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NEW YORK STORIES

"Train Trick" by Christopher Sorochin



My Saturday job necessitates my taking the Long Island Rail Road at 7:38 a.m. from Penn Station. On a recent half-awake morning, I ambled aboard and, being the first passenger in my section, claimed the largest seat available—the coveted three-seater-facing-two-seater configuration.

I wasn’t there long before I had company. A short, young, dark-complexioned man came straight to the end seat of my little domain and asked, “Is it OK if I sit here?”

“Sure,” I replied, though a bit apprehensive, as all the other seats were empty. It didn’t help matters that my new companion sported one of those Muslim knit skull-cap and the same style beard commonly associated with Taliban fanatics. Did I mention that this was the Saturday before the 9/11 anniversary?

“Great,” I thought, in spite of my liberal prejudice against, well, prejudice. “This guy’s gonna blow up the train, and I’ll be at Ground Zero next to him. At least I’ll be killed instantaneously and not hideously maimed for life, or so severely injured I die a painful, lingering death.”

He set down his coffee cup and bag from Dunkin Donuts, which softened his image a bit—would someone munching a frosted Bavarian crème commit a terrorist act?—and undid, then redid his belt (which didn’t seem to be studded with explosives) before sitting down.

I recalled something I’d read by someone who’d spent a great deal of time in the Arab world, about how they have a different concept of personal space and would sit in the most desirable seat whether it was occupied or not, unlike Westerners, who would spread themselves out for minimal contact.

On the other hand, I live near the heavily Arab neighborhood along Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, and all the folks there seem to have adapted to US-style proximities without difficulty.

I buried myself in a magazine.

“Excuse me, sir,” my neighbor cut in, “but do you live around Hicksville or Plainview?”

“No,” I briefly smiled back, “I live here.”  He kept on about how I looked familiar and how he’d been at an all-night prayer meeting.

All right, I thought, cancel the Orange Alert. He just wants to sell me God, or more likely Allah. Why must these religious types bother the rest of us in an attempt to get us to adopt their worldviews? I don’t go around trying to talk complete strangers into becoming lapsed Catholicism or secular humanism or quasi-pagan agnosticism.

Back to the magazine. A moment later:  “Sir, do you work out?  You look …”  and he bent his arms in a flexing position.

OK, so I’m being buttered up to either hear about his vision of God or give him money, or some combination thereof.

I started to reply that I used to have a job unloading trucks and, since then, have never seen the wisdom in paying someone for the privilege of lifting heavy objects. But he was on a roll.

“At my gym was a girl from Bangkok, Thailand. Do you know where that is, sir?”

I confessed to having heard of the place.

“She taught me to do massage.”  By now he was staring fixedly into my eyes. “I take oil and start on the back of the neck,” he made the pantomime gesture of rubbing in a circular fashion, “then down the back, up over the abs …”

Uh-oh. Wasn’t quite prepared for that. Just as he was getting down to the thighs, I blurted out, “What exactly is your point?”

The eyelock became, if possible, even more intense.

“I want to do your massage.”

“Oh,” I stammered, reddening, “No, thank you,” as if I were declining a flyer handed out on the street.

Without further preamble, he took his Dunkin Donuts bag and walked off down the corridor.

Well, how ‘bout that?  The crack of dawn on a weekend morning, haven’t even had a second cup of coffee and I’ve already been propositioned by an Islamic rent boy.

Could this be part of a new trend in gay “escort services?” Could there be a market in religious fantasy figures? After all, the Catholic Church would seem to have put “altar boy” up there with “leather daddy”, “cop” and “construction worker” as a viable persona for the back pages of alternative publications. Is it now possible to order up a “Mormon missionary” or a “novice Buddhist monk” or a “Hasidic yeshiva student” for one’s titillation?

An unsolved mystery, both spiritual and profane.


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