Hypogeous Tractatus 5
Motion tags- that’s what we used to call the magic marker blemishes made to a subway car while riding the train- a sneaky way of getting your name up, and just as respectable as a sucker punch is to a boxer. I was little, and my hand skills were slow to develop, so the title of “toy” still hung on me- appropriately. But I would strive carelessly for any progress within my feeble powers. I watched the trains like a monk studying scripture, and I even did the unthinkable- something the school teachers never succeeded in forcing me to do- I read books, and even newspaper or magazine articles - so long as the subject was graffiti. I was spellbound. My favorite, “Getting Up” was a book including a firsthand account of the writer’s life from the living legend Lee Quinones; and his terrifying, colorful spray-painted story made me understand that a few ass kickings and arrests came with the calling. I was eager for mine, suited up to join the ranks, my humility only outweighed by my passion.
Recent photo of train station gives impression of labyrinthine depths
My parents saw me sliding into trouble, into street life. Summer camp felt like a jail sentence away from my dreams, except a man destined to drown will drown even in a desert. So if I could not find a graffiti partner in the City to face the trains, by a twist of fate I would find a friend in the Catskills to plot all kinds of mischief once we were done with the dodge ball and swimming pool foolishness and set free to the real world. Gil was Puerto Rican and Jewish from the projects on Avenue D, and had a nasty sense of humor. He told me all about the train yards in his neighborhood and I salivated at the prospect as if holding a pirate treasure map.
I had been living alone with my pops in some leafy section of Queens at the time, so opted to stay at Gil’s for long stretches as liberated teenagers, since his mom was never around. Just two boys with graffiti ambitions in a housing project apartment with roaches, pissy elevators that never worked, while “stick up kids on the prowl broke the staircase light,” stacks of food-stamps to buy sugary cereal, and gangs of bad kids to run the city with all night. Paradise.
So the fateful day dawned when we would approach the underground train layups at Manhattan Bridge. I’d done this plenty in my imagination, even more in my outlandish lies, but standing there at the edge of the train tracks watching Gil and CK disappear into the darkness of the tunnel I was paralyzed with fear. I was little for a twelve year-old. Suddenly stripped of its fantasy costume, the reality of introducing myself to the mysterious darkness and actual dangers of the tunnels was overwhelming. I was about to turn heel and run off like a coward when they emerged from the shadows to call my name.
That day my feet were braver than my mind and I took that leap. But after a phantasmic confrontation with those graffiti scarred caverns we found to our disappointment, and relief, that no trains were parked there at that time. Every step we took was another step closer to safety and daylight sunshine. We made an appointment to meet back up the next day to return, an appointment I had no intention of keeping.