Knife-Wielding New York Clowns
So, it’s a smidge past 10:00 in the PM, and I’m on the train to work. Reading a novel and keeping to myself. I’m dressed in my characteristic summer dress, which is to say black slacks, black whifebeater shirt, black fedora, black running shoes, with my black sidebag, containing my laptop. I’d been on the train for one station, when this peculiar old woman, with short white hair, no teeth, a red headband (long, trailing several feet down from where it’s tied off behind her head), a long brown trenchcoat, and a vague smell of alcohol about her sits down next to me (and bear in mind that there are several empty seats all around me she could have chosen). She wraps one arm around me, and says, without preamble, "A little big to be a biker, aren’t you?".
"I think you’ve mistaken me", I say, immediately uncomfortable, and wishing to disabuse her of whatever notions it is that leads her to believe this is an appropriate course of actions on her part. "I’ve never ridden a motorcycle in my life".
"You can’t fool me", she says, "I’m a New York clown!". It becomes somewhat more clear at this point that the incongruity of her first statement was not to be an isolated state of affairs.
There’s a group of five young oriental girls sitting across from us, clustered around a cel phone. They’re glancing at us with mounting confusion and discomfort. I share this with them. "I’m not Jesus, I’m not god", she says, looking at them. Though the particulars of this breed of diatribe varies from lunatic to lunatic, I know it immediately when I hear it. These are the words of a lost and oft-homeless person whose life has fucked them up so much that they’ve needed to incorporate some personal mythology into their day-to-day lives to give them definition.
"Because neither of them exist", I say, as though to complete her earlier thought. I was feeling increasingly uncomfortable with that arm around me, and wanted to say something which would decrease her affection towards me. I kept my voice level and clear, without making it sound like it’s intended as an insult.
"No, there’s truth, there is", she mewls, pleadingly. She wants me to agree with her.
"There’s not", I say, still staying level in my diction, "And saying so over and over again won’t change that". It is not without some significant relief that I note she withdraws her arm from me at this point.
"So you don’t like kids?", she asks, extrapolating upon some twisted and unknowable train of thought occurring in her inscrutable mind.
"I… don’t see what that has to do with what we were talking about", I say, while going back to reading my book. I’m hoping by this time she’s seeing that whatever she wants from me she’s not going to get.
She snatches the book from me, to look at the cover. Seeing nothing on it which she can spin into what she wants to talk to me about, she hands it back to me, and I begin to read again. Meanwhile, she goes back to rattling, this time to the five oriental girls in front of us, about how we destroyed the world, and now there’s only vampires. Wisely, or perhaps merely uncomprehending, they don’t respond. This doesn’t dissuade her.
Moments later, the train begins its approach to Metrotown station, and I move to get off, not because I actually need to get off here, but because I hope to take the opportunity to change cars. I take note of a couple of police officers on the train platform. They seem to be rushing towards the train I’m on. I think, absently, that I’m glad I have my ticket with me and haven’t snuck onto the train.
The train comes to a halt. The doors slide open. I move to step out. The police officers, drawing their guns and running at me, push me aside, screaming at me to get out of the way. They board the train. One places his gun against the head of the old woman with the headband. The other screams at her to get down on the ground. As he’s handcuffing her, he bellows at her:
"Where’s the knife"?
Oh, yikes.
The police handle her off the train, pushing her down behind the elevator shaft, and I realize this woman has recently stabbed one or more people, and that she was considered a serious enough threat to warrant an armed response. I am very, very glad that my efforts to disengage from her went the way I planned for it to, instead of eliciting a more hostile response.
I don’t know if I was meant to be camouflage for her, like the cops wouldn’t be looking for a couple or something. Perhaps she was just batshit fucking insane. The truth probably lies somewhere between the two.
Only one thing is made perfectly clear to me by this experience:
I don’t like New York clowns.