Not sure why exactly – but it was.
I had just staggered back to the Duboce and Church N stop from Safeway – loaded with dinner groceries, a laptop, and other sundry law student essentials. The platform and sidewalk were littered with work-weary people. Five minutes passed. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Nothing came out of the tunnel – not a J, not an N, nada.
You know, of course, what an N train looks like during the evening rush even without a delay.
Sure enough, when one finally creaked above ground and groaned to a halt, it was packed to the gills with frustrated commuters. But with a pound or so of quickly warming london broil and other items I was afraid were begining to grow their own friends, I squished myself into the first car, dragging my fellow law student, grocery shopping friend with me.
It was predictably unpleasant and at each stop the doors seemed to take four times as long to close. The Sunset Tunnel seemed five times as long. And the number of people getting ON the train after Cole Valley seemed a thousand times higher than normal.
All of this is, of course, normal. But when, somewhere around 2d Ave, a couple of high school frosh climbed aboard and began to make out with sickening loud kisses (smack, slurp, mmm, mmm, slurp, slurp, smack) broken up by “you know, like, like, i mean, like, i was all, and she was like, and then he was all” – I had it. I was done. Get me off the damn train now. The girl was pretty enough – the guy was clearly a jerky kid who thought the world of himself judging by the way he expounded on the relatively worth of his classmates, his mother, and various mp3 players. Slurp, smack, smack.
My friend and I locked eyes and lost it. The two women sitting on either side of my friend looked equally nauseated.
Everyone on the train was restless. Angry. You can just feel it.
As the train slammed to a halt at my stop, I peeled myself out and bummed into another young guy who most earnestly declared it his worst train ride ever. It was hard to argue with him as the plastic bags cut further into my hand and beef blood seeped onto my shoe.