This room I'm in is made of cinderblocks, but they're covered with thick paint, light blue, and it looks like it was recently done. There's no graffiti and everything is much cleaner than I would have expected. There's no bed, just a bench-shaped protrusion from the wall, and there's a john with no seat. There's nothing to do except watch TV.
There's a debate going on right now; not here where I am, but outside, in the world at large. They are debating whether young people who commit crimes are influenced by "violet images" on TV. I don't know what they're talking about when they say "violet images," because TV is not violet. TV is red.
I knew a guy once who was a guidance counsellor for teenagers. He had a job in a detention center for young offenders, and once a week he had to counsel a boy who killed an old couple by smashing their heads in with a beer bottle. I asked the counselor guy if he could get me the kid's autograph but he said he did not want to promote that sort of thing. The counselor guy told me that this kid was expecting to have a street named after him. He said this meant the kid did not know the difference between fame and infamy, and that this was an indication of what was really wrong with him. I didn't understand what he was talking about, and I asked him when they were going to do it; when they were going to name a street after that kid.
I wonder if this kid was influenced by these "violet images" on TV, and if that was why he did what he did. Because I watch a lot of TV, and I don't think I'm influenced by it at all. But you have to wonder.
This morning, the subway I was riding got stuck in the middle of the tunnel, and all the lights went out. It became very hot and stuffy, quickly, and at first people didn't say anything, just kept ignoring each other like usual on the subway, but gradually people who knew each other began to have whispered conversations. Then the whispered conversations grew a little louder and some people started having conversations with strangers; I could tell by the way they were talking.
Two young women had a baby with them and they were the first ones to begin to talk loudly, and they were talking about the way the baby was reacting to the heat. The rest of the conversations died out and I could tell everybody was listening to the two young women, who were quite crass, actually. White trash.
I wonder about that expression; white trash. It seems to imply that if a white person is trash, you have to point out that they are trash, but if a person of some other colour is trash, it does not need pointing out. And that sounds pretty racist. It's too bad because it's a great expression otherwise. I love calling people white trash.
Anyway, those two women were white trash, and I don't mean anything racist when I say that. And they were talking about how the baby was sweating profusely, and how bad it smelled. One of them said something about loosening the baby's clothing, and I could hear her bend down and do it. And then the smell wafted over me. It was a really bad sweat smell that nonetheless had that special baby smell associated with it; that baby smell that usually seems so nice. The baby smell didn't make it better, it made it worse. I can't explain why. I tried not to breathe.
I needed to get away from these trashy women and their baby and the other people and the darkness and the heat, but there was nowhere to go, so I began to watch TV.
You see, I can watch TV in my right eye, if I close it and squeeze it. Try it yourself; all you have to do is close your right eye and then press hard against it with something that hurts, like a fork. Keep your left eye open, and press harder and harder until you see red through the right eye. I'm good at it; I don't need a fork anymore, I can use my fingernail instead. Focus on the red and after a few seconds it starts to look like a little TV screen. Use your mind to flick through the channels, by concentrating, and you can watch anything you want.
I watched a bit of a Brady Bunch episode, but I wasn't really in the mood for it so I switched channels and watched the news. They were showing Christopher Columbus being interviewed after finally discovering Trinidad or Honduras or somewhere, and he was talking about how there was a big soccer match back in Spain and he wanted to get home in time to see it. He was a pretty interesting guy, but I had trouble concentrating because the two trashy women were talking too loud, and finally I lost my concentration and lost reception for that channel. I tried, but I couldn't find it again. Maybe the interview was over.
The trashy young women were now talking about how the heat had made the baby "go." At least they didn't use a swear word to say it. It made the baby "go." And I was not completely sure what they meant by that, but then another smell wafted over me. An absolutely horrible smell, thick and pervasive. I tried to breathe through the sheepskin collar of my coat, but even that didn't help. And if you can believe it, even that absolutely horrible smell included the special baby smell, and again, the baby smell only made it worse.
