Woes of a Working Woman

I oscillate between two different worlds 5 days a week. Every morning, I sit at the cold granite counter in my kitchen and eat plain oatmeal with fruits and nuts, while my grandmother laments about the seeming lack of milk in my diet, and my parents discuss office politics and Tuesday night free movies. I make my lunch, I aimlessly search for shoes before deciding to wear the same black flats once again, and then my mother drops me off to the bus station. I used to pretend to read on the bus, but I have now come to accept the inevitable, and just keep extra tissues to wipe off the drool once I reach Port Authority.

The earth shakes once the bus makes its final stop. There is a thundering of footsteps, of wheels, of a sudden tension and speed. The walk to my office is only about 25 minutes, but my 65 year old knee usually prefers the Subway. Like cattle, we all cram into one train; the really experienced travelers manage to read the newspaper above everyone’s heads and rest their Starbucks coffee comfortably on someone’s elbow. The 5 minute walk from the Subway to work is filled with very distinct types—middle aged workers from Jersey; unattractive and skinny European models; tourists with fanny packs and an illusion that Third Avenue is the place to be.

My work is wonderful. I get to interact with all kinds of people—the sad, the grateful, the crazies, the powerful. My day revolves around service, but is colorfully peppered with death threats and free cupcakes. As wild as my job might seem (the cupcakes are insanely delicious), it is the actual time I spend outside the office and outside my home, in a lingo, where I find myself in a suspension of reality.

Two weeks ago, as I was walking through Port Authority to catch the E train, and someone aggressively taps me on the shoulder. A lady with copper curls started walking in step with me, and in a deep southern drawl said, “Seriously, though, this country is just so obese! I mean, I just look around and see all these fatties. You know what I mean? I guess I could say I am one of them but seriously, what is with this country? I mean, that is why everyone has diabetes!" She laughed and then walked ahead of me. The woman was not fat, and that was our conversation in its entirety.

Since my grandmother is here, my family has been more active and involved with each other than usual. My grandmother yells about the termination of naptime after I graduated Kindergarten (ideally I should be bringing my sleeping bag to the office); my mother simultaneously asks about my pending marriage (I should settle down at some point relatively soon) and my future ambitions (I should not be domesticated and strive for excellence in my career); my father barks about my tangled hair and agrees with my mother on her contradictory advice (I won’t go far with this marital bliss stuff if I don’t brush my hair). My sister is the only seemingly normal one, but the very fact of her functional existence thoroughly perturbs us, so she gets scolded by default. In the midst of all of this chaos, I try to find some peace on the bus. Unfortunately, NJ Transit seems to have also gotten the memo to wreak havoc in my life.

There was one day when I was particularly tired. A plague had ravaged the office, and 5 or 6 people were out with various mystery illnesses. My left eye had been burning and secreting mysterious clear liquid all week, and my knee was reliably acting up. I assumed I was dying, or at least coming down with a cold. My family was in Virginia Beach, so I walked to and from the bus station. Coupled with phone calls reassuring my family that I was alive, filled to the brim with calcium, and taking naps during staff meetings, I was mentally and physically exhausted.

The one day I left work slightly early, for fear of catching some Bubonic strain of yellow fever mixed with pink eye mixed with sun rashes, I came home exceedingly late. The subway was crowded until someone farted and inadvertently kicked off 30 people at the next stop. While this was convenient for my nonexistent personal bubble (which continues to burst as I commute to work with toothless singers and greasy wife beaters), it aggravated my left eye even more. My contact was dangerously sliding up, and my vision kept blurring. I was to meet a friend for dinner in Ridgewood, and desperately needed to get home to pee, take out my contacts, and wash off the stench of underground bodily gas.

I raced to Gate 163, where the bus had stalled for some time. I let out a sigh of relief as soon as I dropped into my seat. A few minutes after the bus left Port Authority, the driver pulled over and parked on the shoulder. She got out of the bus and spoke on her cell phone for about ten minutes. She got back on and told us we had a flat tire, the second one today, and that we would be shuffled to an arbitrary parking lot where we would get on to the next bus. “And I don’t think that bus will be air-conditioned.”

I wanted to call my friend to tell her I would be late, but my phone had died. I didn’t have her number in my work Blackberry, so I tried to email her. The screen went blank about five times before I could finally send her a miserable one-liner: “Bus has flat tire. FML.” My iPod also died before Bruno could finish telling me about the beautiful girls all over the world. My left eye continued to break down, and so reading was out of the question. I stared out in silence until I finally fell asleep.

I was woken up in Paramus. An old Russian man with bad breath was sitting next to me, incessantly poking me. He asked me if the bus was express. We had been on the road for 45 minutes; Port Authority was far behind us. I said yes. And then as I attempted to doze off again, he sustained a conversation with me until I got off at my stop. Then I walked home, ate a handful of wheat crackers that tasted like the box, washed my face, and ate Thai food with my friends.

Yesterday, my iPod was quite functional, but the passengers who elected to sit next to me were not. The first man had just caught the bus about 30 seconds before it left. He was sweating heavily, and sat down right next to me—right on top of my open purse. He said excuse me after he sat down, but continued to deform my purse. With some difficulty, I pulled it out from under him. His cologne was overpowering. My face broke out in rashes and I pressed my face against the dirty glass. He got off after about thirty minutes. I was then alone, and listened to music in peace, thinking of nothing. The bus emptied as it neared my house. When we were about 15 minutes away, someone came down and slammed onto the seat next to me. The person was incredibly close, and I turned to see an old, fat, sleeping man to my left. A strong beer lingered in his breath, which blew out hot and heavy into my face. His legs were sprawled and his hairy arm effectively disintegrated any shred of personal bubble I thought I had left. I was squished into the glass; my headphones knocked uncomfortably into the window as he kept leaning into me. With one final snore, the man fell asleep into my lap. I was too stunned to be disgusted, and then too afraid that I would miss my stop. I sat there in silence, and sent incredulous text messages to all my friends. I held the phone over his head as to not disturb his slumber.

Though I seem to be in a constant state of transit, running from mode of transport to mode of transport, hurriedly shoving slow walkers (seniors included) aside, cursing MTA and NJTransit, I find myself at a complete standstill as I leave Manhattan. I always take a window seat on the right side of the bus, so that when we drive along the river, New York transforms into a frieze. The world pauses, I pause, and together we stop and stare at the dynamicy and vibrancy of grey steel. And every day I close my eyes and smile to whomever is watching, happy that I am still very much a part of such a beautiful city.