Subway Stations

It was the third of July and I was in New York City. The air was sticky and charged with excitement for a holiday that had nothing to do with me and yet I felt entirely a part of. That’s what New York feels like. Being part of something that you don’t belong to and belonging to something that you’re not a part of. The electric hum in the air was similar to that of the subway trains that were determinedly snaking through the belly of the city, taking people’s bustling feet from one end of the line to the other. I descended down the stairs of the subway which held its cool mouth open, gobbling up tourists and native New-Yorkers alike. It was my second day in New York and I stood, leaning my back onto the cool tiles of the subway wall, enjoying a brief pause from the New York summer sun that was as persistent as the busy feet now walking overhead. I tried not to grin as a pang of excitement hit me hard in the stomach. I didn't want to give myself away as a tourist, I wanted to observe others as a local, absorbing it all. The sinuous sound of a saxophone as its notes crept around the corners of the subway platform and into the ears of preoccupied business men and giggling teenage girls alike. The smell of perfume and hot-dogs and sweat and liquor and loose change mixing into one, a smell indescribable on its own. I took in the mums and their babies, the business men and their briefcases, the tourists and their maps, the college kids and their iPods. I was in New York City. Still holding in the grin that threatened to burst onto my face, I looked up at the sign overhead and realised I was on the wrong platform. Giving up all pretence of fitting in, I high-tailed it from one end of the platform, adorned with years of chewing gum, a modern masterpiece, to the end of the other. I was jumping down the escalator, two steps at a time when I saw the subway train sitting lazily at the platform, breathing in passengers like a large metallic whale. As my foot was leaving the last step of the escalator, the subway doors began to close. A cry and a held out hand caught the attention of the last man onto the train, who coolly held his own hand in the door, lending me precious seconds. I squeezed into the throng of people, and looked at the crowd of strangers to which I now belonged, at least until the next stop. A sigh echoed from the subway train as it continued its subterranean swim. I glanced around and grinned a thank you to the stranger. I was in New York City.