The Mad Brooklynite

I first spoke with the Mad Brooklynite on the Bergen Street platform, where we'd both stepped off the G Train to wait for an F train, to take us deeper into the Borough. The Brooklynite was a small man in a brown suit with frayed cuffs and a stained collar. He wore a blue cap with a B on it, in a typography I associated with the departed Brooklyn Dodgers. The bill of the cap was missing, reducing it to a sort of Dodger beanie or yarmulke. "Do you have the time?" he asked. I did, and I told it to him. It was a quarter past three. "In Manhattan the train stations have clocks," he said. "Apparently we're a secondary class here in Brooklyn; our business could never be so important, and our need for the time of day is thus insignificant as well." I offered a nod, and a slight smile. His point was striking -- why were there fewer clocks in the Brooklyn stations? What was being expressed? The Brooklynite changed the subject. "Did you know the G train is the only train in the entire subway which never enters the island of Manhattan?" I shook my head. "The sorriest train in the system," he continued. "It suffers from low self-esteem. Perhaps it should be allowed to change its route one day a year and enter Manhattan, just so it could taste the honor." I smiled to make him know I understood his sarcasm. "But that raises an ontological issue," he said, surprising me. "If a G train goes into Manhattan can it truly be regarded anymore as a G train? Perhaps its exclusion from the island is an intrinsic property." I shrugged; I couldn't know. "Here's another: the Village Voice," said the Brooklynite. "In Manhattan it's given out free; in Brooklyn we pay a dollar and a quarter. Our attention is less valuable to their advertisers, I suppose. Perhaps if we had clocks in our stations and knew the time of day we'd be more efficient, and hence more likely to generate enough disposable income to afford Pilates instructors and phone sex." I felt I could argue with the Brooklynite's logic, but I didn't choose to do so. The F train arrived, and we boarded. I shuffled away from the Brooklynite, found a seat and began reading my newspaper. The Brooklynite stood by the doors. After the Carroll Street station the F line becomes elevated, and as we rose into the sunlight the Brooklynite turned to me and beckoned with a crooked finger. "Come, look." Helpless to refuse, I stood and joined him at the doors. "Consider the Williamsburg Savings Bank tower," he said. "Our sole skyscraper. Such a bare skyline, with just that blunt, homely phallus. Manhattan's a porcupine, a formation in crystal, a piece of electronic circuitry. Brooklyn's a bare crotch with a lonely erection. I'd be shocked if it didn't someday wilt in shame." I chuckled, but the Brooklynite only scowled more deeply. "Full of dentists, too," he said. "And empty offices. They rent for three or four hundred dollars a month. I know a plumber who rents one just to store his tools." He grew introspective. "My own dentist kept offices there, so long ago. Doctor Theodore Schemella. He's surely passed. I wore braces as a child; I would ascend to his office where he would tighten the bonds on my teeth with great effort. I recall his elbows trembling, like an arm-wrestler's." We passed over the Gowanus Canal, Brooklyn's armpit; it went unremarked. "This trestle is unneccesarily high, don't you think?" asked the Brooklynite after a brief silence. It was true: I'd never considered it, but the F train does rise an unaccountable distance from the ground there, as it moves towards Park Slope. "A terrific view of Manhattan," he said sadly. "That's the only justification. The rise here ensures we consider the Island as we retreat to our hovels. It splays Brooklyn out like a grubby body beneath us, Manhattan like the banners of heaven in the distance. They want to rubs our noses in it once more, before we fall again into darkness." The Brooklynite grabbed my arm.

McSweeney's, 1999