Tuesday, August 7th

Bright, humid, and hot. So muggy that when you move, you sweat.

85 degrees.

Before 9am.

N: Waited 20 minutes for the bleeding train to come. Four outbound trains crept by on the opposite side and I couldn't help but think that the massive delay wasn't caused by a train malfunction, but rather, a brain malfunction.

Who was the poor bureaucratic bastard, trapped inside his tiny, hot prison of an office at the end of Ditmars station, magnificently unconcerned about the swelling numbers of morning rush commuters multiplying on the edge of the platform? As the trainless minutes ticketed by, what was this unknown schedule he had to stick to that restricted him from sending off an inbound train, when 4 trains were at his disposal? Why why why must it be so freaking hot and--thankfully, the train arrived with A/C on full blast to relieve my brain from the suffocating August air.

7: Waited another 10 minutes for the 7 train to come into QB Plaza.

All the regulars were there like an introduction to a comic book: Vet (cane at the ready, unsuccessfully trying not to melt like Frosty in summer), Hound Dog (the petite, possibly West Indian, greying woman with bejeweled glasses straps and her sunflower dress, who obediently looks out the train windows for anything out of the ordinary. Her watch is only the length of a single stop, but she guards the train gallantly. I was standing beside her the day she got her calling: it was a breezy June morn as we passed the spaghetti-like on-ramps of the Queensborough Bridge, she, the lone witness, cried out, "Oh my God!" Seconds later, I followed the invisible line her rigid, pointed finger made out the scratch-bombed windows to see a leather-clad man sprawled on the concrete, his motorcycle lying sideways 15 feet from where he lay.), Fussy Asian Doctor in scrubs and the rest of the motley crew: Annoyed Day Laborer, Blasting iPod Man, and Tireless Baby. The only one missing was Italian Stallion (the frustrated, squat, middle-aged woman who always gives me disapproving looks when I wait along side her at QB Plaza).

Finally the train arrived and we manned our posts: Vet melted, Hound Dog stared, Asian doctor fussed, and I wondered what I'd do if I found out that I was linked genetically to a reckless and evil villain like Voledmort.

G: The commuter flood washed over me, I copped a seat and tried to fight the encroaching migraine (thanks to my constricted sinuses)...which felt like my scar was burning...