The Drunk Train

A couple of weeks ago I made the long (3 hours) and arduous journey from Long Island to Westchester by train. A total of four trains. It was the first time I went into the city and used something I have long resisted, my white cane. I can see just enough to observe reactions from bystanders. Some gawk, some look scared, some purposefully stand in my way. Still others look me up and down wondering if they can get away with robbing me. Their ignorance of the visually impaired is my weapon. They think I can’t see anything. Fact is, most people considered blind can see a little bit, maybe only strait in front of them, maybe fuzzy or distorted, maybe only peripherally. Anyone tried to mug the blind guy is going to get pummeled in a surprise Blind Samurai Ninja justice. “I did’t expect that punch to the bridge of my nose. Shit!”. The ignorant rarely read so I can write this up here without any fear of revealing my secret. I can see you in my own twisted cubist way. Moreover, I can FEEL you. I can sense the compression of air as something moves closer. I can smell your evil and stupidity. My fear and rage gives me a power that you simply do not have.

On my trip home I ended up on the 2 a.m. drunk train. Hordes of drunk idiots yelling and drooling. Girls freezing their asses off because it is not fashionable to wear a coat apparently. Numbnuts shoving drool covered grease pizza in their faces like David Hasselhoff gobbing his Wendys on the floor as his daughter filmed him. The train arrives, I bang my cane around through the throngs of dopes. I make my way down the stairs and I can see that people are glaring at me because I am in the way. Tough shit. I make my way into the train car. Many, many seats are taken up by only one person. I quickly formulate a social experiment as I attempt to find a seat on the quickly filling up train. The seat hogs stare at me and ignore the guy banging the white cane putting on an aire of confusion and worry about finding a seat. Some look away. They know they are wrong for not offering a seat up, but do not care. I cannot see them, so they think, so I do not exist. Some have their feet across the aisle as they lounge drunkenly. They see me but do not move their legs to let me by. I smack their feet with the cane then step on their ankles. I looked down, determined that feet were dangerously in my path. I can only see what I am directly looking at, and not even that well especially after a long day. So I kick them “accidentally” to see how they might react. The do not react. It feels good to kick some asshole in the leg so I do it four or five more times. I stop bothering to fake apologize.
I move through five separate cars. I probably passed two hundred people. NOT ONE PERSON OFFERS ME A SEAT. NOT ONE.

Honestly I felt uncomfortable asking for a seat, I don’t like asking for shit. My social experiment went a bit awry when I realized the seats filled up because every drunk female got offered a seat. Suddenly I realize theirs almost none to be had. I see a few seats near me. I see guys look at me, look at said drunk girls, then offer them a seat, which they take. I can see them avoid “eye contact” with me. I am actually, in fact, pretty fucked at that moment. I am confused by the commotion and activity and by the fact that the train actually filled up. I had no idea so many drunk morons were sloshing into the train at the rate they were. Next time, I will just demand a seat. But at this time, there were none. I’m smushed up in the area by the door crushed in between a bunch of slack jawed fuckheads. I have black shades and my cane held up near my face, so no one shoves me. They do, but I am unbendable. This guy (who I reasonably surmise is closeted for various reasons I am not going to bother to enumerate) with his beard, I mean girlfriend, is eating some Penn Station grease pizza. He keeps putting his elbow right near my face. Like two inches from my nose. I grip my cane ready to crack it into his elbow. Lucky for him he stopped, but it was not because of me. It seemed like some sick game. “I can put my hand up in his face because he does not see me. I am free to be an asshole. He does not exist. If I elbow him in the face, what’s he going to do to me anyway? Fuck him. Hahah! I am drunk on Alcohol and Power!”

There’s a plastic surgery faced drunk woman behind me diagonally. She grabs my forearm and leans into my face.
“Are you blind?”
“Uh, yeah. Pretty much. Yup”
She grips harder, approaching kissing distance to my face.
“We have a connection, you and I. Can you feel it? The connection.”
I pull my face back away from her gin stanked breath. I mumble a bit of noncommittal nonsense.
“I Love music”
She lets go after her final bizarre disconnected statement.

This is what I wanted to say,
“You do not have permission to touch me. I am not a fucking pity case. I am not some spiritual higher plane being because I got some shitty disease. Get your fucking mitts off me, Alkie!”

What I think she was really thinking;
“I wonder what it’s like to fuck a blind guy? It might be an uplifting spiritual experience and he won’t notice my awful face mangling elective plastic surgery.”

Without the can I am an odd slow moving guy, too young to be walking slower than on old man. An irritation. A magnet for smirking assholes who run their shopping cart literally millimeters from the back of my ankles. With the cane I can walk with my head up, because I can “see” any hazards on the floor while avoiding banging into people unintentionally. Some people are fascinated by a blind guy with a cane. Totally understandable. “How does he do that? Wow!”. Some turn away pointedly. Others actually gawk with fear, or worse, contempt. You may not believe it, but it is true. A truth that is constant, grinding and repetitious. I always thought people were shit, but now I have the proof. I think some people want to see me fall down. It is not a show for a crowd, like a playground bully. It is their little evil secret. Guess what? It’s not a secret. I know you. Your name is other people.