The Subway Game

Sometimes, I play this game on my morning subway commute in which I cast my fellow tube-riders in whatever book I’m reading at the time. For example, when I read The Hunger Games last summer, I played “could I take ‘em?” I gave myself incredible odds, blithely assuming that an hour’s worth of archery lessons taken when I was eleven translated into my adult self being able to slay my fellow MTA passengers using only my purse straps and a tube of lip balm.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been on the New York Subway. If you don’t live here, then you probably take cabs everywhere because you barely leave Midtown like all the other tourists. The subway is covered in filth. A century’s worth of dirt, slime, water, rodent hair and hobo juices. Also of note, no matter how carefully you try to gauge the best car to enter from the platform, you will always choose the car that has a crazy person in it.

Or maybe all the cars have crazy people in them.

Crazy people will provide you with that NYC ambience. They will give you a bible lesson or two. They will sing, dance, get in your face, attempt to beg money off of you, and possibly masturbate with a teddy bear (yes, this happened…poor teddy). They will also smell. Even if you are lucky enough to get on a car without a crazy person in it, you will still smell the last crazy person to have been in that car.

But back to my game.

I’m reading Dune right now. (Didn’t you know?) For a while I tried playing “Harkonnen or Saurdukar”, but there just haven’t been enough gingers lately to make the game really satisfying.  So instead I started playing “Subway Sietch”.

I’m a little obsessed with the idea that the Fremen (the natives of Arrakis, the titular planet in Dune) are really smelly. They don’t bathe and they carry their body waste around in their clothing. (Stillsuit. Look it up.) They probably reek of Spice which is described as smelling of cinnamon. Incidentally, this is possibly the sole reason I stockpile cinnamon candles for my apartment. What? And even though the Fremen are badasses and all mysterious and stealthy, I tend to think their smell precedes them.

So next time you’re jammed into the subway on your morning commute, close your eyes. You’re in a Fremen Sietch. The crazy person stench? A thing of normalcy.  Ahh, the smell of heavily fortified home! Why would you desecrate hard earned water by bathing in it? The constant crazy person muttering? Just your comrades speaking in a secret battle language! Is that B.O. funk you’re smelling from that guy? No! It’s Stilgar protecting your flank. Is that damp down smell wafting from everyone’s winter coats making you sick? WELL FREMEN SMELL POOP ALL DAY. THEIR OWN POOP!

OK, I didn’t say it was a fun game.

*IMAGE CREDIT: drivebysh00ter