It started on a downtown 4 Express a little before 8:30 AM. The train was not overly crowded, but due to signal malfunctions, it was moving much more slowly than I’d have liked, lagging and jerking to abrupt stops every minute or so. Annoying. But that wasn’t enough to do it.
The briefcase steadily bumping against my leg did it. And the tall, barrel-chested man who insisted on stepping back into me did it. And the sniffly woman who kept sliding her rough mitten onto the top of my bare hand did it. My brain began screaming.
Stop touching me!
My skin was burning, crawling in irritation and my jaw clenched tight and by the time I came head-on with the baggy-pantsed, pseudo gangster began coming down the wrong side of the stairs at Grand Central, I was fully infused with it. Refusing to budge, I hauled right on up the stairs and when he mumbled “move, bitch,” I narrowed my eyes and growled.
“YOU move.”
There it was: evidence that, despite all my best efforts, I had caught The Rage.
Ordinarily, I’m slow to anger. Even way too slow, sometimes. But yesterday, it seemed to have all caught up to me – all those years of unused wrath just pushed its way to the surface and exploded out of my pale, freckled skin. I wanted to run people down on the sidewalk. To stab an irritating sales clerk with my nail file. To tell the world,
Get the fuck out of my way and stay out of my way because good fucking god you’re all making me fucking crazy!
I tried explaining this to my brother, when on the subway yesterday evening I asked him, very calmly (but through gritted teeth) to stop brushing against my arm with his leather jacket. He looked amused, and stepped aside.
“I’m sorry,” I said, raking my fingers through my ponytail. “I don’t understand it. I’m just so… irritated today.”
“I noticed. What’s up?”
“Just… my skin hurts and there are way too many people. Why are there so many people?”
I would love to pass it off as PMS. Love to. But it’s not. Whatever this is… this frustration, anger, and sometimes totally unwarranted and unmitigated despair... is going on twenty-four hours of unexplained residence in my normally even-tempered soul.
It is very clear that I’ll be much better served going to a yoga class tonight than risking further angst by traveling out to middle-o-nowhere Queens to have dinner with Joe and Gracie. Best not to present a new someone with displays unbridled anger within the first month as it tends to alienate them.
I’d like to save that for month three.
should you decide to stay on the Isle of Manhattingan you are SO invited for dinner and a touch free hideout :)
Posted by: Ari at December 30, 2004 10:50 AMI'll say this for you, at least you said something. I just go through the days seething.
And then I make people's heads explode just by thinking about it, rather than giving them warning.
Posted by: New Blue Shoe at December 30, 2004 10:58 AMIt's the time of the year. There seems to be three times as many people around than normal. I have moments like that myself. Yestersay on 5th avenue was my time where I looked at a tourist and quite eveilly told him to either move or I'd move him when he just stopped dead in the center of the crowded sidewalk to gawk at a hot dog cart.
Posted by: Rafael at December 30, 2004 11:02 AMi was irritated for you, just reading that. i don't think i could make it in NYC. too many people. i got really pissed off here in TULSA (oklahoma) during christmas with all of the people here. NYC has to be a gazillion times more crowded than that!
Posted by: red at December 30, 2004 11:21 AMI hear you. It's the crowds, the people, the stuff going on. Too much input! Time to go home and escape for a while.
Posted by: megan at December 30, 2004 11:25 AMI totally empathize - I actually wanted to shoot (with a gun I didn't have) a truck driver on my way to my parents' house for Christmas. (It was his own fault - he tried to force me into another lane of traffic because he was playing "lane policeman" on I-75). I settled for tattling - I called the 1-800 number on the back of his truck.... :)
Posted by: lawyerchik1 at December 30, 2004 11:27 AMCorrect me if I'm wrong, but don't you NYCers need 'the pulse'? Greek came down to Fla and was totally bored. I guess it would help if 'the pulse' was a bit more polite. Glad you told the the jackass off. It's good to get it off your chest once in a while. Happy New Year, Fish.
Posted by: Plantation at December 30, 2004 12:04 PMI understand what you mean. Are you noticing an abundance of proselytzers on the trains lately? I take the 2/3 from Brooklyn to the Upper West Side and I'm convinced the crazies just love it. And they'll go on and on for 15-20 minutes about how we're all going to go to hell. I want to ring their necks. I think there should be a law allowing the victims of these born-again idiots with verbal diarrhea to spray them with pepper spray. 5 minutes of spouting off is fine but 25 minutes. There's a special place in hell for those people.!
Posted by: annoyed at December 30, 2004 12:05 PMMaybe it's the Dixie Chicks from yesterday causing it. Ha! Kidding.
Next time someone pisses you off, cut 'em.
Can you imagine if you lived in Calcutta?
Posted by: Robotnik at December 30, 2004 01:54 PMhoney, not to discredit your rage, because WOO RAGE, but there ARE actually more people than usual in the city right now. it's been driving me nuts too. don't worry! get a cider from starbucks. i've been finding that's been fixing everything.
