Q FOR QUIET

Five-forty in the morning. I enter the Q train from the 83rd Street entrance.

At this time of day, the ridership has changed from those who are arriving home from a late night out, to those going to work on the early shift. In my case, a TV show shooting in Brooklyn.

The one exception to the workers is a scraggly one-armed black guy, most likely homeless, wearing a camouflage shirt and jeans, asleep on one of the smaller benches he has to himself.

At the 72nd Street stop, a 30ish Latino guy steps on and sits at the opposite end of the bench where I'm sitting. Like everyone else on the subway at that hour, he's quiet. 

That changes by 42nd Street. The Latino guy suddenly starts talking in Spanish, out loud, as if on the phone with a hard of hearing relative. 

But he isn't. He's talking to himself, us, somebody only he can see, nobody.

Everyone in that car has seen this before. It's a free bonus that comes with your $2.75 fare: the not-quite certifiably crazy person who wants to share with the world whatever is on his or her mind, whether we're interested or not.

We never are. 

The Latino guy's monologue continues, as the rest of us hope that his stop is coming up soon. But experience tells us that this guy is probably taking this to the end, which in this case is Coney Island, because he's got so much to tell us, and nobody's at the beach to listen to him. Not on a 19-degree, pre-dawn late January morning.

It's loud, this monologue. Not threatening or scary. Articulate, too. Anyone conversant in Spanish can easily understand him.

But we don't want to understand him. All we want is to get to our stop quickly and quietly. And if you're familiar with the New York subway system, you know you can have one or the other, but not both.

As the train goes over the Manhattan Bridge to Brooklyn, I'm momentarily distracted by the blue moon super moon, still bright in the cold, cloudless sky, beaming light and details that you usually see only through telescopes.

Maybe that's what the Latino guy is talking about now. It doesn't matter. We don't care. All we want is for him to shut up, but nobody says anything to him, because his reaction is incalculable.

One of us, though, has had enough. The one-armed black guy in camouflage, who only wants a little shuteye before going on the street again, has had enough. He stands up, walks a few feet toward him, and says, "Hey!"

We all turn to him. He looks at the Latino and holds a forefinger to his lips. 

"Shh!"

The Latino guy immediately stops talking. The one-armed black guy returns to his seat and to slumber. And the rest of us glance at each other: Oh, so that's how it's done.

So easy and obvious. Laughably so: Finger to lips.

"Shh!"

All we need is the scraggly one-armed homeless black guy in camouflage to do our work for us.


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