Who Wants a Huddled Mass of Ass on the Lap?

We are all part of the huddled masses, and whether you came in through the front or the back, Lady Liberty lifted her lamp to all of us at the golden door. I mean, we’re all immigrants here in the States – whether your great-great-great-granddaddy sailed across the Atlantic in his best ascot on the Mayflower, or your great-grandmother survived a persecutory famine in Europe and arrived in New York Harbor only to have her head shaved as a precaution against lice and her name changed from Magdalena to Marge by a half-deaf people herder at Ellis Island, or your dad paddled through the Gulf on a straw and plastic-tie made raft with your mom bitching that he made a wrong turn at that piece of driftwood back there and your oldest sister barely crawling and green from the waves – all originally from somewhere else. And in New York, even more of us are immigrants, transplants from the West or South or Far East. Hell, even those of you who were born in lilywhite Connecticut or Jersey and now live in the city, you’re transplants too; despite the numerous times on spring break or abroad you told an asker you were from “the city,” you weren’t born here. So “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” and all that crap.

But don’t give them to me on the subway. And don’t give them to me in the form of overweight middle-aged women whose asses take up their seat and MINE, thereby forcing me to cozy up so to the shiny, bacterial slick pole near the door that I bang my head off of it. Don’t give me the huddled masses with loads and loads of shopping bags that they hoist on their laps (and subsequently mine) or that they strategically place in the way of every possible exit and thoroughfare. And don’t give them to me chattering away and gesticulating so that they elbow me in the ribs and when I cough from the pressure of their plump elbows grinding away at my kidneys they stare at me, and then continue chattering and spitting on me in Russian.

And DO NOT give them to me at Bryant Park in the persons of two pint-size women glued to my ass, pushing me on to the B or D, despite the fact that I’m trying to follow subway etiquette and let people off the train before I try to get on. And don’t give them to me after I’ve sat down and turned back the hands of hearing by about twenty years by blasting my iPod in the hopes of drowning out their screeching in the mother tongue. And don’t plop one of them next to me, hemming and hawing and rolling her eyes and pointing at me to indicate that I should have let her friend sit next to her, rather than across the aisle; even though I got on the train first and randomly picked a seat (my telepathy must have been down). Because if you give me this woman and the stinky ass Chinese food she has in her three shopping bags, I will try to ignore her. That is, until you give me her gesturing and nearly screaming to her friend across the three foot aisle to come over here. And her friend – the other half of the huddled mass with three of her own shopping bags and no lie, knee high fishing boots – then wades through the aisle to stand at our feet. And don’t give me a huddled mass of a neighbor who is so anxious to talk to her fisher friend that she pulls her down on a packed bench with no room and thus, seats her on my lap. And don’t have both of them then turn to me and roll their eyes again, as if to reiterate how inconvenient it is that I chose to sit there – under the fisher’s ass – in the first place, or how annoying it is that my grandmother’s father sold everything he had to buy a boat ticket for himself and his pregnant wife and thereby inadvertently landed me on a New York City subway a hundred and some years later. And don’t give them to me prattling on about how rude I am for not offering them my seat and therefore an opportunity to commune the motherland, because I'm part of the huddled masses too!