Hobos a-swirl in subway tunnel soup

The observation of the day yesterday afternoon during the commute down in the Penn Station tunnels was this: you squish everyone together close enough, with very little (if any) ventilation, and everyone smells like rotten feet. Cass and I got about three feet from the stairwell to the A trains, which took at least three minutes, before we were like, we're going back upstairs because these goddamn Long Island Rail Road people aren't going to budge.

Imagine a seething, roiling mass of frustrated boiling angry commuters all waiting for the Track 120 train that has been delayed for an hour ... multiply one train-load by about nine. And we were all on our best behavior, as evidenced by a woman who asked, "Can you let me by?" to which someone very simply answered, "No." As in, you're asking the impossible. As in, you can't be serious, you stupid silly bitch. As in, who made you the fucking princess of Massapequa? We all want to get home you fucking twat. You're not the only one.

Cass and I nodded at each other and squeezed ourselves out of the 5:30 p.m. piss soup as fast we could and made for the tunnel entrance outside Penn Station.

Reason number, what? Four hundred sixty-two? that we live on the west side and not anywhere else? Because we don't have to depend on the LIRR to ferry us back home to our terra cotta suburban oasis OUT IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE? Which could take us anywhere from forty-three minutes to three hours.