by Dara Lehon

     It's Monday at 7:52 a.m. and I'm running. Not on a treadmill; not in Central Park; not to beat my roommate to the bathroom. I'm running, half-asleep, to the over-crowded 1/9-2/3 station on 72^nd Street. Fumbling for my Metrocard, I'm a taxicab, weaving in and out of crowds as I sense the train from across the complicated Broadway/Amsterdam split. Deftly sliding the card through its slot and slamming my hips into the steel turnstile created to maintain order (and apparently bruise my hips) I hear the train. I bolt down the grimy, worn stairwell, which fits one person, going one direction--the one slow person in front of me, apparently--and leap towards the open doors of the train, where my fellow commuters await. I'm out of breath.

     Now maybe I've been old-school subway-trained. I grew up in this city to graffiti-decorated subway cars with flickering lights and unrecognizable odors. I've met pedophiles, and heard an even-less comprehensible P.A. system. I grew to know the kind of subway Generation Y and everywhere-else transplants only see in movies like Jacob's Ladder or Saturday Night Fever where they'd imagine a much darker, more dangerous New York City, where going downstairs was one step away from a descent to hell. I remember sticking close by my older brother, as we'd zigzag through the rush hour crowds on 14^th Street to make the transfer. My subway-nasty-look and strong gait are now inherent underground, as are an exhausting grasp of my bags to my body and my permanent fixation on subway advertisements versus other people. I suppose having a 20-something man fondle my backside at the age of 13 taught me that the subway was both a very friendly and unfriendly place.

     And somehow I emerge, a woman in her twenties, unafraid to take the subway herself from her overpriced Upper West Side apartment, still interlacing between the hundred of passengers. But these are different passengers.

     And I wonder: Why would one choose to mosey downstairs to the subway? A loud, smelly, soot-filled tunnel sheltering everything from Wall Street gurus to advertising executives to vagrants and trinket-sellers to rats? Have gradual subway improvements and the hyped-up, yet rarer than a lineless brunch at E.J.'s on a Sunday, "new trains" actually enhanced an old-pro's experience? Or have they transformed the experience into an underground Happy Hour where people come to loiter and be seen?

     I certainly applaud all of the subterranean improvements: the safety, the relative cleanliness, the graffiti-resistant cars, the decrease in panhandling and increase in overall use, and oh, the sacred Metrocard. But while I tippytoe the blackening yellow warning line, desperately seeking the eyes of an oncoming train, I hear people talking, paying little mind to their surroundings. They have conversations. They read their newspapers and listen to their discmen. They actually watch the man salsa with a life-sized doll. Lovers gaze into each other’s eyes. Women apply their makeup and fix their hair, their purses open and inviting, their sparkly diamond rings reflecting the metal poles. This is not the subway of my past.

     And still, like Pavlov's dog, at the sound of the train, I bolt, my feet ablaze. I run past those who amble slowly down the middle of the stairwell, clumsily carrying a bag on their shoulders, mindlessly whacking others behind and to their sides. Those women in their dainty mules or stilettos, unable to walk quickly down the stairs--or anywhere for that matter. I scoff at the occasional baby carriage or oversized Bed Bath and Beyond bag. I am frustrated by the screeching halts, construction on weekends, the trendy purses that jab into my rib cage, and the snotty attitudes that I encounter in boarding a car. Or the people who do not understand that sometimes getting out of the subway car helps reshuffle its contents to fit better. And, lest we forget, the space-hoggers: those who have situated themselves on a train with a duffle still on their shoulders, magazines opened full-spread, walkmen blaring, and legs spread apart. They're unbudgeable for the desperate commuter squeezing into an ounce of space just to get from Point A to Point B.

     Now it's Monday, 6:13p.m.in Tribeca. My a-typical New York workday's over and I'm headed to my Acting class where I can learn to get in touch with my anger without paying for a therapist. I sense the local train and book down the block, securing my bag across my chest with one hand, grabbing my Metrocard with the other. I speed down the stairs, between moseying people, only to be defeated by a turnstile reading "Too fast. Please swipe again." But I don't give up. I've made eye contact with a passenger on the train. It's within reach. I'm panting and banging my hip into a metal pole and as the infamous "door-closing" tone sounds, my upper body thrusts forward while the lower half remains stationary. The doors close, taking my eye-contacted passenger with it. I sigh audibly as "go" and my new Metrocard balance appears on the turnstile display. The pole turns, allowing me to enter the now-empty platform. Slumping down on a bench which has surely been used by a few thousand too many people for a few too many thousand purposes, I clasp my bag and inhale the stale, filthy air of the tunnel. I watch two express trains go by.

     And I wonder: Should I just walk instead of run?