She is breathing right into my nose, that fat woman with her imposing perfume and overly made-up face meant to conceal her inferiority complex. She twists her mouth in disgust, as if she just bit into a big, ripe lemon, and looks repulsively at everyone around her, like she were the only one suffering. I am leaning against the train door with my back, squished right between the fat woman’s Olympic bosom and an old man’s sweaty belly. But I am still one of the more fortunate ones. The temperature outside is upward of a hundred degrees and the ineffective air-conditioner in the train does very little to cool things off. To make matters worse, it is about five-thirty in the afternoon on a Friday, and the one train is jam-packed with people eagerly heading home for the weekend. The mood in the train is poisonous. The air is stale and moist with sweat due to the trapped heat. All anyone thinks or talks about is the heat, from morning to evening. Heat, heat, heat. The cruel, sadistic, perverted heat. I don’t generally mind that much.

Granted, the closely packed buildings and endless concrete infrastructures store and swallow the heat like that were its intended purpose, but I have seen worse.

The situation down here is on an entire different level though. There is not a breath of fresh air anywhere, and the bodies clustered together excrete odors that are a slap to the senses. I see a woman in her thirties wearing a classy business suit that shows off her bosom discreetly, standing right beneath a sweaty, dripping armpit. She is forced into this exact position, and no other, by a mariachi band crowded around her. They are rather small in size, but their big guitars make up for that, taking up every inch of unoccupied space, meaning the woman can’t even as much as turn herself around. And to add insult to injury, the arm belonging to the sweaty armpit extends into a hairy, brutish man who unfalteringly stares at the woman’s breasts. He doesn’t take a few peeks at it every now and then, or perhaps mistakenly looks at it a little bit too long. No, he stares it down with full force and vigor. The woman looks blankly ahead, ignoring the man and counting down the seconds ’til her stop.

We are almost at 72ndStreet and, judging from her appearance, it shouldn’t take much longer for her, but I am heading to 116th Street. That’s six more stops! I lean my head back against the door, which rattles unpleasantly but is slightly cooler than the rest of the train. Then it happens! I almost fall over in shock as a wave of fiery, foul wind rushes up my nostrils. It smells like a ton of mashed, rotten eggs dumped somewhere in a rat-infested sewer. It smells like a dozen corpses being worked over by worms and maggots. It smells like nothing I have ever smelt before, and it is spreading like an angry wildfire, causing chaos as it moves through the ranks of passengers. Can this be? Could this have actually happened? Someone let out a steaming fart in this condition?

People are coughing and gasping for air all over the train. There are screams of protest, and I think I just heard a lady crying somewhere amidst the crowd. I can’t breathe, I can’t speak, I can’t think. I am sweating profoundly now and cover my nose and mouth with my shirt, trying to block out the stench. Most people try to do this, but it has little success, for it is a cunning fart. It sneaks itself into every hole and opening. What wickedness, what sheer, cruel wickedness! Why would a human being do such a thing? The depths of human depravity know no bounds. I sincerely hope whoever did this suffers profoundly. He should be dragged out into the street, clubbed to death, and hung from the Brooklyn Bridge as a deterrent to others. He should be denied a decent Christian burial, or any religious burial for that matter, and simply dumped into the ocean. He should be"or maybe it’s a she?

I glare up suspiciously at the fat woman beside me. The train slowly and comfortably moves along while we are trapped inside, tormented and terrorized by the fart. A man three bodies to my left looks like he is about to faint. His face is swollen bright red and he sways around as if intoxicated. He is not gonna hold up much longer!

I look out of the window with hope of seeing a subway platform, any stop will do. But no, all I see is the dark, bruised walls of the tunnel stretching on and on. I bury my head into the plastic bag I’m holding in my left hand. It contains the Manhattan guides and maps that Uncle Kelly sent me to get for the hostel. You do someone a favor, and this is the thanks you get! I cover my head completely with the plastic bag and hold it shut around my neck. I can dimly see through the bag how the people around me are eying the bag enviously, and rightly so. It works pretty well, filtering a lot of the stench out, leaving mostly a hard plastic smell behind.

The train slows down and, at last, rumbles into the subway station. A panic breaks out as everyone pushes towards the doors. Pressure flows from body to body, all ending up with me at the receiving end, being squished mercilessly against the hard metal door. I believe the fat woman’s body was able to absorb some of the pressure being passed on, or else my situation would have been pretty dire. The train comes to a standstill. A long, empty moment passes, and then the doors finally open up, causing a sea of angry passengers to spill out onto the platform. We come out stumbling and panting and genuinely thanking God for the end of our ordeal. A couple of tourists standing on the platform look at us in terror, not understanding what is going on and fearing the worst. I look around me, finally capable of thinking a clear thought. A witch-hunt goes on in my mind, who could have done it? I glare at everyone suspiciously but quickly come to the conclusion that there are too many suspects; it’s impossible to know.

A few passengers are already joking about the incident, having now fully recovered. I have had enough of this and walk wearily out of the subway station and up into the fresh, inviting air. Not really fresh, it is still Manhattan after all, but welcoming and a whole lot better than what I just experienced. Being a tad traumatized by this event, I decide to walk back home, the full forty-seven blocks, instead of subjecting myself to another train ride…



