You said, "I’m not afraid to die."

Last night found me (once again) making my way to the subway at about 2:30. As I entered the station, I was pleased to find it suitably crowded, which meant that I had most likely not just missed a train, and therefore would, with any luck, not find myself still in the station half an hour later.

Though the night air had been downright pleasant, as I descended into the station I was sad to discover that it was, in fact, quite suffocating down there. But as I was a little drunk and also in a very good mood (guess why), I pushed undaunted through the turnstiles, and strode down to my end of the platform, not immediately noticing that stopped on the tracks on the other side of the station was one of those yellow maintenance trains. Nothing particularly odd about that late at night, but as I walked down the platform, I noticed vaguely that there seemed to be an awful lot of activity around that particular train.

That’s when I noticed the smell and all the smoke. How I didn’t realize while I was walking that the air was so thick I could barely see through it is beyond me. It wasn’t until the strong odor of burning rubber mixed with burning oil (or something like that) reached my nose that I was like, “Huh, this isn’t right.”

Hilariously, for a moment I actually contemplated remaining there. Until I realized that I couldn’t breathe, that is. It never ceases to amaze me how much we New Yorkers will put up with in the interest of catching a train and making sure we’re positioned just right in terms of where we know our exit will be at our destination. Anything to shave a few precious seconds off our final trip time.

As I began to choke and suffocate, I relented and decided it might be a good idea to get some fresh air. So I headed back to the turnstiles, where the fresh, cool night air was pouring into the station, and I gulped it in gratefully. As my head cleared, I began to reflect on what it would be like to be trapped underground during an, um, emergency of that sort, in a situation where fresh air wasn’t in such adequate supply and a quick exit may not have been so easy. Not pleasant thoughts, to be sure. Kind of like thinking about drowning or being buried alive. You know, that sort of thing. The kind of thoughts with which you know that, if you allowed yourself to, you could easily torture yourself into insanity.

But last night, my thoughts were more along the lines of, “Eh, who really cares. I just wanna get home.”