The train pulls into the station and it's packed -- car after car glides passed you and you're psyching yourself up to do some gentle stranger-shoving. Then an empty car catches your eye. Thinking it's your lucky day, you and a few other naive commuters trot down the platform to the vacant car and look greedily over the abundance of vacant seats.
You may first notice a slumped over figure in the corner; probably sleeping, covered in blankets or coats, perhaps with a black garbage bag full of stuff on the floor near their legs. But more likely, the first thing you notice is the scent. That impossible stench of neglect so profound and low it can only exist in the greatest and most crowded cities on Earth. If you didn't transfer cars between stations you did so at the next stop.
But sometimes the scent is only terrible enough to evacuate a portion of the car. Such was the case on January 3rd, around 11pm on the M train. To be honest, for the first few minutes I was asking myself if the stench was coming from me. The smell felt weirdly familiar to me, it was a calm smell and I glared slyly at the tops of my shoes. When I looked up I realized many of my fellow passengers were holding their noses shut and shaking their heads at each other. The smell, I soon realized, was emanating from a man and a woman standing at the far end of the car. They were the only ones standing. The rest of us were seated.
They were tall. They seemed to be the largest people in our car, not obese or anything like that, they were powerful rectangles, planted alongside one another like redwood trees. The man stared out one window and the woman stared out another. They didn’t address each other, but they were obviously together. Aside from the rawness of their faces they did not look like New York's broken down and undead. It was confusing they should smell so bad.
The woman was statuesque, ferocious. High cheek bones. Looking - almost defiantly - out the window and at nothing at all. She was proud. Both of them were reasonably well dressed. They each had a large rolling suitcase in front of them. The woman had a knotted plastic bag on top of hers. The man wore a long brown overcoat. Just gazing out the window, the both of them. Tired. Tall. A little bit smelly. Crossing the Williamsburg bridge into Brooklyn.
The others continued plugging their noses and exchanging glances. Propping themselves up in exaggerated discomfort beneath the fluorescent lights of the train; making a campfire out of their mutual disgust. I was ashamed of them. If the smell was so bad they could have left - the other cars were just as empty. The fact is, they all secretly knew it wasn’t such a horrible smell. They were just trying to bring themselves closer to each other.
I wondered about the man and the woman. I wondered about their destination, their relation to each other. I imagined they were on the way to a new apartment. The stench they gave off was an accumulated stench. No person could develop an odor like that in just the three days we'd spent in 2011. They still smelled like last year. I think 2011 will be a better year for them than 2010 was. I can’t say the same for the other people on the train.