish he weren’t shouting it. But what if he’s not a faker? And he’s filled with self-loathing? And by giving him a buck, I will feel him with a moment of shared human--screw it. He’s playing me. Or he thinks he is. But fuck ‘em. Give up my last bill and I’ve got forty cents for lunch and breakfast.
“Are there any Christians on this train?” A few people other start reaching for their wallets. Fools. Their buttons are so easily lit, like little robots. The woman across from me pulls out a big pink checkbook-like thing with a metal fish attached to the change purse. Louder still, he says, “Please God, let there be a few Christians!” He has that eye right on that little Jesus-fish. You can hear the zippers, the unsnapping of buttons, the jingling of coins. And now he’s reached a crescendo: “Dear God, don’t let them all be dicksuckers!”
You know the moment where the record scratches? ZZZZSSSSSSSKKKkkkkk.....
“Please God, please God, don’t let there be a bunch of dicksuckers on this train!” The woman across from me grabs that fish and zips shut her little change purse. She shoves it back in her bag, more zippers, more buttons, now in the other direction. Everyone’s horrified. But now I know he’s the real deal. No Williamsburg poseur here, this guy’s got it. He’s 100% lunatic, 0% sales. “You scumbags! You’re all fake Christians! You’re all a bunch of god damn fake Christians! I hate Christians! You scumbags! You’re all fake-fucking-Christian scumbags!” I pull out some change.
He walks over to me. “You,” he declares, “are not a dicksucker! Ladies and gentleman, you got one gal on this train who is not a fucking dicksucker. One of you. She’s not a dicksucker fake-Christian like the rest of you fucking scumbags.” They hate me. They really, really hate me. But fortunately, it’s my exit.
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Posted by stubby 11/06
10:20 AM | | Did he really say “dicksucker”, or was that an edit?
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Posted by Lady Penelope 11/06
12:59 PM | | No he really said dicksucker. I’m so not making this up. I live in NYC. I don’t have to make shit up, believe me. To be honest, these sort of things happen a lot, both here and in Chicago. There seems to be a plethora of homeless men with something like Tourette’s.
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Posted by Moira 11/06
02:53 PM | | I probably would have tucked my little purse away, too, not realizing what he had just done. He called out the hypocrites and showed them for exactly what they were: kowtowing, arse-licking, toe-the-line and pass-the-wafers hypocrites.
100% lunatic, perhaps, but with a much better grasp of reality than the pretty little churchmice.
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Posted by Lady Penelope 11/06
03:12 PM | | Yeah, I should speak up for them though. I realize that’s how this makes it sound, and that’s a flaw in my telling of the tale:
I can’t blame them for being nervous. Signs throughout the subway warn riders not to give to panhandlers, panhandling on the trains is illegal. Contributing to the problem just encourages it. And, yes, it is a problem. (Just for one, it requires the panhandlers to walk between cars. At least a few times a year somebody falls down between the cars as the train’s moving… and then the conductor’s gotta go pull the mangled bloody corpse out. They have special psychologists to deal with the conductors.) Though I have no issues giving money to panhandlers, I very rarely give a homeless dude money on the train.
It’s easy to say that these people weren’t being christian, but he did just insult them (one could argue that “dickeater” isn’t much of an insult, but nonetheless the intent is there), and it’s 9:30 am, and nobody needs to hear this guy telling them off for not giving up their cash fast enough.
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Posted by Lady Penelope 11/06
03:30 PM | | And also, save the woman with the fish on her wallet, this is NYC. Chances that any of these people have been to church in the past six months? 15%.
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Posted by balderdash 11/06
03:41 PM | | what a hilarious story. Evahbody gots the baby jeebus on their side.
That guy on the A train who plays guitar and sings Spanish songs is great though. If my sidewalks froze I would hire that guy to sing the ice off of em.
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Posted by Lady Penelope 11/06
03:49 PM | | I bet your thinking of the same guy I am, though I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him on the A train. Perhaps I need to start taking it more often. I love his voice so much, I used to see him on Saturdays on the L platform. One of my first trips to the vet, he was playing at the 53rd street 6-train station, and I was terrifically excited that Egg, in the midst of all the other badness, got to hear him sing (cats do like music, I’ve noticed). The way his voice echoes off the tunnels? If I had $1.50 to last the week, he would get it, b/c his music’s so ... palliative.
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Posted by Moira 11/06
03:49 PM | | Church attendance is irrelevant. If they responded to his question, “Are there any Christians here,” then they have planted their flag on the beach. And when they suddenly changed their behavior because he swore, they proved they were more interested in the label than the substance.
The laws and location are a separate matter. Yeah, the guy has a problem (well, several).
But, like I said, if I’d been there, I either would not have pulled out my wallet at all, or I would probably have done the same thing the majority of the riders did and put it away when insulted.
You just painted a really interesting portrait and it made me think.
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Posted by Lady Penelope 11/06
04:01 PM | | Church attendance is irrelevant. If they responded to his question, “Are there any Christians here,” then they have planted their flag on the beach. And when they suddenly changed their behavior because he swore, they proved they were more interested in the label than the substance.
Hmm. Good point. But really, I don’t think they were so much trying to be good christians necessarily as responding to his rising desperation/their increased guilt or sympathy--same reason you might’ve, same reason I did. When a panhandler comes on, people never reach for their wallets right away. It takes a few minutes for the spiel to ratchet up the conscience, for that feeling of “he’s not going to go away” to come on, for that “well maybe he won’t walk over here” to be abandoned, for that “oh, what’s a dollar to me anyway?” to result in the handing over of change to the subway panhandler. Hard to say that they were worried about their relationship to Jesus, their faith I would take as an unknown.
But this is totally in my telling it, b/c the way i have it, yes, i made them look like a bunch of fake christians. I kind of went for humor value with that line, I can’t quite be sure the timing was as exact as I make it sound, and now I feel guilty for misrepresenting them.
Really, the more I think about it, I was being an asshole. I should not have given this guy a buck.
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Posted by Moira 11/06
11:23 PM | | Heh. You convinced me and then, apparently, I sent you to the other side of the argument. Poetic.
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Posted by Lady Penelope 11/07
01:48 AM | | I’m not really sure that I changed my mind about it, just that at first, I hadn’t realized I’d written it so ... accusingly. My original reaction was, “Gosh they weren’t a bunch of jerkity jerks, they were just riding the train...”
But then rereading it, I was like, duh, no wonder you thought they were hypocrites. And I feel sort of bad about that. My doing, completely. The timing of the coin purses, it might have been close, but maybe not cause-and-effect close (for some of them, possibly, but not so as I could ever be certain), though that seems to be what I directly implied. Chick did have a pink checkbook with a jesus-fish on it, but I still couldn’t call any of them hypocrites, however sloppily I put this together.
Listen peoples, if we could afford a fact checker…
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