by olivia dunn

unwanted public conversation & street-side interrogation

I know the second, unwritten tag-line of this column is: “you just can’t make this stuff up.” It’s true.  You can tweak it or gloss it or set it in another city, you can re-name everyone and claim events for your own that happened to others, but you really cannot pull this stuff out of thin air.  I mean, there’s just no need to.  Take a walk with me, my friends, keep one eye to the ground and the other wide open and blood-shot-edly unblinking and you, too, will revel in the ever-unfolding quilt of madness that is the human race.

I was taking the subway home in the evening, feeling blissful and loose after a particularly invigorating yoga class.  There is a good chance eye makeup was running down my damp cheek, there is a good chance the dreamy look in my eye, purely the result of endorphins and chakras, could have been mistaken for the potent effects of THC.  I’m just saying: this ever unfolding quilt of etc., etc., includes myself.  What I would prefer to discuss this week, however, is the man in the ski mask.

Side note: I have never been skiing before.  Oops, I have never been down-hill skiing before.  The maniacs at my urban high school equipped our class, one snowy upstate New York afternoon, with cross-country skis and directed us to the adjacent field.  Let us discuss, as an aside from ski mask man, the effect of thirty-odd inner-city youth and the unwieldy sticks attached to their feet.  Let us discuss the winter garments of the underprivileged; girls with sneakers wrapped in plastic bags, cheap white socks as mittens.  Everyone was indignant at this rural form of physical activity, especially myself.  Just as I was getting the rhythmic hang of the swish, stab, swish, stab, I tangled my legs so thoroughly and giggled so hysterically that I was left in the field, only to be locked out of the school by the time I limped back to the gymnasium door.

My point is, there is only one reason I know of that a person wears a ski mask.  [I will insert here the sub-possibility of disfiguring cystic acne, though it would be preferable for the improvement of the disease if the pores were allowed access to fresh oxygen, etc.]  The only person who wears a ski mask is a person preparing to rob a convenience store.  [Bank robbers, now correct me if I'm wrong, use pantyhose.] Needless to say I was jolted from my endorphic reverie at the sight of this woolly face.  I am no idiot; I did not make eye contact with him but trained my better eye [right] on him in a manner which I flatter myself is stealthy and unnoticeable.  He was making his way towards the subway doors, presumably conveying that he planned to disembark at the following stop.  He stopped near the door, holding no pole, straddling the floor like a surfboard, bowlegged like a cowboy at a standoff.  A cowboy bank robber surfer skier.  He had a wooden hairbrush in his hand and moved to return it to its home in his back pocket.  Deliberately, he shoved it into the denim quarry, and as he pulled his hand out again, he demonstrated a shocking gesture with his muscular hand.

It was extremely clear to me, if not anyone else, that he was giving everyone behind him, which is to say, the majority of passengers on the train, “the” middle finger.

Oh, but I must be confused.  I must have not seen it correctly.  Why would a masked man, so deliberately concealing his emotions, choose to express himself so, so pointedly to a subway full of innocent passengers?  Believe me, readers, this was no innocent eye-scratching finger choice.  No; with my third eye chakra energetically activated by the yoga, I was sure I could sense the anger of his intentional movement.  I searched the faces of the other riders, but my visual quest revealed nothing.  They sat, dully, staring at the space six inches in front of their face, as though surrounded by clouds of slow-moving gnats.  Was I making it up?

Interesting, that my first instinct was doubt.  After several years of experience, I can tell you with utter certainty that strange things do happen, and at an alarming rate. I should have been no less surprised if the man in the ski mask had a concealed weapon, banjo, snow shoes, yogurt, feather headdress, heart of a poet.  He got off the train, and so did I, hesitating to keep a distance behind him in case, self-absorbed as I am, that middle-finger was pointed at ME.  I ran up the stairs with my last burst of karmic energy, looking over my shoulder as I shoved through the turnstile.  The story, I am glad to say, ends there.  I offer no more, readers.  Conclusions, drawn from thin air, will be accepted in the comments section below.