Lexington Ave Line, Southbound from Grand Central, 6:45 PM Tuesday
It's the ebbing edge of rush hour and two guys, teenagers, wheel a huge boombox strapped to an old luggage cart to the middle of the car. After a brief spiel concerning the amazing dance act we were about to see, they turn on one of those James Brown songs you can't remember the title of later.
The first kid starts into his moves, and they're not at all bad, but nothing particularly impressive – the intensity of his scowl seems in inverse proportion to the difficulty of the relatively modest body-rocking he seemed inclined to. However, it soon becomes clear that his steps are just a warmup for his partner's moves, and a way to clear a little room.
I'm about to look back down at my book when Kid B starts in with the handspring-backflip combinations. It looks impossible in the confined space of the aisle: he's between two packed rows of seated people, who look more stunned than anything else. I'm convinced that any moment he's going to fall on someone, break his neck, break multiple necks. The train is rocketing along. I look out of the window – the juxtaposition of his aerial maneuvers with the sight of stations whipping by in the darkness is powerfully delightful.
He and his partner finish up by linking their bodies into a kind of doughnut shape, heads poking up, innocently, between one another's knees. We slow down and pull into the Brooklyn Bridge station. They collect funds, dart off, leaving the car generally, it can't be denied, lifted marginally out of the torpor of a humid June night's commute.
Posted by B T at June 22, 2001 05:18 PM