UPDATE: Zealot on the C (and F) Train, STRIKES AGAIN!
Original Post:
While riding the C train yesterday, my boyfriend and I were witness to a common scenario to the New York City subway system: the righteous and vehement preaching of a crazed zealot. This one was a pretty disheveled and his clothes were a bit of a mess. A dirty beard hung around his chin and his bony hands gripped tightly to something dull and plastic between his fingers. His lunch, a few bags of Cheetos, were dragging behind him in a large, plastic Family Dollar bag.
It wasn’t his appearance that was upsetting. His words were.
He spoke of Sodom and Gomorrah, of God’s wrath, of smiting and sin and other things vengeful and nasty.
We mostly ignored him. The trains are lousy with subway preachers so spotting another is no surprise. What was a surprise was, as we stood up to switch to the F train at Jay Street, the “preacher” called out “some of you will ignore me and walk away”. “Do you think he was just calling us out?” we asked each other.
Shaking off the oddness of the last comment we stepped off the C train and watched as the F approached. “You have to be kidding me,” Matt said as we stepped on the new train. I turned and saw the scruffy zealot staring us down. He’s followed us.
He ranting continued as we rode into the city. He carried on about God, retribution and accepting damnation. We continued ignoring him as much as possible.
Keep in mind that we were doing nothing to provoke him and up to this point had decided to assume he was speaking to the entire car.
As the train pulled into our station we stood up and made our way to the door. The doors opened and we stepped through and began climbing the stairs… and then I heard it. The sharp, biting, squeaking noise. I turned and saw the crazy prophet staring us down, the bony finger of his right hand pointing directly at us. “Faggots!” He was hissing the word repeatedly, pointing his finger at the two of us and squeezing a dog’s squeak toy in his other hand. It was that which caught my attention… the high-pitched squeak. But it was his bizarre eyes, bony finger and spitting, rasping, hateful words that struck me.
“Faggots!” he continued until the doors closed. We walked away, continuing up the stairs and ignoring the ravings of this single lunatic… but remembered that NYC was not a sanctuary for people who are treated differently. Far from it. It is still a far cry from the bullies in the gym locker room from my high school days or the back of the bus. But it is sadly no sanctuary.
Am I going to let this crazy subway preacher make me feel bad for who I am or who I love? Hell no. He’s crazy! But I am going to use this platform to point out the crazies from a safe distance. Now, if only the MTA could do something about the subway preachers to make the public feel safer. After all, aside from my boyfriend and I, there are hundreds of others, families with children, who do not need to have that sort of hatefulness forced down there gullets… squeaker or no squeaker.
Tommy Karr 