5-19-08 Social Skills

I walk down to the G train at the Metropolitan Street station, through a long, wide hall above the platforms. A tall, lanky, bearded, vaguely homeless (shabby, but not so shabby that he might not just be an impoverished man and poor dresser with bad grooming habits) man walks down to the platform going out to Queens, and as he's about to go down the stairs, he belches.

This belch, it's a world-beater, a monster, a basso-profundo masterpiece of gastro-intestinal fortitude, literally echoing off the stone walls of the subway station. Humbled at this display, I walk downstairs to the Brooklyn side of the platform and see him across the tracks, and without breaking his stride or preparing, he lets loose another belch that resounds like the crack of doom, after which he smiles, almost proudly, and keeps walking to the end of the platform.