Everyone's a member of the subway

The Column: 03.29.24

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Some friends of mine put me up for membership in a very exclusive New York club, one where you go and meet all the right sort of people who know things that a nice Midwestern guy doesn’t, such as where can I find a really vicious lawyer when I need one and how can I improve my chances of getting a rave review in the Times, so the friends wrote recommendations and the admissions committee interviewed me, and a week later I was rejected for the best of reasons, because I was dumb.

It was a Monday, 2 p.m. I flew into LaGuardia that morning with a suitcase so I took a cab home to the West Side and decided to take a shower and freshen up. Dumb. I should’ve gone straight to the club but instead I made myself fresh and winsome and dashed to the subway and took the B train to near the club and then came out of the subway and in confusion walked the wrong way and arrived at the club half an hour late.

I left my cellphone in my coat at the door, forgetting that I need an app on the phone to control volume on my hearing aids, so when I sat down with the committee a half hour late, I could only hear fragments of what they said and rather than excuse myself and go solve the problem, I tried to imagine what they said and I improvised, I told stories, I tried to be amusing, and for all I know, they were asking about my career and I was talking about cashmere. It was a chilly goodbye.

And a few days later I was rejected. Justly. Why would you admit a demented man to your club — there are care centers for those people.

It’s too late for me to be exclusive, when I think of the dumb things I’ve done, blunders with money, mistaken love, screwing up a simple interview. I’ve done things so stupid, I am earnestly hoping for memory loss. Plagiarism is one of the few sins I haven’t committed, otherwise in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state. I was rather distinguished back in 1986 when the editors of the Los Angeles Times hosted a luncheon in my honor and my old friend Irv Letofsky, who was reporting for the paper, sidled up to me and said, “I knew you when you were just white trash.” I loved that man. He was from North Dakota where they don’t put on airs.

I have a number of clubs already, the Episcopal church a half mile away, which lifts the spirits of its people, and another is the reading room in the public library where I sit among silent studious men and women one-fourth my age, and another is the subway, which rolls into the station and I enter the nearest door and find myself in a new assortment of people, always surprising, some of whom could use a vicious lawyer or a rave review, others are doing okay as is.

The train heads downtown and a lady walks through the car, hand outstretched, saying, “Can anybody help me?” over and over, and most people look away, some shake their heads, some study her, and it’s a moment of simple human truth. The conscience is touched, you hear people thinking, “She’s only using it for drugs,” and someone else, “Hungry children may wait in a tenement basement in the Bronx,” and the hungry children win out, I reach in my pocket, meaning to get a one but I find a roll of bills, I’ve been to an ATM, and her eye is on me and I pull out a fifty and give it to her. I like fifties, they make me feel rich.

This is a tender human moment between strangers. She whispers, “Thank you very much,” and I’ll take that whisper home with me. I am not better than she. Jesus doesn’t think so, neither do I. I worked very hard but I enjoyed it all and I was wildly lucky. Giving her the fifty reminds me of just how lucky I’ve been and then it’s worth a couple hundred, a decent profit for a short ride. We should start a Good Luck Club, wear a clover badge, you recognize another member, you are obliged to tell them a joke. “Why are you scratching yourself?” “Because I’m the only one who knows where it itches.” You’re welcome.

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