NY electric

FROM March 25, 2005

The 3 train uptown, 6 pm, the smush of strangers. People, mostly besuited professionals hoofing it home from Times Square rush hour, are pissed. Crazylady in headphones sings loudly, off key, "Yeahhh You can go your own way--go your own wayyy-ayyy-ay." This lone section of chorus; her favorite part, I suppose, because she's crowing it on a loop. She crows, and crows, and crows, possessed by the 'fro'd and vested soul of late-'70s Lindsay Buckingham. A puffy-eyed woman nearby asks can you please stop with the singing and the answer is pretty much no:

You want fuckin quiet, go to the fuckin library! Go to the fuckin library if you want fuckin quiet growl, and growl, and growl

Tired lady looks her dead in the eye and says, In my next life I'll be born six-five and a man, and I will kick the ass of people like you

Crazylady stops singing, switches seats.

41st and Madison, 10 am. Four men relieving a truck of its boxes; they seem decidedly not-pissed. The door to the cab is open; rhythm tumbles out; horns flash wide cold smiles in the bite of the open morn. The moment is so fucking generous: it's Amerie unleashed. "Ding dong ding dong ding" is spring's doorbell and I am definitely answering. I feel less dead in 15 seconds than I have since like, 1964. Oh-woah!