williamsburg

At about 1:45 a.m. Saturday night, I got on the L train at First Avenue, headed toward Brooklyn. On the train were two people already engaged in some sort of a fight. I gathered from their exchange that this had happened: a young man and his friend were horsing around, and the friend flicked his lighter on momentarily; a woman got very upset that a lighter had been flicked on in the subway and told the two men to put it away; the man asked her why she was getting in his business about a lighter at a time of night when people do much worse shit on the subway; she said something about terrorism; and that's where the fight was when I got on the train.

There are important details that I thought I should save for the second paragraph of this retelling, namely, that the two young men were Spanish and dressed how lots of guys from Brooklyn dress -- baggy pants, backwards hats, big polo shirts. The young woman who made the comment about the lighter was of a very pale white, with long blond hair. She was dressed in a way that you would expect a young white woman headed to the first three stops in Brooklyn on the L train would be dressed: party-pretty, feminine, summery. (It's October but apparently was 87 degrees in New York Saturday.) These facts are important to omit in the first telling of the story because they unfairly bias the reader in the first instance.

The man was berating the woman, saying, "What did you think would happen? What did you think he was going to do with a lighter? You think we're terrorists? No, you didn't, you just thought because I'm Spanish that I was gonna do something, because you think everyone whose Spanish is going to do something. You couldn't just leave it alone, so I'm not gonna leave you alone. I'm gonna talk to you until you get off the train. What's your stop? I bet you're stop is Lorimer, isn't it?"

It was unclear at this point where sympathies should lie; with the woman, because she should not be so angrily, loudly, and publicly berated for seeing ves algo di'ing ves algo in a post-Rudy world; or with the man, who identified something the woman would not admit -- namely, that if the young men horsing around with a lighter had been two slack-haired white guys in tight ironic graphic Ts coming home from the Randall's Island Arcade Fire concert, she would not have harassed them for flicking open and on their stylish Zippo. Yet for the other white people on the train -- and there were only seven, and they were all standing or sitting near each other -- and I do not count myself accidentally among them* -- and speaking now is not my own crass hypersensitivity toward race but a specific, empirical observation, a simple act of reportage from your neutral scrivener -- it was clear that the Spanish man was at fault. So gradually, a triumvirate of defenders emerged, among them the (1) white woman, apparently not in the first woman's company, whose personality lent itself to healing chakras and earth-toned clothing suitable for extended periods of sitting meditation; (2) the tall, self-righteous white woman, most likely soused, also not in the first woman's company, whose boatnecked styles are of the day but will be roundly mocked on cable "Remember the 2000s?" retrospectives, accompanied by (3) the artificially brunetted white man in his early thirties, wearing tight black jeans and a black T-shirt stretched like the head of floor tom over a distended belly that read "J.H.S. Gymnastics," who stayed mostly silent until he wryly mumbled some poorly-delivered insults before exiting the Graham Avenue stop.

*I say this because when I lived in the Bronx with community garden-affirming, SoBro-gentrifying caucasoid Vermonsters they would say things like, "We're the only white people in the neighborhood." And I would think, "I'm white?" and I would say, "Yeah, smash the state."

The first to rise to the first woman's defense was (1), who tried repeatedly, to no avail, to calm the situation down. Lighter lady continued to try to explain why 9/11 changed everything and lighters should not be lit on trains, and (1) said, "Now wait. I want to know too. Why did you think it was a problem that he lit the lighter?" She was mostly ignored for the remainder of the ride.

Her participation, however, prompted (2) to begin her assault. (2) shouted at the man, saying, "Why can't you just shut the fuck up? You're making such a huge fucking scene! Just shut the fuck up and stop picking on that woman. You're making such a big fucking deal out of it and everyone on the fucking train wants you to shut the fuck up!" The man seemed delighted to have this new target, especially one who moved the conversation quickly from being a genuine, if very agitated, debate about post-9/11 paranoia to a contest of voluminous insults at high volumes. He responded by saying, "Yeah? Why don't you just shut the fuck up? Huh? Why don't you just shut the fuck up?"

