My Kindle is out of battery. I am reading a crappy book, but it beats this. We are a captive train audience.
A man in a Knicks hat with tattoos sleeves on each arm is foaming at the mouth and yelling into people’s faces. The devil has found us today.
The disturbed man dishes insults to all of us that range the entire alphabet. He spits at some. He rams his shoulder into others. He tells us all he doesn’t mind going back to prison. I am praying at the velocity of a well known rosary at a Latin funeral. The irony— that I recently heard the Mind Shift Podcast on Demons and Miracles. This scene fit the conversation. Brother is straight up spiritually attacked. There are red scraped circles around his eyes. The energy is unmistakable. A 400 lbs man in a bucket hat is ready to fight him. He raises his hand and tells him to calm down. A tourist is crying quietly on the next bench.
Headphones are in and my fingers are tight around the pepper spray bottle. The man suddenly stops yelling and decides to pee on the train doors. We are finally approaching the first stop in Brooklyn out of the bridge tunnel. We all line up at the furthest door; they don’t open soon enough. I see an elderly man waiting to get in. “Pick another car,” I tell him loudly almost grabbing him. The elderly man follows me into another train car cautiously. A woman screams at the conductor, “I saw his penis for f***s sake.”
Once in the other car, as the doors close, the elderly man makes eye contact with me and whispers, “thank you.”
Another Monday in NYC.
GABRIELA YARELIZ 