transit & bananas

8:15am

Your spiral, curly hair is admittedly quite lush, it smells like coconut and that is not always a bad thing – though mostly best left to fruity umbrella capped beverages and sunscreen. If you had made the slightest effort to move, even marginally to the left – when we all got into this sardine tin packed train – I would not have such an intimate knowledge of your tropical smelling locks. I would also not have to see my baggy eyed reflection in your bucket shaped, dark, seemingly expensive sunglasses – or perhaps they are rip-offs that you bought in China Town – either way, you are indoors now. The train has stopped in a dark underground tunnel.

Everyone is winter puffy, jacket wide. All these warming layers in closed public spaces afford a physical leaning and stranger bumping that our short selves summertime naked arms would not as readily accept. Stranger touching is the worst, second only to finding a hair in your soup. A long, stranger hair.

8:37 am

The loud, hissing sounds of base heavy music, leaking audibly through your headphones is making this human sardine tin seem tighter for air and sanity. All this humanity is feeling a bit less ‘human’ and a lot more ‘ity’ like the high note sounds of this song. I hope you can afford a good hearing aid device in the future. I feel certain that you will need one.

8:41am

The train has screeched to a halt again. Perhaps the tracks are reluctant to carry us to our respective destinations. Perhaps the noble and historically functional metal on metal can sense our foreboding, of arriving yet again to the doorsteps of jobs that we despise. Perhaps that’s just me.

This is a delivery system for the deeply disgruntled, in a stop-go tube of early morning disdain, catapulting us from sleep to work.

My job looms, time ticking, tick tick tick, a 9am start is a lark; this train does not approve and has all intentions of making me late. Again.

8:54am

I ponder the futility of emergency exit signs; any sort of blaze or disaster in this human sausage roll would surely be all emergency and no exit. Coconut curls has left, I miss her almost immediately as the last station has made room for mouth-breather-man and he has damply filled the void. His gargantuan, sweaty and open-mouthed presence makes me wonder if he considered that smoking a cigarette and eating – what could only have been a dead raccoon for breakfast – was a great pre public transit choice. I can only imagine having breath that exudes the essence of road kill makes one immune to the acceptable standards of personal space. His standards overall are sub par at best.

8:54

In best avoidance of raccoon mouth I have turned and buried my face in my scarf. The Gods of public transit are surely still asleep, there is no mercy this man is going to eat a banana, in a cocoon of humans packed closely together, he is eating a penis shaped fruit, inches away from other people’s faces!”

There is no mercy.

9:01 am

A kind faced middle-aged lady, flashes a genuine “I know” smile and swims her eyes to the heavens in the solidarity of how unfortunately awkward it is to be stirred in a pot of human flavoured stew. It has melted a part of my crispy disgruntled facade and restored some faith in humanity.

I smile back and now finally at my stop, I am expelled from the tin train and up the stairs, back into the world of fresh air and light. Perhaps tomorrow this will all work out a little bit better. When sunshine replaces sleet I will ride my bike. Perhaps tomorrow I will call in sick.