The Rat Race: My Love-Hate Relationship with the Columbia Social Scene - Columbia Daily Spectator

The un-air-conditioned 7 train subway doors opened, fogged up with heat and the swampy dew of sweat. It was the sweat of the shrunken old man in his baggy plaid suit, the sweat of the woman stroking a comatose lizard with cotton candy hair shish-kebabed around oversized chopsticks, and that of the man who stunk of piss and defecation by the door half a foot away from my face half-shouting a song that only he could hear: “Hello darling, won’t you dance with me?” The temporarily isolated bubble was introduced to new cacophony: Cantonese and Mandarin and Vietnamese and Singlish; a dog howling in pain; vendors hawking duck heads; a fat, brown, barefoot boy wearing only a soiled diaper and sobbing for the 10-cent lollipop he’d dropped onto the tracks. Somewhere far off in the distance, I could hear the trailing refrain of a boomboxed Reggaeton seduction. I was propelled out of the train car by the flood of entrances and exits. Flushing, Queens, stretched out before me—a moving river of people and shuddering neon lights. I exhaled. Columbia felt as distant as any foreign country.