part one

Serendipity. On the Jewish new year, I was playing good Catholic girl for the first time in a lunar cycle, wearing the Virgen de Guadalupe emblem on the bust of my pink tee, reading about Mighty Guadalupana Coatlaxopeuh Tonantzin, and clicking Hail Marys off an imaginary rosary, for reals, when I heard the dude. He was manic and conspiratorial, a subway train chatter, white cat reddened by sun or inebriates, hissing see, see, like Jimmy Cagney, or people weaned on Jimmy Cagney–like my mother’s generation, like how mom’s best friend Inez Monjaras (god rest her soul) sprinkled perfect staccato sees and so I sez in her natural speech, unself-conscious and rambling out like a Chevy.
So he sez:
Read about your government! He’s holding onto the pole but his arm whooshes up; tobacco flicks out from the half-smoked roll-your-own in his hand. Read about your government! IT’S ALL THERE…
IN REVELATIONS.
The N train’s bumpy over the bridge, but this guy was just tipsy. He pitched over crooked and stuck his face near an eggy but fancy, palm-headed fellow with an iPod, plaid shirt and specs, early twenties, sez he’s a graphic designer. Tipsy Tobacco man 1-2-stepped to the bench, looked in iPod’s face, and he sez,
I’m a goddamn engineer and I haven’t worked in months! I’m smarter than most people on this train! Fucks in the government never did shit for me! This shit is over! Don’t you think all these fucks in the government, don’t you think they should all be [unintelligible]
iPod’s scared and makes no eye contact. He’s tryin, trying hard to, tryin hard to look disengaged, stoic or distracted so Tipsy Tobacco will go away—but, poor guy, it’s so obvious, you could mash up his schlumpy fear like a warm Twinkie. And anyway, Tipsy is tipsy but calculated, and he is smart in a certain way—I can tell by way he says REVELATIONS wry like a punchline—and his is not a preacher-mission for apocalypse or left. Tipsy T is curious whether iPod dude, in particular, thinks the fucks in the government should all be [unintelligible]
“I don’t, I don’t,” iPod stammers to the end of his thought. “I like some of them. I’m not sure.”
Fuck, man. Governmental uncertainty. Not. Cool. ,. Dude. This right here is a polar engagement! Tipsy starts talking much, much louder.
Me, I’m nosy and lately I been meeting people. I’m nosy, and I want to talk to Tipsy Tobacco. So I’m all the trifecta of Virgens can wait, shove the book in my bag, send the rosary back to the heavens with my abuelita, and I peer through the oblong metal poles, across the doors, I smile, I stare. I am willing Tipsy Tobacco to direct his monologue my way, ’cause his monologue cut the subway in half, and he’s the first real practitioner of passion I’ve seen all day. He may be drunk, he may be crazed, but he’s a man of the spark and right now I feel it. Come bless me with that train-wasted, art bell curandera shit! Crack an egg, dog! But no, I’m not the chosen one, and it’s our stop. We all get off at Pacific and fan out in three directions, iPod relieved, Tipsy T still talking but not to me.