The Quiet Car

When I take the train between NYC and Boston, I typically try to sit in the quiet car. I like the quiet car for the same reason I like libraries, concert halls, cemeteries and cathedrals. I value those few public areas where the individual's need for personal reprieve and introspective space is understood to hold trump over that drive we all have to inflict our overwhelming desires for recognition upon the universe (and any hapless passersby).

In these quiet places, having the poor judgment to open a potato chip bag results in instant mortification (especially at the cemetery). You know when you do it (because we have all done it) that anyone within ear-shot of you is both suddenly and acutely aware of your hunger and thinks that you're an irresponsible asshole for not eating before you came.

"What do you care about what others think?" 

To be truthful, I really enjoy etiquette. Dick jokes and intense personal honesty aside, the survival of our thin veneer of civilization relies on either avoiding one another or learning to get along. Etiquette is that dying social process that dictates how to be considerate to others, and act respectful of their feelings, especially when you don't feel like it. 

If I were to summarize the motivation to be well-behaved in public, around strangers, it would be like this:

"Well, I don't care what they think, strictly speaking. And I don't care how they feel. And, for their part, they don't know me from Eve. But cognition is a limited resource. There's a finite amount of attention span to go around. If I want my existence to evoke a response, maybe I should spend that currency of attention on something worthwhile instead of wasting it on circumstantial annoyance."

It's difficult to take etiquette too far - the exception being when you feel that your understanding of etiquette entitles you to correct or demean another person's autonomy. God forbid you walk across the aisle, raise your voice and say, "Hey, enough with the fucking potato chips!" Etiquette, insomuch as it dictates that we should not be inconsiderate and un-selfaware jerks, also dictates that none of us has been granted the special privilege of policing the rest.

In any event, the quiet car is an implicit pact among travelers - "I am here. And I am aware that you are here, too. For this brief span of time while we transit from here to there, let us be united in our desire to be left the fuck alone."

I treasure these moments of mutual understanding among strangers.

It is with this in mind that, when I have to work on the train with the possibility of phone calls, I (sadly) avoid the quiet car. Such was the circumstance on my most recent ride, a ride that was uneventful for the first two hours until the young, business-casual 20-something next to me put away his laptop and went to get a beer. Once he returned, he pulled out his cell phone and, fully within the bounds of etiquette for our car, began having one of the most awkward conversations I've been privy to in a while.

Now. I tried to mind my own business. Over 20 minutes, this individual's conversation became loud enough that I was physically incapable of tuning it out. Paraphrasing cannot capture the improbability of it.

"I MIGHT NOT HAVE FINISHED COLLEGE, BUT I'M MAKING SIX FIGURES. I'M DOING ALRIGHT FOR MYSELF, I DON'T KNOW WHAT HER PROBLEM IS."

... stop to laugh ...

"WELL, WHEN WE HAD CUTE GIRLS ON THE GRAPHIC, EVERYONE THOUGHT THEY WERE PROSTITUTES. DO YOU WANT ME TO PUT TWO HISPANICS HUGGING? OR DO YOU WANT ONE GUY, ONE GIRL? WHITE AND BLACK? OR SHOULD WE GO BACK TO THE HOOKERS?"

He paused to pull something out of his bag, in the process lunging halfway out of his seat, nearly elbowing me in the face. I took that as an indicator that his conversation had taken him entirely out of the train car into some special place where he was alone.

"HOLD ON A SEC. ARE YOU THERE? HELLO? HELLO?"

People in the car began making silent, pleading, wide-eyed contact with one another. There's nothing like awkwardness to make you want to reach out and touch base with someone to see if it's just you. We wanted the conversation to end, or for the guy to realize just how loud he was yelling. In that moment, if God were benevolent and non-Newtonian*, his phone would have dropped the call.

"OH, HEY. OK. SO, LIKE, I CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT. WE CAN TOTALLY SELL THIS. IT'S EASY TO CHANGE, YOU WANT ME TO JUST TRY THE HISPANICS? OR HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THE PROSTITUTES? BECAUSE I'M OKAY WITH PROSTITUTES."

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* I sometimes joke (and I stole the joke from a comprehensive history of Science, Religion, Ideology and the Arts) that Newton stripped God out of the Universe. More accurately, Newton and his Mechanics argued for a completely deterministic model of physics. Fin. The resulting sense of utter and overwhelming determinism led to the (somewhat dreary) thought that by making such a perfect and clockwork Universe, the only room remaining for God was outside the universe as an impartial observer. For those who felt the idea of a God outside Creation was a bit creepy, a coping mechanism was to marry the observed reality of Newtonian Mechanics to the idea that God was omnipotent and omnipresent inside the Universe, but chose not to interfere. All this boils down to the joke, which is the sneaking suspicion that Newtonian God just knew that you would be stuck in that awkward situation in the elevator/train/office, and probably thought it was hilarious, but wasn't about to let that change anything. C'est la vie.