Madman on the Subway, or, Mistaken Identities

Tue, 1999 Jan 12, 7:16 AM - Last night on the No. 4 southbound, just before 125th St., going home from the Bronx about a quarter to seven, I heard a loud gargle and spit from the guy sitting to my left, one empty seat away. He had spat into an empty seat to his left. The man in the next seat sprang up, indignant, and demanded to know, "Why did you do that?" Then I looked at the spitter.

Late twenties, light-skinned, head shaved but for a long topknot like a cartoon Iroquois, ragged jeans decorated with patches, an expensive backpack that kept him hunched forward in the seat, a bottle of spring water in one hand and in the other a notebook, the kind with a black-and-white speckled cover used for school lessons. He looked pretty normal, actually, except tense.

The man who stood up was in his forties, black, a worker in something other than an office job (no tie), light brown fedora.

The spitter did not look up. He muttered something hard to hear, then a little louder, "The devil will get you!" And, intermittently, more almost inaudible mutterings.

Then he spat again, loudly and voluminously, into that same seat. He kept taking swigs from his water bottle to replenish the spit.

More people got on at 125th. Some started to take the empty seat, but were savvy enough New Yorkers to look first, and moved on in disgust.

At 86th St. the black guy who first protested stepped off the train, an finally brought back a young, pudgy black woman in transit uniform, who looked in but was definitely not about to enter. She called on her walkie-talkie, I assumed for the cops. We waited.

The black guy kept peering in to see that the "Iroquois" was still there, and so was I, uncomfortable but staying put. He was occasionally muttering and spitting. Then without warning he snapped his notebook at my face -- I jerked back without thinking or even knowing what had just flashed by -- hitting the visor of my cap and brushing my face, and he spat onto the floor in front of me.

"Why did you do that?!" I said, jumping up.

I think it was the right thing to do. This guy was going to get more obnoxiously aggressive until he got a reaction, and his next move might be to spit on me.

He turned on me, furiously, jumped up, shouted "Why don't you mind your own business?" and - I don't remember the exact words, but something like "You wanna fight? I'll break those glasses of yours. I'll --" and I don't know what else he was threatening to do. It didn't much matter what the words were, and they were hard to understand anyway. Part of the rant was that he was "Puerto Rican" and I was a "honky." This was news. Puerto Rican? Him? So I shouted at him, "Tú no tienes idea de qué estás hablando!"

Useless, of course - it appeared he didn't understand Spanish, probably -in his agitated state - didn't even recognize it.

When he said he was going to do something to me, break my glasses or something else, I don't remember, I said, "Why would you want to do that?"

"Because you're ugly!"

A possible response would have been, "So what?" I chose to remain silent. The two of us were standing there, poised, he ready to spring and I ready to fend him off. There were others on the car watching us, including several young guys. I wondered at that moment what they would do if this guy swung or kicked at me and we started brawling.

At those moments, a man calculates the odds. I think even he, within his locura, was calculating, too. He wasn't much, or any, bigger than me, but probably 30 years younger - - would have faster reflexes. I may very well have been stronger. He may or may not have had combat skills; I may or may not have been able to summon old karate and judo techniques learned many years before. The other young men on the train may or may not have intervened to stop a fight - I was pretty sure the black guy who had first protested would jump in, though. What makes me think that he was also calculating was that he did not actually strike me. He sat back where he had been, as did I, and muttered things like, "I'm Puerto Rican. Go back to Ireland where you come from."

Ireland? Interesting notion, but not applicable.

We sit for a while, still waiting. Then he gets up and thrusts one booted foot against the window opposite, kicking repeatedly as hard as he can against the Plexiglas, which merely bulges with each blow and springs back. He gives that up and sits down again in the same seat, and spits again into the one next to him.

By this time the train, long stopped at 86th street, was filling up with other would-be passengers. Your usual subway crowd, men and women, office workers, probably salespeople, et al., black, white and brown. The man who had originally protested, I would learn later, was an African. A big guy who briefly sat between me and the madman was speaking Arabic with another guy across the aisle. In short, the madman's claims to special complaining rights on the grounds of being Puerto Rican were not likely to get much sympathy from this crowd.

We waited and waited. I finally got up and out of the car, and spoke for the first time with the black guy who had first protested. "If I'd done that, my ass would be in jail. But I'm African. He's white, so he gets away with it!"

Maybe that was what had driven the pseudo-Iroquois crazy! He was being perceived as white, when what was really special about him was that he was Puerto Rican.

The African guy and I had stuck around probably for the same reason, to serve as witnesses. After more than twenty minutes with the doors open at 86th St., still no cops had shown, and he and I and others gave up waiting and went upstairs to continue on the local. Just as the No. 6 was pulling out, one of the guys who'd come up with us shouted, "There they are! At last." The cops had arrived, but I just got on the No. 6 and left them to deal with it.

GF, 99.01.13