A friend and I board the A train at midnight. I am in the middle of blabbering to him about what it’s like to grow up in a small town when a very drunk, white-bearded man sits down across from us. He is swigging from a Snapple bottle that is clearly not filled with Snapple.
I tense up, imaging him throwing the bottle–imagining how I would immediately swat it away from my friend, who was sitting closer to the man than I was. Then I imagine what will happen if I miss. Broken glass. Blood. It will be a mess.
“It’s happy hour!” the drunk man announces and pulls out another glass bottle, this filled with liquid of the brown, alcoholic type. He pours that into his Snapple. On a seat near him, a man in an MTA uniform looks up briefly, adjusts his headphones, and closes his eyes.
The man starts talking loudly, for the benefit of everyone, about work or something. I’m doing the avoid-eye-contact-and-try-not-to-listen thing, as are most of the other people on the train. Until the train stops and another man, only a little less drunk, comes in holding a Lime-a-rita in a paper bag.
He sits between the MTA employee and me. He turns to my friend and me and point to the man, who is waving his Snapple mix around in the air. “I love that guy. Look at him! Wouldn’t touch him, but I love him. He looks like Santa.” Then, to drunk Santa, Lime-a-rita says, “Hey, you look like Santa.”
“I am Santa! Every year at Macy’s. $1,200 bucks a week ain’t bad.”
“You gotta grow that beard out some more, Santa,” says Lime-a-rita. “You just have three months.” (It’s June.)
At that moment, a young man selling candy goes by.
“Candy? Snacks? Candy? Snacks.” He speaks quickly and speed-walks through the car, timing it so that he hits the subway doors just as they open at the next stop. Then he disappears.
“You see that?” asks Santa, “How’s he gonna sell candy if he just sails by like Halley’s Comet? Whoosh! Halley’s Comet. Whoosh.”
“I love this guy,” says Lime-O-Rita. “Hey Santa, you have Christmas candy? I love this guy. This is New York. I’ve lived here my whole life. Born and raised. I love this guy.”
“Just whoosh! He doesn’t even pause. Whoosh. How’s he gonna sell candy?”
A woman gets on at the next stop with her young son and lots of suitcases. The only open seats are next to Santa. She eyes Santa nervously. Another man, with face and neck tattoos, gets up and sits next to Santa, offering his old seat to the kid. The woman tells the kid to sit down, and he does.
“I don’t bite!” says Santa. “I got kids of my own. All grown up.”
“I love this guy,” says Lime-a-rita.
The woman begins moving her suitcases closer to her son. Another passenger helps her. Then she looks at the map behind Drunk Santa.
“Where you going?” he asks.
“West Fourth Street.”
“West Fourth? And where are we? Kingston? You got like nine stops. Don’t worry. We’ll tell ya when we get there.”
She smiles. And the rest of the car takes a sort of collective breath and smiles with her. We start making eye contact. With Santa. With Lime-a-rita. With everyone.
“I got kids,” repeats Santa. Then, to the kid, “Give me a thumbs up, kid.” The kid obliges. He even makes the Spiderman doll he is holding give a thumbs up.
“You got kids?” asks the Lime-a-rita guy.
“I got more kids than you. I got three.”
“I got twelve.”
“Twelve? I got more gray hairs than you. How do you have twelve!”
“How old are you?” asks Lime-a-rita.
“Older than you,” says Santa.
“How old?”
“Seventy-one.”
The subway reaches our stop. “I’m seventy-two,” says Lime-a-rita to the amusement of the rest of the car. People are laughing. Out loud. It’s nice.
But like most subway stories, this one ends midway through–with us getting off our stop. I rejoin the outside world. It’s a little sad to resurface, though. It felt good to be simply accepted into this funny little A Train community. To make eye-contact with some of my fellow New Yorkers. To laugh with strangers.
It occurs to me as I walk home: I, too, love that guy.
