Perimenopausal Mussolini and the Kindness of Strangers

But not me

I had to pee. So badly. I realized this at the same moment that I realized I had accidentally gotten on the wrong train, and had to get off at the next stop and snake through the Delancey/Essex station to get back to my train, which would mean it would take even longer to get home than my urgent bladder needs could abide.

As I hustled toward my end of the train platform (one must always be efficient and plan where to get on the train so as to be at the right spot when one gets off), I walked by a man sitting on the edge of the platform, his legs dangling over the edge. Meaning: when the train came, his legs would be ripped off, or the conductor would have to slam on the emergency brakes, injuring people, or the man would be killed and people on the train would be injured.

Which may be just what the man had in mind, because he was rocking back and forth and muttering, “I want to die. I want to die.”

At that point, the pee was starting to leak out. This has been happening more and more. I don’t recognize that I have to pee until I stand up (yes, I sit too much) and then, the minute I do, I am peeing. On myself.

And of course I didn’t want this man to hurt himself or others, and I did not want to witness such horrors. But I will admit that my most pressing thought was: I don’t want the train to be delayed for hours by those horrors.

Yes, that’s right, I wanted the train to run on time, in part because I didn’t want to fully piss myself.

There were no cops on the platform, no emergency phone, no one to ask for help. And let me stress this: no one was doing anything to assist this man or prevent catastrophe. I certainly wasn’t going to approach the guy, since he very well may have tossed me onto the tracks. But no one was paying any attention or trying to get anyone else to. And so, it was I, of the full bladder, quaking in hot flashes, who went in search of help.

I walked back to the underground bodega—the saddest of all spaces, which I wish no one had to work in, and should at least have a sky light to the above-ground—and asked the proprietor if he knew how I should get help for a suicidal man. He shrugged. Shrugged. I walked upstairs. Toll booth empty. I wandered around up there, thinking about the train that the sign said was coming in five minutes, until I saw a man with a “customer service” mesh vest on. I waved to him, but he was deep in conversation with what appeared to be two other customer service mesh vest-wearers, and didn’t want to be bothered—especially by the loon with a flushed face and a neon sign reading, “Warning: Karen approaching.” Which is, I assume, how they interpreted my urgency.

“There’s a man on the platform with his legs dangling over the edge muttering ‘I want to die,’” I said. “Could you do something?”

“Can you give me a description?” one of them asked. “White? Black? Hispanic?”

I was pretty sure he wasn’t black, but I didn’t clock much about him because, you know, I didn’t want to get near him and also I wanted to get help. “I don’t know,” I said. “You can’t miss him. He’s the guy sitting with his legs dangling over the edge of the platform muttering that he wants to die.”

Finally, the guy came through the turnstile. Or he tried to, but it was one of those new turnstiles with the plexiglass gates and he couldn’t get through and someone had to go around and unlock the emergency exit with a key. Yep.

We’re down to two minutes now. He got through and moseyed to the man, but it turned out that one of the other customer service mesh vest-wearers had made her way in at an appropriate pace and arrived at the suicidal fellow just before we did, so that I could hear her say to him, “So you want to end it all?”

Yep.

What happened next, you ask? I don’t know. I went all the way to the other end of the platform because I was afraid he would target me for interrupting his plans. The train was delayed slightly anyway; I suppose customer service radioed someone to say “hold off.” I thought how funny it would be if I just squatted and peed and the police or customer service would have to come arrest me and it wouldn’t matter that it was my own fascist desire for timely trains that had saved the day, or the dude’s life, or just prevented an hours-long delay, because I would be urinating publicly. And frankly, perimenopausal women should be exempted from laws banning public urination.

Then the train came.

What was that, I kept thinking to myself. Okay, fine, there’s so much mental illness and despair that we have to insulate ourselves from it, look away, because otherwise we’d all be upset all the time (or maybe we’d be trying to do more to spread the wealth and get people off the streets and figure out how to reopen and reinvent mental hospitals so they could be safe and help people). But you’re shooting yourself in your own foot when you let a guy sit on the platform waiting for his legs to be obliterated by an oncoming train. I mean, if you’re not gonna care about humanity, do a better job with your own selfishness!

I did a good thing, but I’m very clear that I did it as much for me as I did for him.

I was still smarting about the episode the next morning, as I was walking down Broadway. The smell of cigarette smoke filled my nostrils, and I went through my internal rant about the effect on one cigarette, how it travels to affect everyone on the block and how smoking should only be allowed in an enclosed room where you’re breathing in your smoke and your second-hand smoke, when I saw who was smoking: a young man with an Eastern European accent and an elderly woman who was either homeless or the last remaining downtown resident who once frequented Studio 54; her look could have been either. One of them had bummed a cigarette from the other, and that small interaction had opened into a connection, and they stood on the side of the street and asked each other questions about their lives. I only caught a few minutes of it, but it was enough to briefly restore my faith in humanity. (I do very much miss the days of smoking, because it was a great way to get to know people.)

To live among millions of strangers is difficult, and it is also to live with endless moments for potential grace. The most uplifting conversations I’ve ever had with strangers have been with Uber drivers, including a Sudanese refugee who told me of escaping through five different countries just to get to where we were: a bombed-out neighborhood in central Brooklyn, which to him was comparative heaven. It’s so easy to forsake gratitude for grievance; I do it all the time.

But I don’t want to. Thanks to the strangers for meeting on the street, and to the really-not-very-good customer service workers, for getting the guy off the ledge and for being there, and thanks to whoever provided the funding for them (but maybe don’t all cluster together in one spot where you can’t actually get inside the turnstile), and thanks to my brother who, 33 years ago, said, “If you don’t have any plans after college, you can come sleep on my couch for a while.” I didn’t plan to still be here. But I am. I’m still here, even though I had many, many moments of muttering “I want to die. I want to die.”

I’m so glad I didn’t succumb to those feelings. I hope that man, whose age or race or face I did not record, finds himself someday able to feel happy to be alive.