Filth.

As I was returning from my hour trek to a decent grocery store, I was standing on the subway platform and began to examine my fellow travelers around me. All colors and shapes (and sizes). Then I looked down and began to examine the rat a few feet away from me. He had enormous testicles. It got me thinking, thinking not about testicles, but of exactly how dirty New York is.

Once the train roared in, blowing an intense wind, a wind of rat feces and decades of grime, it stopped and I crammed on board with the throngs of melting pot commuters. Across from me was a Mexican man with a ponytail scratching at his arm, picking a scab. As he picked, he flicked, flicking the largest portion of scab into this girl's hair who was asleep on the bench below him. Meanwhile, the large dirty man who was pressed against me, due to the rush hour overload, began to pick under his fingernails with a scrap of cardboard, which he then discarded onto my shoe. This got me thinking again, not of how I now wanted to burn my shoes when I got home, but of how a few weeks ago I went apartment hunting with a co-worker. She and I went to the upper east side, a nice neighborhood, to find her a place to live. I was along for the ride and was very curious to see exactly how small the places were. I was surprised, not at how small they were (they were small), but at how dirty they were. Molded bathrooms, soiled kitchens.. and these people were home, standing there, smiling at us, proud of their gardens of goo. All of the places, except for one, were pretty much disgusting. It's crazy to me. Wouldn't you want your home to be a safe haven from the squalid streets of New York? I know I like things clean, sometimes a little too clean, but this is ridiculous. I started thinking about the dirty city, dirty apartments, dirty people, there is no break from it. And to make things worse returning to Bushwick is like is a stab in the face. Garbage tornadoes down Whipple Street, used condoms strewn about like deflated party balloons, and baby diapers packed tightly with rancid shit waiting curbside. It doesn't end, this filth. Here we are in this modern society but in so many ways we are a bucket-of-trash-out-the-window away from living like medieval peasants. I know I'm over exaggerating.. a little. On my way to work the other day I counted eight piles of vomit, in all colors and consistency, on various parts of the sidewalk. Then, the other day the smell of hot garbage blew into my place of employment and everyone was like, "oh, god, gross... eh... it'll blow by". WHAT?! Ew, seriously. One night last month I awoke from slumber because the air coming through my air-conditioner vent smelled so foul it made my eye lids pop open. New York is fun and all, but why does it have to be so dirty? People hawking loogies all over the sidewalk. Ethan Hawke? (He lives around the corner from my work so I see him daily. He needs a bath and a dentist appointment, seriously.) I watched this guy one afternoon toss his McDonald's cup onto 9th Avenue and keep walking. I realized it's people's lack of concern for those around them. Everyone is too selfish and too lazy to make New York not a trash can. No one cares. They don't care if their scabs are falling in people's hair or their fingernail clippings are left on a bench for someone else to sweep off. They don't care that someone else has to step in their loogie. And these are the same people who are hired to clean New York. The people in charge of cleaning the subway cars, for example, they live in my neighborhood, I'm sure. I can only imagine what their homes look like. I've watched them "clean" the train cars. They don't care. Why would they? They get nothing and do nothing. Doesn't matter to them. Sorry, I could write a whole separate blog about how fucking lazy people are, but this one is about how dirty people are. Oh, and fat people.. that's another blog, too, but it's the worst when the fatty's are dirty or littering. Ooo, that really burns me up. Anyway, New York is dirty and when I get home I blow my nose and my boogers are the color of the subway tracks.

As I examined the rat with elephantitis of the testicles, I thought, am I much different? Not because, I too have elephantitis testicles, but because I'm covered in dirt, like him, crowded in by millions, just trying to make my way. And sometimes, I too eat garbage. Maybe that's why they call it the rat race? It does amaze me how New Yorker's compromise and/or accept this as a way of life. Not only that but they pay thousands of dollars a month to live in shoe boxes surrounded by crud. The funny thing is, most of these people are from smaller, cleaner towns or cities. Shouldn't they want a cleaner life? Or do they thrive in the filth, like a chinchilla having a dust bath, or Eddy rubbing her face in dead bird remains? Remember when David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear? Maybe he could make the dirt in New York disappear.. that's something I'd like to see. Is he still alive? Or maybe that David Blaine fellow? I hate him. Regardless, I'm going to go take a shower.