Posted by: k (rissa) at December 30, 2004 02:49 PM'The rage' is why I could never ever ever ever ever live in New York City.
Posted by: bisous at December 30, 2004 02:55 PMTry growing up in Mississippi! My lord the people are so slow ....I actually enjoyed the buzz of people while living in Chicago. Yet, now that I am in London, I want to re-enact the scene of "As Good as it Gets" and walk don't the streets repeating, "Don't touch. Don't touch. Don't touch!" I really hate coughing people on the train......
Posted by: Amanda at December 30, 2004 03:04 PMOh I'm so proud [sniff]. Our little girl has growed up and become a REAL NEW YORKER! Embrace me! On second thought...
Posted by: Belle at December 30, 2004 03:07 PMI think it's something in the air, because I've had a bad attack of The Rage lately as well. Anger to the point of irrationality, over nothing. Here's hoping it goes away soon...
Posted by: Judy at December 30, 2004 03:18 PMHappy new year Fish!
Posted by: Steve at December 30, 2004 03:20 PMWelcome to my world.
Posted by: Anne at December 30, 2004 04:15 PMI know that feeling, but I don't know that it has anything to do with PMS or the number of people... I've been meaning to correlate it against air pressure, and a variety of other environmental factors, because yeah, you described it aptly - "my skin hurts"
It's like my personal space has expanded, and anyone getting even close to me is a personal affront.
I find it most annoying in grocery stores, actually, where there are days where it seems like people are *deliberately* blocking my way, intentionally cutting me off, then stopping short, and just generally being too... well, too _there_ for my taste...
Posted by: Maggie at December 30, 2004 04:29 PMnever am i more irritated than on the commute to and from work... one non-stop rage-athon.
Posted by: pynnhead at December 30, 2004 05:05 PM'Tis precisely why I moved to Minneapolis. I lived a block in between a hospital and a police station on 53rd & 8th. Between that and trying to get to S. St. Seaport for work, I was ready to scream. Not only was my space violated, I was sick of the smell of rotten piss and fish and nobody and nothing would shut the fuck up.
There are, of course, days that I miss it immensely..and there are days I don't.
The real tragedy of it all is I'm being fiscally squeezed right now and have to sell the place. It's been such a great investment and my little security blanket of knowing I could always return and afford the city is gone.
Bum. Mer.
Posted by: Kristen at December 30, 2004 05:44 PMWhat I want to know is what pseudo gangsta boy did when you growled at him....! Whimper and step aside? Cause he should have sensed you weren't kidding.
I hope you feel better. Even down here in suburbia we get too many people. Why doesn't everyone just buy their damn presents on the Internet & stay out of my neighborhood (which is close to a mall and they drive through when they're not supposed to). Pfffht!
Posted by: Kim Wells at December 30, 2004 05:47 PMNo, no, no...welcome to MY world. Nah, I don't really HATE people; I just seem to feel better when they're not around.
Thank you, Chinasky.
Posted by: Robotnik at December 30, 2004 08:28 PMI have DEFINITELY had the exact thing you speak of... this itching feeling, like you want to rip off your skin and scream at everyone around you... little noises, repetitive things, are ticking their way into your head...
And I don't live in NY. I live in the Middle of Nowhere, Ohio. I just assumed I was crazy. But I guess, since there's more than one of me, that it's okay.
Posted by: Anna at December 30, 2004 10:30 PMJust pay some homeless guy on the corner five bucks to let you kick him in the nuts as hard as you can. That usually works for me.
Posted by: NEIN at December 31, 2004 12:40 AMit's sad, i felt that same frustration last time i was in ny. but it didn't change back home where there are less than 10k people. i haven't experienced any rage, but i do think there's some cosmic unfairness when you spend your whole life moving out of the way of others, and regardless of whether there are 1 or 100 people to fill the space you've politely opened up, someone always does.
Posted by: brando at December 31, 2004 03:25 AMFunny you mention the lurching, slow downtown 4 train on Wednesday that made me ten minutes late for my third day at a new job... Never, ever a good thing, and certainly worthy of the hour's worth of rage it stirred up in me. Public transportation: the rage maker!
Posted by: Katie at December 31, 2004 01:31 PMI thought I was going to be original, but looking at the other comments,I guess not.
Don't know what to say other than "I feel your pain". Oh my God. I can't stand Bill Clinton and I'm quoting him.
Anyway, good luck. I don't know how to solve it either, other than to move to somewhere that people don't exist. But then again, every once in a while I do need people. Have a good day. Darrell
bloody tourists.
Posted by: S at January 3, 2005 12:11 AMI feel like that all the freaking time in varying degrees, whenever I'm on the same street as anyone else. It was really bad when I went to a community college near Chicago--now that I'm in a college town, it's better but still there. I don't understand why I'm so irritated at people. Get out of my way!
I'm taking up aikido.
Posted by: Lynn at January 6, 2005 05:10 AM