I thought about moving to the other end of the subway car, but that would mean giving up my seat. I was in one of those single seats in the corner, and that is the best place to be in a subway car. Besides, it was so dark that making my way to the other end of the car would entail an awful lot of undesirable physical contact with other people. I decided to stay where I was. I gently poked myself in the eye, and then pressed hard.
There was a program on TV that showed our subway car, in the same situation that we were actually in, except on the television it was light and I could see what was going on. But I could also tell that the people in the subway car could not see; for them it was dark. Pretty realistic, I thought; looks like a good show. The view was from above, but at a slight angle, and I realized the camera must be mounted over the door at my end of the car. I looked at the corner of the car and there I was, sitting all squished up against the window to keep as far away from everybody else as I could. My left elbow was up on the windowsill, and the index finger of my left hand was jammed hard against my right eye.
Why is this on TV, I wondered. I hoped it was not a news program, because if it was, maybe it was because something awful was about to happen, like the entire subway was about to be engulfed in flame and we would be trapped in there, cooking like lobsters. That would be newsworthy. I did not want to die, of course, but watching myself die on TV would be cool. I had mixed feelings. But it was probably not a news program; it was probably just a show.
It's amazing how many shows are on television with myself appearing in them; sometimes it seems like every third channel has a show with me playing a major role. So how come nobody has ever heard of me? Every new person I meet, I expect them to have already heard of me, but they never have. And nobody ever asks me for my autograph.
One of the guys standing in the subway car was picking his nose, very deep and with great enthusiasm. He thinks nobody can see him, I thought, laughing to myself. Little does he know. I could see the two white trash women standing nearby, fussing over the baby and making comments they thought were funny. So that's what they look like, I thought. They were blocking the aisle, they and the baby stroller, so even if I had wanted to I could not have walked to the other end of the subway car, not without an awful lot of trouble, anyway. Just as well I had stayed in my seat.
Nothing much was happening on the subway car, so I started to flick channels, but I was determined to come back to that one and see how the show would end. I found another channel that showed me having sex with the weather lady from the City news show. I watched that for a while. It was good, at first, but after a few minutes the weather lady suddenly turned into the guy who does the sports on the same news show. I changed channels, but the two white trash women started making all sorts of noise, and I lost concentration and lost my reception again.
They were laughing now, those two women, laughing fit to bust, and it seemed to have something to do with the stench that was still coming from the baby. It was getting worse. But the smell didn't bother me as much as the two women did. I didn't blame the poor baby; it's always really the parents who are to blame for these things. I began to feel an overpowering rage, directed at those two white trash bitches.
And when I thought the word "bitches," I got even more mad. You made me swear, I said to them, in my mind, you made me swear and I think it's just not appropriate to swear. You two bitches are the type of people who swear, and I'm not. The rage built up, and I felt flushed, and I got that feeling where even the slightest impulse moves me. I don't like that, I don't like feeling like I'm not in control.
I jammed my knuckles into my eye. I trapped a portion of the eyeball between two knuckles, and I gripped it and twisted it. I pinched my eye hard, and the TV came in as clear as day, with better sound than I've ever heard before. I flicked channels.
On the subway channel I saw the same scene, except the man in the corner, that was me, was getting up from his seat. He walked to a nearby double seat and the two people who were sitting in it disappeared, poof, just like that. The man bent over and lifted the seat to expose a cavity beneath. Inside the cavity was a fire blanket, rolled up, and a fire extinguisher and an axe. The man picked up the axe. He hefted it, and then he turned and raised it high over his head, where it hung poised for a split second of perfect balance, and then swung down, its blade neatly finding the part in the hair of the nearer of the two white trash bitches.
Nobody else in the subway car moved, at first, as they could not see, so they had not seen this coming at all. The girl screamed as the axe split a chunk off her head, and then a couple of other people screamed and shouted, as if only in reaction to hearing the first scream. I figured I was the only one who could see what was going on, and I think even the man with the axe, that was me, could not really see. Maybe he had a good picture of the scene, in his mind's eye, but whatever the case, he knew who were the appropriate targets.
