Man on the Train

                                               

People on the Train, 2009
Oil and pencil on Stonehenge paper

    Two days ago, I waited for the train at Fulton Street on my way home from the city.  I took a seat on the platform bench beside an older black man.  Although he was clean cut and well-dressed, his suit showed the rumples of cheap polyesther, and he fidgeted with a black plastic bag.  As I sat next to him, I fell into a semi-paralytic state of  thought regarding this man and particularly about his suit.  I held an unopened Snickers bar and fought the curious urge to offer it to the man in the rumpled suit, but thought better of this, less the offer be taken in the wrong spirit. Yet an unremitting urge to interact with him persisted.  We communed in silence as he fidgeted and I blankly stared at the Snickers bar.

    When the train roared into the station, the man stood with an effort and walked toward the open doors.  Although there were plenty of seats available, I followed a gut instinct, and sat down next to him just as we'd been on the bench.  In front of us, a young black man lay passed out across four train seats.  We could only see the back of him, but he was missing a shoe and his clothes were stained.

    "Nice view" the man said to me.

    "Excuse me?" I asked, taken off guard by the New York City rarity of a stranger initiating a conversation.

    "Nice view," he said again, motioning toward the youth in front of us.

    "It happens, I guess," I said clumsily.  I immediately began to think in terms of how to navigate a conversation with a black man about the state of this other black man, who  sadly, is somewhat emblematic of the state of many young black men I see on the train.  Predictably, early morning and late night trains are punctuated by young sleeping black men just like the one in front of us.  Recent experience has conditioned me to believe that it is not my place to say anything about the black condition, as how can I possibly know what I am talking about?  But the thoughts accumulate and fester, and I like the problems I long to solve in my art, I speculate endlessly about how to solve the problem of the young black men sleeping on the train.  Conversations with strangers are rare, but honest conversations about race with a non-white person are rarer still.

    "What does it make you think of?" I asked.

    "It makes me wonder what the difference is between me and him."

    With these words, I was a little suprised to hear the waspy inflections in the man's voice.

    "What do you think the difference is?"

    "Well, I grew up in the south, and my mother was kind and loving, and my father...he did not say much, but when he said it, he did not repeat himself.  But thats the way all fathers were then.  Things were much much different then.   I am older.  I'm 72..."  and this he trailed off a little and gave him the perfunctory nod of respect.

    "Forgive me for saying this, but doesn't that mean that his chances are better than yours?"  I asked referring to our place in time.

    The man inhaled thoughtfully.  "There are more opportunities now, but less discipline."  He said a few more things about his childhood, but I noticed that he did not speak of this generally, and not specific to his race.

    The train stopped at Essex, and people filled the train.  A Chinese lady sat between us, and we tried to carry on our conversation, but it fizzled for straining of our necks.

    I opened my Snickers bar and ate it.  At Marcy, he stood up, and wished me goodnight, and I wished that we could continue our conversation, but was grateful for the few words we'd exchanged, and the man's willingness to give me his perspective.