I was tightly surrounded on the subway train by four young toughs, and I had a cock up my heretofore heterosexual ass. How could this have happened to me?
It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon and my wife, Florence, and I had taken a taxi downtown to Lacey's Department Store. We needed a new bedspread as the old one was getting pretty threadbare.
We went up to the bedding department on the seventh floor, and it was appalling. They had nothing. Years ago Lacey's had been a wonderful store. You could find anything there, but no more. Coarse artificial fabrics, ugly colors, shoddy workmanship. Everything was badly manufactured and very expensive. We wandered up and down the counters looking and shaking our heads. Where would we ever find what we were looking for? If this was what Lacey's was carrying, no one was even making anything we would want to buy.
We decided to go home, but when we got out on the street, it was absolutely mobbed. We had not been aware that today was the Latin Day Parade, and many blocks were closed off for street fairs. On many of the side streets, there were carts peddling delicacies from all the different Latin countries.
We wandered through a couple of blocks, looking at the exotic merchandise. Maybe we would find a bedspread, but no such luck. At one stand we had some delicious Mexican tacos.
We walked back to the Avenue to find a cab, but forget it. The roadways were bumper-to-bumper traffic. Even if we could have found a cab, it would have taken us hours to get home, and cost us a bundle, with the meter ticking away as the vehicle idled in heavy traffic.
"What are we going to do, Arthur?" Florence asked me.
"We'll have to take the metro," I answered her. The metro was, of course, the subway. We had spent our honeymoon in Paris, and I was in love with all things Parisian. And so with a slight Gallic pretentiousness, I had been referring to the subway as the metro for years. In Paris they, of course, called the subway the metro.
In a hundred years Florence would never have thought to take the subway. She was a taxi person. No matter how much more a taxi cost, she hated being underground, and never traveled that way. But now we had no choice. If we wanted to get home, we would have to take the subway. Even a bus was out of the question with this jam-up. We'd get home tomorrow morning.
We found an entrance right next to Lacey's and went down the stairs. I bought a card at the booth, and we went through the turnstiles. The platform was so packed with people, you couldn't even move.
"There must be something wrong," I said. "It looks like there hasn't been a train in a half hour."
"It's so crowded," Florence complained. "This is awful."
We tried to work our way down the platform. It was a tight squeeze. "It's the Latin Day Parade," I said, noticing the people around us. It was a very Caribbean crowd. I felt as if I could have been in Havana or San Juan. Everybody was very lively and festive. We continued to move down the platform and suddenly we came to a halt. There were four men absolutely blocking the platform, from one side to the other, and they didn't seem very willing to move.
"Excuse me," I said. "You're blocking the whole damned platform. We'd like to get through."
"You hear this guy?" said one of them to the others. "He say we are blocking the whole damned platform. He would like to get through." He was imitating me. Making fun of me.
"You're very rude," I said, shoving him, trying to get by.
"Oh. We are rude," he announced to the others, shoving me back. "He say we are very rude." He held his position firmly and refused to let us pass. Suddenly I heard the sound of a train coming into the station. Thank goodness. Now I would get away from these guys. I was starting to feel a little threatened. I don't think Florence even realized what was going on, that we were in a dangerous situation.
The sound grew tremendously loud, and you couldn't hear words anymore. The train pulled into the station and the doors opened. I started to guide Florence toward the open doors, but suddenly I felt as if I were being swept off my feet. I couldn't control my own movements. The four men had closed around me and we moved into the train as a group. I felt their hands supporting me, as my feet flip-flopped around not gaining much traction.
I was standing in the middle of the car, packed like a sardine. These four guys around me, one on each side, and hundreds of people around them. I didn't even have a pole to hold on to, but I didn't really need one. There was no way I could fall. There was no way I could move an inch. And where the hell was Florence? We had gotten separated, and she was nowhere around. I was worried she hadn't gotten on the train, I wanted to try to locate her, but I couldn't move a muscle. The train pulled out of the station and the acceleration forced me back against the man behind me. (One of the four.)
The guy who had been imitating me was standing directly in front of me, facing me. I looked up at his face and he gave me a scary smile.
"How you doin'?" he asked me.
"Fine," I said nervously.
"Wha's yo' name?"
"Look here," I started to protest.