And I lost reception again. My eye was still glowing red, like it does after you stare at the sun, but the TV reception was gone. I sat there in the pitch darkness with nothing to do except listen to the two bitches laughing and chatting, and the other whispered conversations, and as the minutes went by it just got hotter and hotter, and the baby smell got thicker and thicker.
And then, suddenly, there was an announcement. At first I thought it was the TV, this voice coming from nowhere, but then I realized it was coming from the internal speaker system of the subway. A man's voice apologized for the delay, and said that subway security employees would be coming to help us evacuate the train, one car at a time. There was a buzz of conversation, as people explained to each other what the man had just said. Why do people always do that?
And after a few minutes we saw flashlight beams darting around in the tunnel, and we heard the next car being slowly evacuated. Then it was our car's turn, and I heard the doors being forced open. There was a small amount of light now, from the flashlights. As soon as the doors opened everybody stood up and jammed into the aisles, and then they stood where they were and waited, of course, because it was a slow process. I stayed in my seat and laughed silently at all those people who had already left their seats. That's another thing people always do, that makes no sense at all.
The subway guys put little stepladders next to each door and took people's hands and helped them climb down, one by one. One of them asked the two bitches to wait until last because of the baby. It took a long time for all of the people to get out, and I watched as the guy who picked his nose was helped out the door, his finger still in the nose right to the middle knuckle.
I was last. I stood up from my seat, pleased with myself. I walked to the door and one of the subway guys asked me where the girls with the baby had gone. I said they had grown impatient and left by another door. Then I was helped down to the level of the tracks. They told me where to walk, and they told me what not to touch, and I walked along the tunnel, in the little space between the wall and the train. It was only two hundred meters or so, and then I climbed a set of stairs onto the platform.
But there were a bunch of people waiting for me, a bunch of security guys and the man who picked his nose. He wasn't picking his nose right now, though, he was using his picking finger to point at me, and he was saying, "It was him. He did it. I saw him."
The security guys grabbed me gently, and they seemed not to believe him. He told them, "Go check. It's the fourth car. Two girls about nineteen years old and a baby." We all waited while some of the guys walked back down the tunnel, and a crowd gathered around us.
How did he know? I couldn't figure it out. Nobody saw, it was dark, and the nosepicker had already left. How did he see it? How did he know it was me?
The guys came back, carrying the stroller with the sweaty, stinky baby still in it, gurgling softly to himself. They said yeah, he did it, there are two young women there in a pool of blood, don't let him go, and the guys holding me stopped being so gentle. They forced me to sit on a bench and somebody called for help on a radio.
The nosepicker still stood there, and now he jammed his finger back into his nose in a way that looked painful, and he closed one eye and the other eye seemed to stare into space, and he said, "He won't get away with it. It was on TV. I saw it on TV, and you can get the video from the TV stations. Here! Here it is, in Spanish. It's on a Spanish news show, and I can see that guy, that guy you've got right there, with the one normal eye and the one bloodshot eye; he thinks nobody can see him, and he's getting up from the corner seat in the subway car, while everybody is being helped off the train, and he's opening a seat and taking out an axe, and he's walking over to where the two girls are staying out of the way because they're supposed to be last, and they're bending down, fussing over the baby, and the guy's raising the axe. I can see it all, it's clear as day, with better sound than I've ever heard before."
He took his finger out of his nose and stared at me triumphantly. A trickle of bloody mucus dripped down from his nose into his smiling mouth. He knew he was going to be on TV himself now, as a witness, and he would be famous, and everybody would recognize him and ask for his autograph.
And as they dragged me away, I realized only then that I am going to be famous too.
Now I'm here, in a holding cell. They don't want to send me to a real jail and they don't have permission yet to send me to a hospital. There's nobody else here, in any of the neighbouring cells, but I don't know if that's because nobody ever gets in trouble around here. Maybe nobody commits crimes anymore, because there are video cameras everywhere and the odds are just crap, compared to what they used to be. Or maybe it's just to keep me more isolated.
They won't give me anything to read. They won't let me have any objects that I might use to hurt somebody. There's nothing to do except watch TV.