Change at Jamaica Station

Chapter One and Two

The Change at Jamaica

Chapter One

 If You See Something, Do Something                                 October 2018, Pennsylvania Station, NY

I hate being human, I think for probably the twentieth time this week. So much pain in the world. Even sandals on a rainy day, just one human mistake after another. Everywhere I look since 9/11 was a reminder of my own pain, my own loss. Seventeen years later and I could still get depressed and paranoid just by being in a train station, when I know I should just be thankful to be alive, thankful that Matthew's life insurance, Christmas bonus, and the 9/11 victim's compensation board has left me so much better off than so many others. I am free to do what I want, but I have lost the idea of wanting anything other than the pain to stop.

It's the sandals that get to me. I'm not into judgement but having lived in four out of five boroughs of New York City over my forty-five years, I have become a discerning people watcher, and right now, I'm convinced something just isn't right. Certainly, in the big apple people wear all different types of footwear, but his sandals look incongruous in a way that gives me an eerie feeling that I have missed something. Did he just jump out of a burning building?

Why are they so decrepit? Two smoky, grayish weaved, wet, once- were- white flatness, they looked like Jesus Christ might have worn them. Literally, they look like someone dug up Christ's shoes and decided they were cool looking, so why not wear them to go to catch a train. I glance around the train station. I don't see Christ. Why are his shoes here?

His clothing looks newish, almost preppy, but not necessarily like his own, even though the fit is perfect, but they don't go with the sandals. My gay hairdresser, Sebastian of Sebastian's, would definitely approve of the cut of the pleated pants, and I could just hear him saying "so Cute", in his velvet voice, but the sandals were a tad too long for his feet and difficult for him to walk in. His light overcoat in twill looked more suited to bird hunting on one's English country estate, rather than a city train station, but on him, the garment looks lumpy, the only other item than the shoes that are not a perfect fit. Those shoes, with a Kelly green sweater that could have been in Tory Burch's last winter collection? Really? I don't think so. Sebastian would be fussing over this outfit with a 'tsk, tsk', while flirting shamelessly with the man with soft looking hair. "Good conditioner is so important," I can hear Sebastian reminding me.

Perhaps I need to have more conversations with people other than my hairdresser, but I've been a bit lonely. That really is a gross understatement, possible the biggest ever made, but Guinness world book doesn't have a page for loneliness. I have become a people watching connoisseur, which is easy enough in the diverse human bouquet that is New York City. There was a time in the past people would say how I was blessed with good karma, just always being in the right place at the right time and laughing my way through life with a smile. That ended on 9/11.

Weekly I stop to acknowledge how much of my life occurs on the train or waiting for it to come, and how other passengers feel more like siblings of the great experimental family of New Yorkers, fellow wanderers really, and very rarely complete strangers. Though some of them are quite strange. That is the nature, the free feeling of being in New York, where a vibrating pulsing rhythm underscores the mundane moments sitting around waiting for the train, the bus, (too slow), the taxi, (great if not too far) Uber, (I don't have the app), or the long walk home. People are surely a constant source of entertainment; but I like shoes.

"Excuse me." A gorgeous black man in a polished suit says to me as he steps around me, rushing with the crowd to get out of the underground train station and to work. He's handsome in a Sydney Poitier way, and much easier on the eye than the off pair of sandals, which in contrast to a well put together man, wearing Brooks Brothers textured leather wingtips, look even more jarring. Why are his sandals smoked?