Four women on the subway platform, chatting animatedly, discussing the evening’s plan—a show and meeting someone later if I’m overhearing correctly. Which is the stop to get off at, and is that other co-worker going to be joining? one of them asks, I think wistfully, with the standard New York night out hope that this will be the one you find a spark.
These women look nothing like me, but as we wait for the uptown 1 train, I see a glimmer of myself, almost twenty years ago, fresh in the city and alive with the magic of it.
Returning for this quick trip for an event I’m alive once more, willingly shoved into a subterranean tunnel with a cross-section of humanity, pressed up against strangers in a moving car. An inescapable buzz hits almost as soon as I step off Amtrak and cross shiny new Moynihan station, the electricity that made me feel, for the decade I lived here, part of something, special, lucky.
On the platform a couple asks if they’re in the right place to get to Times Square. “We’re from Chicago! We’re going to see a show!” I’m taken aback, forgetting I too assume, when traveling, everyone else is a local. I’m reasonable sure, though I haven’t studied a New York metro map in ages, but I must not have sounded convincing, because a minute later they turn and ask the four women, who also nod. The Mid-Westerners turn back to me apologetically. “It isn’t that we didn’t believe you, we just wanted to be sure!” Of course, no one wants to miss their one night of Broadway.
There’s unexpected snow, a brief roar of wind-whipped flakes coating my hair as I head west from the 1 stop at 66th. I turn north along Riverside Drive at the same time as two men, striding purposefully in parallel. We all gasp like a choir as a wall of wind barrels into us when we turn the corner. I don’t know them any either, but we’re in it together for a moment now. Whatever else we may disagree on, we agree that it’s bitter cold, and there are blocks ahead on foot before we can get out of it, and we will all just have to suffer together.
The primacy of travel by foot and public transit in New York City creates an ecosystem that regularly brings you face to face with strangers. Strangers who look different than you, of many countries, languages, races, religions, style of dress. You endure together both steamy summer subway tunnels and the rush of winter wind at the water’s edge, leveled by forces beyond our control. It offers, to those open and paying attention, convincing evidence that kindness and selfishness are relatively evenly distributed, that there’s no such thing as a good or bad category of people—we’re all a mixed bag, we all have repeated chances to lean toward one or the other, like the recurring cycle of trains that come and go.
I came from a small town, and remember being frightened of the big city awaiting. I thought everyone on the subway would wear designer clothing and my humble attire would stand out. Now I know you can wear whatever you want and be more or less equally accepted—that is, largely ignored, unless you choose to avail yourself of the camaraderie of bad weather or a delayed train. Or, if you find yourself at the bottom of a flight of subway exit stairs with a heavy suitcase, you may be aided wordlessly by a strong Samaritan who takes your bag after a brief permission-seeking raised eyebrow, deposits it at the top of the stairs, nods, and carries on. It’s happened to me countless times.
Worse, I was afraid the city would be harsh, but living here I was frequently on the receiving end of kindness from strangers. Once, when I was that woman in my 20s, out late at some house party, I stumbled through a blizzard toward the train home, dozing off on the ride. I carried a navy leather clutch I’d scored on a crazy sale, a celebration Easter purchase after going all of Lent without spending non-bare-necessity money. I loved this purse. In the blur of the cold late night, I left it on the train. I cried.
Someone suggested popping by the subway’s lost and found office. I scoffed, but what did I have to lose? When the attendant passed the clutch across the counter back to me, I cried again. I opened it up, all my possessions, cash included, intact.
All the people across America who are afraid of someone who looks or sounds, or is only even imagined to be, different, whose fear leads them to support cruel and destructive actions in the misplaced name of “efficiency” or “security,”—I wish you could ride the New York City subway.
Ride it long enough for the glee of heading to your first Broadway show to wear off, long enough for the fear of missing your stop to wear off, long enough for you to relax and notice all the people around you, different on the surface, and in ways that matter too, but also, people like you, living their life, commuting, returning lost handbags, braving the winter, like you. To really see them, and to marvel.
Different people don’t have to be a source of fear. They can be a source of beauty. That beauty was New York City’s gift to me for a decade, and again for a few hours this week. It felt again, shimmering, special, lucky.
It’s a wonder I wish all of America could behold.
How might our politics be different if we could all spend more time sitting across from people who are different from us?
