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A couple of weeks ago on the subway I watched a man create his own humiliation. He was a professor type, in that a stereotype of a professor is a type. He had his hair semi slicked back and a battered old leather briefcase with various papers in it, a suit that was new enough to seem smart but crumpled enough to seem like he was trying.
He had a coffee in his hand and he was trying to read and drink it when he spilt a little on the floor. And it was only a little. But still he put his papers back in his bag and used a paper napkin to try and mop up the very little bit of coffee that was already subsuming itself into the filth of the carriage floor. Only as he leant a bit further to catch the last drop by someone’s foot he tipped his coffee cup in his other hand and it spilt properly this time all over the floor.
The lady next to him lifted her heels in distaste, managing to look at the scene in order to avoid the coffee without quite looking or acknowledging him. I thought at this point he’d give up, his napkin was already coffee stained and the pool on the floor was beyond the absorption of the rag but he put the coffee cup down to one side, carefully put down the briefcase that he’d had on his lap and crouched down onto the floor and started mopping, incredibly patiently from one edge of the spill to the other. Trying to contain the lake from hitting other people.
When the carriage lurched he move to catch the coffee as it ran in one direction. At one point, when it was obvious that his napkin was beyond inadequate one girl near him threw down her paper towel, and then a guy sitting next to me threw his, nobody quite looked at him even though everyone was watching. Even the people who threw the towels seemed to be only half acknowledging the disaster that was happening to him without quite understanding why to him it was so necessary to clean it up.
He thanked them and carried on mopping with the towels, even beyond the point where a normal person would have stopped. And he managed it, what had seemed like a unmanageable amount become become just a wet stain, and still he patiently cleaned it, turning the napkins to find a slighter dryer spot with which to wipe. He’d done what he set out to do despite the fact that I’m sure he realised that everyone was wondering why he was even bothering. That, for them, his effort had gone beyond the initial reaction that most people would have engendered in order to distract from the clumsiness that had triggered the moment.
A woman on the other side of me leant in and said “I think it’s enough, it’s a dirty train anyway” and she meant it kindly and he sort of responded in a gesture of acknowledgment and started to gather together all the coffee sodden paper towels he had on him. He lifted the lid of the coffee cup but obviously there was still coffee in it so he seemed uncertain as to what to do with them, he put them in the cup, felt that it wasn’t working so took them out again and looked to his left to see if there was somewhere he could put them. And, as he looked left, his arm moved to counterweight the gesture, knocking over the coffee cup, flooding the remainder of the coffee over the carriage floor.
I grabbed his briefcase out of the way as it spilled and he said thank you immediately in the same way he had thanked the others, he groaned at what had happened and took the briefcase off me and moved it to his seat. And then he started to try and clear up the new mess with the old sodden now useless napkins. A couple of seconds in, we came into a station, he picked up the coffee cup, the towels, the briefcase and left the carriage.
He left behind a pool of coffee that spread up and down the carriage with the train’s movements as the train pulled out of the station. I thought maybe he had given up because he had come to his station but as we pulled out I saw him sit down on the bench to wait for the next train. For a couple of stops on there was this sense of community, we were divided between those who stepped on the train and grimaced at the coffee mess as they avoided it and those who knew where the coffee had come from.
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yoshi I love your writing.
Nate 02.04.09 @ 12:47 pm