Getting Stoned With Savages - J. Maarten Troost [10]
Thus, if ever there was a cure for urban ennui, Vanuatu was it. As I rode the subway around Washington, gathering what I thought we needed for our new lives—snorkels, flippers, spare flip-flops, sunscreen (family size)—I could barely contain my glee. Typically, I found riding the Metro during rush hour hypnotically depressing. For some reason it felt perceptibly different from riding the subways in New York, London, or Berlin. Elsewhere, one senses a certain liveliness, with people babbling to their neighbors, and at least a third of the passengers, perhaps even half, appearing rather pleased to be here, right now, with you, convivially sharing a subway car. On Washington’s Red Line, which may as well be called the White Line as it rumbles below the city’s palest quadrant, the atmosphere is discernibly different. It is all rustling of newspapers and ruffling of reports. It is sighing and harrumphing, little nonverbal gestures that say, all things being equal, they rather wish the entire world would fuck off. Washingtonians, it occurred to me, were not flip-flop people. I wondered how different America would be if the capital had been located in Key West. What if the nation’s motto had been Let’s get drunk and screw? Would the world be a better place?
Such were my thoughts when the subway doors opened and on hobbled a stunningly attractive woman. As a married man, I try very hard not to be an ogre, but she possessed such beauty that I couldn’t help but furtively stare, even though she was nowhere near as good looking as my wife, a point I’m adding here under no duress whatsoever. Anyway, a real beauty she was. And tragically, she was in a cast, which had the effect of accentuating her thigh, a description of which I have been asked to remove. Now, if my sense of the male condition is correct, and I’m fairly certain it is, one would expect that on a crowded subway car the appearance of Aphrodite herself, straining with her crutches, would lead to a near riot of men tripping over themselves to gallantly offer her a seat. But no such thing happened. Instead, the papers were crisply rustled, and the men of Washington returned to their stewing. I found this, frankly, astonishing, for not only were they being terrifically rude, but they were also, evidently, eunuchs.
As the subway bounced along the tracks, I could see, to my considerable distress, that this poor woman was manifestly in pain. The subway car swayed this way and that, and she winced, struggling to hold herself upright. Beside her, comfortable in their seats, were two men. The man on the outside seat appeared to be thirty-something, besuited and balding, with the sort of gold-rimmed glasses that certain men wear to convey an appearance of wealth, though the effect is usually one of premature aging. I watched him, just sitting there mere inches from a woman standing with a broken leg, and I concluded that he was a cretin of the worst kind, and as I noted all the other men seated in the subway car, including those occupying the seats reserved for the elderly and the handicapped, this smug little puffin came to represent all that I found odious about Washington.
“Hey, man,” I said to him. “Stand up and let the lady with the broken leg have a seat.”
He looked, much to my gratification, as if he had just swallowed a lemon. His face began to contort as it tried to settle on an appropriate emotion. “How…who do you…,” he began to stammer. Then he thought better of it, and with considerable petulance, he rose.
“Thank you,” said she of the golden smile. I tried to think of something witty to say, but one has only a moment and the moment passed, and I could think of nothing more than a bashful, blushing “You’re welcome.”
This wouldn’t have happened in the South Pacific, I thought. Possibly because there weren’t any subways in the South Pacific. As