“It was a human sausage.”

This morning – this exceptionally cold, eyelashes-frozen-together morning, as I stood there in the train, thawing off in the moist heat of some Asian woman’s armpit, I had what one might call an “epiphany” (smart people refer to these things as they really are: brief run-ins with impending mental collapses).

This epiphany (as so many of these darling things are) was as delightfully simple as it was infuriatingly complex. And as the local train from Queens to Manhattan lurched to another stop where three perfectly spherical women were allowed to live out the metaphor of being a round peg trying to fit into a square hole, the silent mantra echoed in my head.

“Jeph?” it said to me.

My eye twitched involuntarily.

“Y...Yes?” I called back.

“You’re standing in an Asian woman’s armpit. You’re standing in an Asian woman’s armpit. You’re standing in an Asi–”

I shook my head and looked away from the floor, where I had hitherto diverted my attention (and, more importantly, my nose). But what I saw was even more disconcerting.

Our train car had become a human-fucking-sausage, jam-packed with frowning faces, flushed cheeks and the odd protruding limb here and there. Those few “lucky” people that had managed to snag seats looked equally uncomfortable with their bags lifted to their chins and shoulders shrugged up to their ears. When the train stopped, a wave of bodies rippled throughout the car, never breaking as the flexible human membrane always managed to inadvertently support one another.

Now, New Yorkers are, most assuredly, a different sort of breed of people altogether. They’re less patient than, say, the drawling, pleasant time-killer of your average Texan. They’re dirtier than, oh, you know...rats. Smiling pains them so much, that by the time they’ve reached the age of forty, their faces hold the constant of expression as of one who is always – always – smelling something foul.

As heinous as all these attributes sound, you really do still have to wonder, when it’s all said and done, what sort of person would do this to themselves? I mean, I don’t care what you’ve done or haven’t done in your life that you’re upset about – I don’t care if you're Judas or Jeffrey Dahmer – you don’t deserve this.

It’s eight o’clock in the morning. I’m already going somewhere I don’t want to go, to do something I don’t want to do, to get paid a wage half what I should be getting – WHY MAKE THINGS THAT MUCH WORSE?!

In a world where you don’t matter – at fucking all – why should every second of your life have to be such a blatant reminder?