Thoughts on the Subway, Monday Morning 7:40am

Sometimes we get stuff in our eyes. Sometimes oysters get stuff in their shells. When they get stuff in their shells, they may develop something pleasant called a "pearl". When we get stuff in our eyes we may develop something unpleasant called a "stye". This seems unfair. On the other hand, they're sitting at the bottom of the sea sucking plankton, while we're up here, munching pizza and Entenmann's. Who am I to complain?

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While I was coming into the station this morning I saw a pale, tubby kid (with an under-sized Yankee's jacket) just inside the rotating gate. He was just standing there, kind of absently spinning the gate with his hand, but not going through; not quite ready to leave the station yet. I just wanted to hug him. I wanted to pat him on the shoulder and say, "This world is going to be a rough place for you, little one, and I'm sad to say that it's going to get worse before it gets better. Just try to ride out puberty, though; if you can make it through that, you've got a good chance of survival." Poor little fucker. I don't blame him for standing there and spinning the gate. I wouldn't want to go either. That's a phase of life I wouldn't do over again for the world.

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My friend Abdul and I once had the same dream. I mean, the exact same dream. This one night, my senior year of high school, I passed out while my friend Bay was watching Desperado on IFC. When the movie ended he tried to wake me to tell me he was going home. I said, "No, you can't… you'll miss the meeting!"

He said, "What meeting?"

"The Kryptonite Meeting."

"What?"

"The superhero meeting… with the fat people."

At which point he said, "Dude. What are you talking about? Wake up. I'm leaving."

And then I actually did wake up and say, "Huh? Oh. Alright, peace."

And that was that. Until, maybe a week or so later I was at a party and I was talking with my friend Abdul. Bay was there too. And somehow that night came up, and we were talking about my crazy jibber-jabber as I was waking up. I said that I was like, "You can't go… you'll miss the kryptonite meeting." And Abdul, without blinking said, "The superhero meeting?" And I said, "Yeah." And he said, "Yeah… with the fat people." I said yeah. "Yeah. I had that dream," he said.

It was one of the weirdest things ever. Bay says he didn't tell him about it or anything. It was just one of those incredibly weird things, where two people, two friends, had the exact same, strange dream. Weirder still: he had the dream when he fell asleep one night while watching Desperado on IFC, leaving it running in the background, just as it had been with me. Now, I've watched Desperado since then, and I have verified that there is no mention of Kryptonite meetings or superheroes, anywhere. Yet, two people, passing out watching the same thing, had the same dream.

It was one of those things that was just so bizarre, and so far beyond explanation, that we both just kind of accepted it, like it's just one of those things that happen. We still bring it up every now and then. "That was really weird, right?" "Yeah. Really weird." But, beyond that, I don't think either of us really knows how to wrap our minds around it, so we haven't really tried.

Abdul is one of those interesting characters in my life. He and I really became friends when neither of us had ever been snowboarding before and our friends took us up an intermediate slope then abandoned us for the rest of the day. We spent the entire day falling on our asses and crashing into trees, but we laughed a lot. (And really, is there any friendship stronger than one that's forged in laughter? That's how Bay and I became friends too, now that I think about it. Dylan too. Hmm...) We never really hung out consistently, or that often, but he would show up for random moments of awesomeness. Running into each other in Washington Square Park, randomly, then getting shit-faced, and singing "Bloody Sunday" while sitting on some random stoop in the village and drinking vodka straight from the bottle (chased with Redbull). Camping in Big Basin, with massive amounts of absinthe. The all-important Kryptonite Meeting, with the superheroes and the fat people. Who knows? Maybe we were supposed to be best friends, but for one reason or another it never happened.

Whatever the case, that is my story about Abdul and the weird, shared dream.

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And those were my thoughts at 7:40am on the subway this morning. There were others as well. Costa Rica coming up. My brother is in town. Girls, girls, girls, girls, girls. But I'll write about all of those another time.

Have a nice week.

-B 3.12.2007 10.36am

"I'm so god damned horny, the crack of dawn better be careful around me, boy." –Tom Waits (from Nighthawks at the Diner)