Nightmare on 28th Street

After work, on most days, what I need to do is simple. Walk around the corner, down 28th St. two blocks to Broadway, hop on the N/R and, zippo, I'm tavern-bound.

With the renovations being inflicted upon the downtown N/R station, however, things have changed. Now, I don't blame the MTA for this?that station could have used some renovations. It always smelled like cheese down there. If they can just get rid of that lingering cheese odor, I'll be happy. Unfortunately, while the renovations are under way (work is supposed to be finished any day now), I have to go an extra several blocks over to Park to catch the 6.

I'm not complaining about the extra walk, either?except that those extra few blocks are a mighty treacherous lot. Case in point, one Monday in early May, when that stretch of 28th St. became something out of Fellini, or Dante, or one of my many nightmares. The walk usually makes me tense to begin with. The sidewalk's a narrow one?and it's narrowed further between 7th and 6th Aves. by the jungle of wholesale plants that lines both sides. With pedestrian traffic trying to work its way in both directions along a single lane, disasters are inevitable. Making things worse that afternoon was the fact that I was trapped behind a slow-moving woman toting a massive bundle of pointy weeds under her left arm. It was like walking a few short feet behind a mobile tiger pit, knowing that at any instance, one of the other pedestrians who were piling up behind me could give a shove, and I'd be a goner.

The woman stopped and spun around at the corner of Broadway, leaving me with a few minor scratches, but allowing me to pass. Then it was the regular convergence of strollers, double strollers, overloaded carts and handtrucks to dodge around. Then the gauntlet of sidewalk clothing hucksters on the other side of Broadway.

One middle-aged woman, green kerchief knotted about her hair, stood nervously outside a wholesaler's door, repeating the enticing "socks...shirts...jeans" in an endless, droning loop, as she attempted to hand a glossy flier to everyone who passed. Only as I stepped around her and looked down did I notice that the fliers she was handing out were for the Wiz.

That had me thinking, as I held my breath in a cheap attempt to make myself more nimble and keep the growing panic at moderate levels. There were people everywhere, on every side of me, heading in every direction. They darted out of doorways and off the backs of trucks, zipping in front of me, making deliveries or returning from having made deliveries, forcing me to stop short. Using the cane in situations like this is pointless. With all the boxes, feet, open delivery entrances and plants in the way, the damn thing would get stuck on something at every step. It was better?less dangerous, even?to do what I could without it, apologizing when necessary.

The sun was high and bright, and the glare wasn't helping matters. The shift from dark shadow into intense light again and again was pretty savage, too. Everything was keeping me off-balance between the corners?and the corners themselves, all of them, were awash with strollers being pushed by inattentive mothers.

(Not to overstate it, but when you get right down to it, I just don't like people very much.)

At the next corner, Christ, whatever it was, I stopped and breathed again, relieved, if only momentarily, that the light was against me. That would give me a chance to stand still for a moment, worry-free.

In the front seat of a car parked over to my left, a young man was rapping.

"A?C?E?G?" he chanted, "?All the way ta motherfuckin' Z."

I don't know if it was a popular tune of the day, something he was just making up right there or perhaps something he'd heard on the new culturally sensitive Sesame Street. Whatever it was, it was damned silly. For a moment, I considered reminding him of the letters he had forgotten, offering him a little foot up that way, but I reconsidered, thinking I had enough trouble, with another two long blocks in front of me.

The light changed, and I crossed. There was scaffolding waiting for me on the other side. Scaffolding is never anything but bad news.

I knew it would be more trouble than usual when, as I reached the far corner, this vision of horribleness emerged from the darkness.

Six feet tall and probably approaching 300 pounds. Some sort of hideous man/woman creature, all dolled up in a shocking white bob wig, enormous wraparound sunglasses and pancake makeup so thick it was cracking. Around its mouth was a horrifying smear of clown lipstick, thick and drippy and red, drawing its mouth into an eternal grimace. I'd seen better makeup jobs in the madhouse, and whatever it was, it put the fear into me. It stood there like a sentinel before the gates of the fifth circle.

I averted the eyes and put my head down, my steps picking up in a way they never should when I'm heading into deep shadow.

Something out here is really fucked today. Halfway down the block, quick glances over the shoulder convincing me at last that the beast wasn't following me, I began to breathe easier?until I looked straight ahead again, to see that, at the end of the scaffold tunnel, blocking my exit like an obstacle in some evil miniature golf match, a man in a motorized wheelchair was driving in circles?circles wide enough to prevent any easy passage.

A doorman stood in front of a nearby building, clearly amused by the crippled man's antics.

I stopped, gauged the roving opening (a difficult thing to do when you have no depth perception), and darted when the time seemed right.

Clear on the other side, almost to the point of, if not screaming, at least whimpering, I finally saw that there was nothing but open sidewalk between me and the subway entrance a block ahead.

Only thing I had to be careful of now was down in the station itself. The 28th St. downtown 6 stop was equipped with one of those platforms that was scattered with randomly spaced posts, placed where they were for no clear reason. A couple of them clip me every time I go down there.

Two minutes later, though, through the turnstiles, having been clipped by only one this time (much to my surprise, after a walk like I'd just had), I assumed my spot and took a glance down the tunnel. Nothing was coming yet.

I was really going to need that drink.

A young couple, probably in their mid-20s, I'd guess, came to a stop behind me, where they continued their conversation?which apparently concerned a lesbian acquaintance of theirs.

"If you're gay, and you're a woman, and you want to be fucked by a dildo," the young man was explaining to his girlfriend, "then you really wanna be fucked by a man. This is the way I see it. It just makes sense. Her girlfriend is supposed to be a man trapped in a woman's body, right? But it's really a feminine man trapped in a woman's body?and what's the point of that?"

Y'know he might have a point there, I thought, just before thinking, Yeah, I'm really going to need that drink.

I looked again. The train still wasn't coming.