If you think the city is lonely or brutal, wait until you’re sick. You know the infamous sick passenger who delays subway service? Everybody hates him or her. Mind you, I’ve never been on the train with this person. But something about being delayed twenty minutes before my express train is taken out of service entirely makes me blame the victim.
“Maybe if someone would stop eating food off the floor of the Grand Central Station bathroom, this wouldn’t happen,” I think. Not to mention staying in bed when feeling ill or particularly seizure-prone.
Really, though, I know that life marches on even when our noses are running all the way. I once dated a guy who delayed train service when he passed out on the 1 train during rush hour. It was a mysterious fainting spell, and the amazing thing is that he talked someone into giving up a seat before he lost consciousness. I, on the other hand, once got off at the Times Square platform, flopped on a bench, and vomited on the shoes of rushing commuters. No one seemed to notice.
I could write a book about how many cookies I’ve tossed in public with nary a concern from my fellow New Yorkers. I’ve barfed from food poisoning, stomach flues, and horrible reactions to antibiotics in some of New York’s most interesting locations, most recently, in front of a chichi downtown restaurant that’s actually a converted bank vault. Wall Street-types stepped over me, like I was some kind of street urchin.
These days, I have a runny nose with the occasional scratchy throat or cough. Non-projectile illnesses get a lot more sympathy, but the best have to be pregnancy (which is a great multi-tasking, body-snatching kind of illness) and the benign keel over. I may start feigning those soon to avoid standing and hanging on the pole. If the train is in service, that is.
