Metro

Chapter 1: Pinch

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
- Ezra Pound, "In a Station of the Metro"

He sits leaning against the concrete blocks the city likes to call "benches." Metro benches, you see. Because the city's too goddamn squeamish of subways to put in nice seats, like the ones people find in Central Park. After all, what personnel of political power would ever, ever, take the Metro? They've got cabs and limousines. Drivers with white gloves. Cushioned leather seats. Mini refrigerators.

The rest of the world tussles with shoulders and feet. With folded newspaper and iPod headphones. Gripping bars and handles, leaning into a crowd at every stop, at every go. Lecherous old men running their hands onto a college student's ass. By mistake, of course. But you can never quite tell.

He reeks of cheap gin and whiskey. The type of boy your mother always told you to stay away from. He was stoned too much to remember his name, but parents always pulled at their children's hands when he came near. "He's trouble," they'd murmur harshly to their child. The kid would keep staring like they were watching a fucking porno for the first time or something. Even little kids love a nice car crash, an obdurate catastrophe.

So he calls himself Trouble. His court-assigned lawyers called him a NFC, back in the good ol' days of juvenile delinquency. NFC, for No Fuckin' Chance. But he figures Trouble sounds a hell of a lot better than No Fuckin' Chance. Shorter, too. Not that it mattered much. None of his friends cared much about his name, as long as he had the hard stuff. The only guy who calls him by his name is his dealer, anyway.

He seems to have spent money on something besides escape-in-a-needle today. A bottle of wine covered in wet brown paper bag. You can still see the shoeprint of someone who stepped on the bag a long time ago. Size 13, from the looks of it. A size 13 that stepped on some pretty nasty stuff, and then transferred it onto a paper bag.

No matter. He still clutches it like an Academy Award. Two Buck Chuck! Two Buck Chuck! Who said cheap wine wasn't worth the sales tax? It's different from the usual homemade concoction one of his buddies comes up with. Which buddy was it again...? Ah, screw it. Not like he knows their names any better than they know his.

He pretends not to notice the hundreds of people that shoot him quizzical looks. So what if he sits in the station all day. So what if he never actually gets on the train. It costs no money to go nowhere. He can stay in the subway as long as he fucking wants. And the benches ain't so bad for sleeping on at night, either. Better than those nice wooden benches in Central Park, donated on behalf of a dead person At least he doesn't feel guilty about taking advantage of someone six feet under. Or cremated, as is the new trend.

"Trouble."

He reluctantly detaches his mouth from the wine bottle. A little babe longing for his mother's milk. Oh, well. Another form of milk is here. Only one person calls him by his name – the milkman. Children on old TV shows always loved the milkman.

He envisions TV Land sitcoms, so outdated and bad that they're funny. Him and his gang getting high in front of Dennis the Menace and I Love Lucy. Dennis and Lucy's screw-ups becoming magnified with the aid of weed, until they all rolled off the knifed couch with laughter. Clutching their stomachs, tears streaming, eyes contorted so much as to disappear.

Or getting it on with their women with I Dream of Jeannie in the background. All the while imagining that their girl was Jeannie. Because – damn – Jeannie was pretty hot. They say Mexican kids always have a thing for the blonde, white girl. Jeannie was that blonde, white girl. Not to say that their home girls weren't fine – they were. But you were probably their fifth screw that day. Blonde, white girls don't sleep with more than one guy in their lifetime.

Supposedly.

"Got the cash?"

Trouble makes a show of reaching into his pocket and drawing out a battered brown wallet. Like a gun. Bang, bang – now give me what I want. Licks his lips, smirking at the linger of wine upon his tongue. He counts out a few 20's, crumpled but flattened in his wallet.

"Here," he says, holding the bills between his fingers. "Come and get it."

"Not yet. Show me your arm."

"Fuck, why you gotta see my arm?" Trouble pushes up his sleeves. "Not like I'm overusing that stuff. I got buddies to share this stuff with."

"Damn, amigo. What you been doing? You got bruises where the needle go."

He tears down his sleeves. "Fuck that. I bruise easy. You got a problem?"

"No, man. Just don't want my best customer to OD, that's all. No problem. But go easy on it. Those bruises are harsh."

"Gimme that," he growls, grabbing at the vial of liquid.

"Okay, okay. Calm down."

Exchange complete. The milkman stuffs the cash into his coat and walks away. Doesn't look back. Muttering all the way up the stairs to himself. "Fucking crazy. Gonna kill himself soon..."

Trouble doesn't mind. He stares at the vial, contemplating whether to bow under the lure right now, or later. No one's around 11 o'clock at night, anyway. The security guards don't even notice. Prostitutes are hustling business from the frustrated and horny middle-aged men that step off the platforms. They'd get busted first, not him.

Maybe...

