Oh, the F Train

The MTA - Metropolitan Transport Authority, does not have a lot of fans in New York. Not the happy clapper human type and not the type that makes cool air. There is no cool air down there.

In summer the subway platforms are so hot you feel as though your body is clamped by solid matter. You drip and perspire and and are too hot to swear.

Yesterday, rush hour in the morning, waiting for the F at my stop: it arrives, late, though the concept seems quaint, given what passes for its schedule. We crowd on like obedient livestock, thankful for the airconditioned uprightness we find ourselves in. We assume our respective positions: novels come out, newspapers, crosswords, knitting, advertisement-reading starts; studied indifference to the proximity of the neck, shoulder, elbow in our face. But we don't move.

Then the announcement: Aourgshshshscccccbbnouaaaaawrgfgnnngooooowrg G-line chchchcheeeeep.

The few newcomers look blank. Regulars curse and start heading back out the doors to crowd like resigned beefs on the now packed, and hotter platform. The F Train, empty, chugs away to the G Line. Why, Why?

When the next F does arrive, eons later, we moo back on, this time pushing bluntly ahead because, of course, this train is full.