Hypogeous Tractatus 6
My first foray into the tunnels I wore a goose down jacket with a plaid flannel lining my mother bought at Bloomingdale’s but this time I came prepared for the layers of grease and dust nobody had warned me about and wore a black sweatshirt with the hood pulled tight around my peach-complexioned face.
We had recruited a couple big kids from a neighboring Project to join us so I felt my back and flanks secured by the ranks, but when we heard a significant click in the tracks we followed in the half-light, everybody but me knew what to do, and scrambled up to duck inside of the shallow alcoves of the catwalk that ran alongside the tracks, and with a rush and roar, a subway train crowded with passengers passed, just clearing the tip of my nose. No sooner had I come to terms with the third rail identification and safety lesson, delivered alongside the news that a legend, who knew these tunnels well, EL3 had just lost his life electrocuted by this very same live charge I’d been instructed to step over, as well as a hydraulic switch that could trap one’s foot if you had the misfortune to step too close when activated, when the very trains I was hunting revealed themselves as just another danger to be navigated, a formidable power against which an army of friends couldn’t defend you. When the train screeched to a halt inches from my poorly concealed and quivering body I imagined a squadron of detectives hopping out to descend on us, but all I saw was workaday commuters reading the newspaper or chatting with each other, mindless of our forbidden society just beyond a pane of glass in the dark.
The author on his first trip to the Bridge layup
Following a fork in the tracks at last we reached the underground train yard or lay-up, and there idled side-by-side an armada of parked subway trains, glowing in the shadows. The scent of aerosol paint perfumed the thick air and one could hear rumblings of rowdy teenage activity. We were far from alone, but the place was crawling with hordes of filthy-faced kids, hands blackened with tunnel grime. Monsters with chipped teeth and multi-colored paint splatters staining their blackened clothes, brandishing baseball bats and wooden paddles swarmed on us. The guys in my group were familiar with some of the members of this house gang, and even I was familiar with one or two of these phantoms silhouettes, so we were admitted into their number.
The older ones focused on the outside of the trains, painting ambitious masterpieces or else a succession of quick throw-up bubble letter signatures up and down the lanes. But I was still little, and the wheels and engines of a subway car ended at my shoulders so must of the paintable surface was over my head and hard to reach, awkward to address even on a ladder so I joined the mob who applied their signatures to any unclaimed space on the train interior, and the scene was some kind of feeding frenzy, anonymous inner city kids hungry for an identity. A few times I had to defend myself from bullies within our new posse, but situations quickly de-escalated by the efforts of diplomats among us- and then a group of strangers arrived with the attention of painting alongside our collective- but failing to secure a pass, they were beaten, robbed and chased from the yards, to save their lives, as if from a pack of wild dogs.
I achieved very little glory that day, in the artistic sense, but managed to sneak in a number of barely-legible signatures as a major milestone in my personal destiny and dream of painting trains.