Filed under: Commentary
So it starts to become a thing when the guy says, to his friends, “Did you go down to Wall Street yet? I wanted to go down and see what it was all about, so I could laugh at it”
Dan and I exchanged glances and smirks.
I went back to reading the article on my phone.
The quieter kid by the window was trying to disagree but mostly by brushing the loud guy off. The loud guy was in front of them, turned around on the seat like on the bus in elementary school. And he was saying the occupiers are just lazy and they don’t have jobs – you can’t have a job if you sleep there and stay there 24/7, duh. They’re just lazy and are complaining and not doing anything. I wanted to intervene, because as he was talking I read a tweet that refuted this – 74% of occupiers are employed, but about half of tea partiers aren’t. I said out loud “I want to engage!” to Dan. This guy talked about how he wished he had gone down and told the occupiers all this – because it’d be more decent to tell them to “their face” instead of saying it “behind their back” ya know? As if he was the first guy to say these things and he should go down there so they knew how he felt about it, because it was just that profound. Which, of course, it was. Or rather, it became.
His next line was “I don’t want my tax dollars going toward shoveling three pounds of shit out of that park!” I was confused at first, and so was the kid by the window. I thought he was referring to the raid that happened a few nights ago – since a lot of personal property was thrown out and ostensibly that removal was paid for by the city, with taxpayer money. But of course – that would be a valid claim. IMHO, the wasted tax dollars are on the police force (police brutality) and the midnight raids and riot gear and pepper spray and desecration of the encampment. Windowkid was confused too – “Three pounds? of shit?”- “You know, three pounds of human feces that had to be removed by the city!” This conversation slowly escalates, until loudkid is animatedly detailing how ridiculous three pounds of shit is, and that that camp was a disgusting mess.
At this point, the kid on the end of aisle who we hadn’t heard form yet says “I dont really think three pounds is all that much shit” I guess he figures this is the best way to discredit the talker. And this is precisely when I lose it and burst out laughing. I couldn’t even look up at the dudes – I had made eye contact with the window kid when the other loud guy said something especially ridiculous up until now, but now I was just hysterically laughing to myself in my seat. I motioned to Dan that I was opening up a new tweet; this had to be documented. That’s when a guy about 3 rows back chimes in.
Keep in mind, it’s a 1am train on a Saturday night. There are lots of characters on this train. Some asleep, some drunk and/or high, some tired from a long day/night of partying/whatever. There aren’t any kids really, which is sort of important.
So this dude a few rows back holds up his water bottle and starts saying something seemingly profound. I thought he was going to say something good – how ridiculous the loudguy was, or how he totally agreed with him and fuck those hippies! But instead, he said “This is a pound! Three pounds is the same as three water bottles!” I think his point was that he agreed with the other guy; that that is horribly disgusting and those occupiers are gross and lazy. I couldn’t really tell.
At this point, everyone in the train car bursts out laughing. Just that one bystander deciding to say something, even if it was totally silly, gave everyone permission to chime in – either by laughing, or by saying something of their own. I felt like I was already a part of this conversation and had felt this permission granted to me a few seconds before, when I was obviously laughing aloud. But when one person, clearly unrelated to these dudes, decided he couldn’t be silent any longer, everyone on the train agreed. More than one person announced “The shit is really hitting the fan now!” White Plains was approaching and people were starting to get up. One man behind me said he was trying to go to sleep, which opened up the “It’s a free country” line. The water bottle guy even said the classic “Who do you think you are?” Everyone was getting into it now. The train was stopping, the the group of dudes was getting off. I said “I can’t go yet, I’ve gotta tweet this!” (Check out some awesome tweet responses from the friend Jeremy @serpicojones)
When I stood up, and the loud kid was reiterating his argument that tax dollars shouldn’t be used to clean up the messes of these protestors, I said my piece – I’d rather have my tax dollars cleaning up feces than paying for foreign wars. A girl near us vocally agreed, and asked me if this stop was White Plains (she had fallen asleep earlier. In fact, I took a picture of her sleeping because she was holding a Budweiser). I said yes as the loudguy finally ended his soliloquy with “hey, go suck a dick.” I immediately said something about how gay jokes aren’t cool, when the waterbottle guy retorted with “at least i’m getting my dick sucked tonight” or something to that effect. As I exited the train, I declared that the argument was legitimate when we were talking about human feces, but as soon as it turned to gay slurs, it stopped being worthwhile.
The doors opened and everyone flooded out, still engaged in conversation.
There’s something going on here. Even if this conversation was stupid, ill-informed, and seemingly pointless, it was a conversation on a train; a place where conversations between strangers are rare and curt. Maybe we were talking about something that wasn’t central to the OWS movement, and maybe it was vulgar and not the best example of productive dialogue. But people on the TRAIN were TALKING about this. The train, a place for quiet and resting and shushing and feeling weird about talking on the phone too loudly, became a place for something. A place where I felt safe enough to speak out about how I feel about the OWS movement, in a sentence. And a place where I could call out a gay slur and say, without hesitation, that it wasn’t ok, that it wasn’t cool. This is something. and people feel enough feelings about it to come out of their comfort zones and inject themselves into stranger’s conversations. And that is definitely something I can get behind.
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