He rolls his sleeves back up. His body's just shaking for some relief right now. With all the shit he had to put up with today, he damn well deserves this. Hell, he might even inject it all. He's the one who pays for it, anyway. What do his friends deserve? His friends that don't even know his name?

Fuck them.

He takes his needle out of a plastic bag. Part of the "clean needles for drug users to avoid HIV" program. Takes the cap off the vial, insert, pull up, remove, recap. Nothing like a good 10 milliliters to calm you down. Makes the shittiest things in life seem like cotton candy. At least for a few hours.

Swiftly, deftly, he ties latex around his bicep. Now wasn't this a motion he knew better than breathing. Calmly finding a vein, he sticks it in. A pinch. Only a pinch. A prolonged pinch. Lasting for as long as the needle was in, sticking out garishly in the middle of a blue-and-yellow bruise.

With a long exhale, he pushes escape-in-a-needle in. Ecstasy. Better than sex. Definitely better than sex. Sex is more work and less instant gratification. God, he feels good now. Closes his eyes to feel the rush. Opens his eyes to remove the needle, replacing it neatly in its plastic bag.

The pinch stops.

The blue-and-yellow bruise gets more agitated. His whole arm is fucking bruised, branded with the blue, yellow, green, and black of drug addicts. He winces. Ironic how the pain only comes after the pinch is gone.

He always thinks that after he gives himself a good pinch of 10 or 15 milliliters, he'll wake up. A good, long pinch to wake up from this dream. He'll wake up on silk sheets, underneath cashmere blankets. Those useless decorative pillows thrown around onto the floor, or at the foot of the bed. Wake up to find out that this grimy street life was all a bad dream. A bad dream that can disappear with a simple pinch.

Pinch me – I want to wake up.
Pinch me – I don't want this life.

But it never does. Pinches just lead to more dreams, less cruel but infinitely more confusing. It goes from bad dreams to bizarre ones, when all he wants to do is wake up. Fucking wake up. Is that too much to ask for?

Pinch me – I want to wake up.
Pinch me – I don't want this life.

Because his name isn't No Fuckin' Chance. And it's not Trouble, either. He was born with a normal name, given to him by his parents. Like any other kid. But time passed and he's forgotten his family, his childhood, and his name. Things you can never get back. Not ever.

He starts to wonder if he should take another 10 milliliter pinch. To, you know, feel even better. But before he can make up his mind, he passes out.

Pinch me – I want to wake up.
Pinch me – I don't want this life.

The next morning, a group of schoolchildren descend underground for a class trip to the Met. 4th graders, herded together by a Miss Turner. As she's busy conversing with a security guard about getting her class to stay together, the group congregates around the concrete blocks the city likes to call "benches."

"Who's that?"
"Is he okay?"
"Is he dead?"
"Should we wake him up?"
"Ew, no! Don't touch him. He's –"
"Filthy!"

Giggles.

One brave boy, obviously the class clown, grins. "I'll wake him!" Striding stupidly, like a drunken peacock, his announcement parts his classmates like the Red Sea. And he's Moses. And he likes it.

He gets closer, grin faltering. This was the type of guy his parents told him to stay away from. A "bad man." But he's already told his class what he was going to do. He can't back out of that. Besides, he's Moses! His classmates are the Red Sea. He is in complete control, at least for the while.

Moses leans over the figure slumped onto the ground. Notices the bruises on the stranger's arms. Figures that one more bruise won't hurt.

Gives him a good, long pinch on the arm.

"What the fuck?!" Trouble sits up, swinging his arm around for an assailant.

Moses spooks. Him and his classmates run away shrieking by the time Trouble opens his eyes.

"Oh, my God."
"Did you see the look on his face?"
"You were so brave!"
"He was scary!"
"Is he going to come after us?"
"He's so creepy!"
"What if he'd actually hit you?"

Giggles.

"Fucking kids," Trouble mumbles, scrubbing his face insistently with his hands. "God, where did I put the –" His hand closes in around the vial. Bingo.

He dusts himself off, stumbling to regain control of his limbs. "Guess I should go split the rest with the guys." The guys who don't know his name. The guys he doesn't know the name of, either.

Climbs up the stairs, sauntering with the practiced air of a juvenile delinquent. Another shitty day in a shitty life. Just another day.

The 4th graders stare after him. Whisper among themselves.

Miss Turner, arriving to herd them once again, catches their eyes and decides it's a good time to teach a quick lesson. "Now, children," she says, clapping her hands, "Those kind of people are just trouble. Don't get involved with them if you want a good life ahead, understand?"

A chorus of, "Yes, Miss Turner," follows. She beams, pleased at having grasped a lesson to teach in everyday life. She was doing her job, just teaching the kids.

Trouble walks out of the station, shielding his eyes from the salient sun.

"Fuck." He grabs his arm and gently massages it. "That fucking hurt."

Pinch me – I want to wake up.
Pinch me – I don't want this life.