Nothing kills a happiness buzz like coming across a thoroughly vile and disgusting excuse for a human being on that wonderful melting-pot of experience that is the New York subway.

Act I: Happiness buzz

The happiness comes from what's been going on the last few days... my brother came into town (from Boston) to celebrate Thanksgiving with a semi-distant relative (her mother was the cousin of the grandfather of mine who was the subject of that Google Scholar search a few days back, making her our second cousin, once-removed) and her family (including some extended family on her husband's side, i.e. "cousins" we're not actually related to and hadn't met before). It was great fun, and meeting this part of my family who I've lived in the same city as for the last few months was long-overdue (but there was much business on both sides, me with my job and the cousin (Linda) and her husband (Mike) with various medical issues). My brother has been staying at their ginchy apartment on the upper West side.

Anyway, today I hung out with my brother, and we utterly failed to do anything of import (aside from each buying new in-ear iPod headphones at the Apple store, and finally seeing the WTC site and Battery Park and so on), after which we went back there for dinner again (mmm, leftovers), and then tried to figure out something to do tonight with one of the non-cousins (who is going to film school at Columbia) but nothing panned out from that so I watched a horrible survivor horror movie on the Sci-Fi channel while my brother pretended to ignore it while browsing the web.

So anyway, I decided to head home, and my second cousin, once removed, and her husband expressed at great length about how much they enjoy my company and how anytime I need a meal I should just call them and so on. They're totally treating me like close family even though I barely know them (not to mention being barely related), and even then it feels like I do know them quite well. I just totally resonate with them, I think. I guess it makes sense, since the cousin is related via that grandfather who I never met but who I'm always compared to by everyone who did know him...

Act II: Joy-kill

So, I got on the downtown 1 train, and had an uneventful ride to 14th street, where I transferred to the L train. This, too, was uneventful, until a middle-aged man got on at Union Square, and sat across the aisle from me. He started making fairly lewd and suggestive gestures at me; I ignored him and pretended to be fascinated by the Cingular Wireless ads I'd already read a dozen times.

Two Japanese girls got on the train, and sat down next to him. He pulled out his wallet, counted out some money, and started waving it in their faces, asking them for sexual congress (specifically, he pointed at his crotch and then at their mouths). They both politely declined, then moved to the other end of the car. He turned his attention back to me, and made the same offer; I ignored him and pulled out my Gameboy and started to play it. He tried to strike up conversation with me. I ignored him.

Other people got on the train, and whenever a woman came near, he offered money (which looked like it was all of $9 or so) in exchange for a blowjob. Nobody accepted, so after failing to attract the attention of the men on the train, he started wandering around in the car, offering to everyone. Then he sat down across from a man, a woman, and their two young children, and started hocking loogies at them, and shouting out how much he wanted a blowjob and how he was fucked-up and so on, and how much all women were bitches for ignoring him.

I finally got fed up enough that I moved to another car, and played more Zelda, trying (and failing) to get him out of my mind.

Finally, we got to my stop, and I got off, constantly glancing behind me to make sure that the pervert wasn't following behind and otherwise feeling sick and paranoid. I thought of all the things I could have done, like directly confronting him, or pressing the intercom button to alert the conductor as soon as I got to the other car, or whatever, but I didn't, letting the guy continue his unchecked cycle of infantile self-perpetuating psychosexual maladjustment.

Gluh.