An Open Letter To The Woman Who Tried To Hold The Doors Of The 6 Train Open With A Large Paperback Book During Rush Hour

First of all, I just want to say that I’m sorry I didn’t get a better look at what you were reading before I pushed your book back out at you so that the doors could close and the train could leave the station. When I encounter someone with a philosophy of life that’s clearly far different from my own, I usually make an effort to find some common ground, and reading material is often a great place to start.

But you see, there wasn’t time. I had somewhere to be. And, not insignificantly, so did the other twelve hundred people on the train, to say nothing of the other fifty thousand or so people on the other south-bound six trains behind ours that you were holding up.

I did hear you shout “Asshole!” as the train sped away. You shouted it with such enthusiasm, such self-righteousness, that I was led me to hope, with some optimism, that you were reading The Myth Of American Exceptionalism by Godfrey Hodgson. The levels of irony would be somewhat comforting, but only if you were aware of them too, and I’m not entirely confident, based on your behavior, that that would be the case.

I’m not sure you realize this, but when you first inserted the book between the doors, I wasn’t even standing anywhere near you. I was on the other side of the car and diagonal to you, perhaps fifteen feet away. I had to ask some people to step out of my way so that I could reach the door and prevent you from entering the train.

Just before the moment of truth, I noticed two things. The first was your self-righteous expression as you sneered in the direction of what I had to assume was the outer window of a nearby conductor. The second thing was a gaunt young man standing just inside the door, watching you. He was positioned closer to you than anyone else on the train; if someone inside was going to help you open the doors, it would most likely be him.

And yet he wasn’t helping. That must have bothered you; you must have seen his face, if only in your peripheral vision. It’s like he was trying to embarrass you into giving up. But, as you and I both knew in advance, that tactic was bound to fail. Perhaps we could have bonded in our mutual disdain for this kid. Once the train had started moving, he looked as if nothing had happened, and for a moment I wondered if you could have possibly been reading Camus’ The Stranger. But The Stranger, at only 123 pages ( edition) would not even have been thick enough to keep the subway doors from fully closing. You would have had to choose between letting it go, and being dragged onto the track with it. Which, in a way, would be appropriate, I guess.

Dislodging your book took multiple blows, and as a big reader myself, I felt a bit bad about that. It didn’t occur to me until twenty minutes later, when I was in another borough and at least three more 6 trains had come by your platform, that I could have pulled instead of pushed. That is, I could have taken the book out of your hands, and the door would have shut. And you, a person who bodily leads with your books and who gets angry about waiting for trains, would have been left on the train platform without a book. And I would have known what book it was.
I wonder what my fellow train-mates would have thought of that. Would they have lost sympathy, suddenly seeing me, not as a liberator, but a thief? And yet, it could have been quite an opportunity for a spoken-word performance. As you would very well know if the book had by chance been Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture by Brian Herrera, live performance is best when it’s spontaneous and unrepeatable. I could have flipped to any page, started reading aloud, and had the entire car’s rapt attention. In that event, your book would have suddenly found a much larger audience than it was going to in your singular iron grip. Imagine how, as a team, we might have then moved the cause of literature forward.
I must admit that, since our brief interaction that day, I have had moments of euphoria – brought on by exercise, sex, waking up after a good night’s sleep – during which I’ve had to admit to myself that all of the above approaches were entirely wrong. Because – and I’m sure you noticed this too – after I pushed your book out from between the doors, there was a brief moment in which the doors, as if in silent salute, actually opened a few inches before slamming shut. I could have, therefore, pulled the book inside long enough to read the title, and then thrown it back in your face.

Imagine your indignation as you knelt on the filthy platform and lifted the book from its resting spot, inches from the departing train. Think of yourself rising, dusting it off, then holding it – yes, triumphantly! – above your head, and giving a rousing speech to whomever would listen (homeless people and subway musicians, mostly) about the power of the written word.

I’ll be on the 47th street platform every weekday at 6:15pm. Let’s make it happen.

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“Nature must not win” image by wallyg. It’s a quote from Jung, and the rest says “…but she cannot lose.” It’s on the wall of the 42nd St./Bryant Park subway station.

Subway bathroom image from the essential.