Subway Story - Uggs

Subway Story

By Tenzin McGrupp © 2005

The weary porter wore paint splattered paints and walked silently into the subway car with a ladder underneath his right arm. He almost knocked me square in the junk as he attempted to squeeze in to an empty space in the corner. I watched an overweight Hispanic woman in front of me as she nonchalantly clipped her finger nails. I tried to listen in on a conversation between two tourists from Germany. They wore funny shoes, expensive watches, and spoke in über sentences. I'm positive they were discussing Schopenhauer. A nerdy girl next to them, with Tina Fey glasses, quietly read a science book.

I caught the unhygienic whiff of a panhandler and my mood quickly soured. The unpleasant aroma of stale feces combined with dungy body odor surrounded me as the homeless guy shuffled past us. I held my breath and took note of his over sized shit kickers while he pestered all the passengers for spare change. He smelled like the urinal at Pat O'Brien's on the Monday before Mardi Gras.

Some people you see and right away you just want to stomp their fuckin' brains in. My latest victim got on at the next stop. The lanky odalisque wore light purple Uggs and listened to a pink iPod. $400 Giorgio Armani sunglasses hid her querulous eyes. The shades were pink tinted, of course. If I’d had the balls, I would have grabbed her by the hair, twisted the iPod out of her freshly manicured fingers, then snatched the Uggs off her feet in the most unsympathetic way. I know a Ruskie broad in Forest Hills who would pay $150 for the Uggs. And maybe if I'm lucky, she'd give me a monthly Metrocard and a handjob for the sunglasses.

Tenzin McGrupp is a writer from New York City.