This particular thread repeated for a few cycles. (Meanwhile, (1) tested her dispute resolution chops by saying, in her "outdoor" voice, "Hey, do we really need to be this angry right now? Everybody just stop and think: do we really need to put so much anger out there now?" Despite her pleas to the universal third person and her leading by example, she continued to be ignored completely.)

Then, he said, "Why don't you just get off at the next stop?"

To which (2) responded, "Yeah, I'll get off at the next stop...after I put my foot in your ass!"

The man responded by shouting, "Yeah? You're gonna put your foot in my ass? Go ahead! Put your foot in my ass! You want to do it, go ahead! Put it in!" and standing, turning his back toward her (over her shouts of "I can practically see your ass because your pants are so low!", drawing some applause from the other vascoconstricted hipsters) and dropping first just his pants, and then, with a defiant yank, his underwear just to a point where, from where I was standing, about four feet in front of him, I could see the plunge from pyramidalis to penis and a roll of flubby, fatty, shorn flesh directly above it. Most people on the train gasped, several said "Damn!" and I could only think: "Flesh tube!"

At this point I very discreetly and slowly retreated ten feet and continued watching the show from a vantage where I might not be accidentally hit by a seminal stream of tidy. I stood near two gothy/Renn Fayre types, one of whom had a hemp chain dotted with punk spikes connecting his wallet to his raver pants, who were commentating on the action unfolding. The conversation continued, to everyone's great amusement:

(2): You're a fucking idiot! You just made an ass of yourself! The whole train saw your ass!

Man: Well, you said you were gonna put your foot up my ass. You wanna put your foot up my ass? Go ahead! Are you gonna do something about it?

(3) (hipster man): [laughing, standing slightly behind (2), presumably his girlfriend]

Man: Oh, you think that's funny? You're a man. You're just gonna sit there in your cheap-ass shirt and hide behind your woman?

(2): You think you're so cool with your backwards hat? "Ooooh, I'm so cool! [In falsetto, gesticulating vaguely and derisively in the air, frowning like a tragic mask, rolling eyes back into head] I'm wearing a Yankees hat backward!"

Man: [grabs hat off head and points] It's the METS! My clothes are worth more than you are! My shoes cost more than your whole outfit!

(2) and (3): [cooing] Oh, money's everything! Money is everything! You're so important! Money is everything!

Man: My pants cost $120. My shirt - this cost $100. My shoes cost $120. They're worth more than everything both y'all are wearing.

(2): Oooh, well, I bought him [jerks a thumb at (3)] this shirt for $4.

(3): Yeah, I don't waste money on my clothes. My brain is worth more than your clothes.*

*Implying that his brain is worth at least $340.

Man: What are you, a bunch of cokeheads?

(2) and (3): [dissolving into laughter]

Man: Oh, I see, y'all are just a bunch of cokeheads. Get off this train and go do your coke somewhere else.

(2): So what if he's done coke once in the last...three...and a half...years?

Man: What a stupid-ass shirt. "J.H.S. Gymnastics." What the fuck is that?

(2): [hysteria increasing] Can't you see he's a gymnast? He's a superstar gymnast? This is a cool shirt! I bought him that shirt. That's a cool shirt in this neighborhood!

Man: I'm from this neighborhood!

(2): Yeah, right! If you were from Williamsburg, your shirt would be tighter! Your pants would be tighter!

At this, el blanco in a tight shirt sitting directly across from me applauds wildly and says, "Yeah!"

Man: I'm FROM WILLIAMSBURG! I live at South 5 and [unintelligible]. Fuck you!

(2): Well, go back to Century 21 and buy another $21.99 shirt!

The trains pulls into the Graham Avenue station.

(2): [unintelligible] That's all gonna change...November 2008! Peace in the Middle East! Peace in the the Middle East! [(2) and (3) exit train]

After the Graham Avenue station, there are no more hipsters on the train. All there is on the train is silence, and the man and his friend with the lighter shaking their heads at each other. The goth kids are discussing who has won. "The right thing to have said was 'How long did you have to work at McDonald's to pay for your clothes?'" one says. I interject and say that it the woman lost because she thought that she was entitled to the neighborhood when ten years ago people who look like her didn't live here. The goth kids disagree, and I exit the Montrose station to go walk my border collie who doesn't know a thing about why people yell at each other and is just very, very happy to see me, every time he sees me.