Commutehead: Welcome to the Suck

OOORAH!

I've now been a member of the gainfully employed for one month. One month of work. One month of lunches and meetings, of portfolios and tear-sheets. One month of metro-cards, and people referring to it as "the subway" instead of "the T". That last one is particularly nice.

And one month of commuting.

Let me tell you something about commuting. I'll let you in on a little secret about it....




It sucks.




Now don't get me wrong. I love my job. It should be illegal to like a first real job as much as I do. But destinational passion aside, it is impossible to overlook that pesky, 2-way, 45 mile commute.


















Each day, along with hundreds of thousands of New Jersey, Westchester, and Connecticut residents, I get on a bus near my house that takes me straight to New York, in just under an hour, and drops me off at the Port Authority Bus Terminal. We are commuteheads. And the commuteheads are me.





















I have a very long, complicated, love/hate relationship with this building. Port Authority was the start and end to many trips back and forth to Boston during college. It was the meeting place for nights out with friends before we had licenses.

And when I was acting, and going to auditions or rehearsals a few times a week, this is where I would meet my dad to go wherever I needed to go. This was a solid routine, played out without fail, literally hundreds of times.

One day, when I was about 13, I was hanging around the Hudson News stand on the main level, our usual meeting point, waiting for my dad to bring me to an audition, when 2 Port Authority security officers, who obviously thought I was a teen hustler, approached me.

"Hey kid."

"Hello."

"How old are you?"

"13."

"Shouldn't you be in school?"

"(Shouldn't you have stayed in school? Of course what I really said was) I'm waiting for my dad."

"Oh really, well why aren't you in school?"

"I'm an actor. I'm going to an audition."

"Oh right... well why don't you come back to our office here and we can call him."

I'd heard about this office before from my friend Jesse, a fellow New Jersey kid actor. Sadly, he was not quick enough on his toes to talk his way out of the ordeal, and spent a few hours waiting for his mom to pick him up, surrounded by homeless junkies and truant street urchins.

"Why don't we stay right here and I'll call him myself," as I took my GIGANTIC Nokia cell phone out of my bag. This was 1998, the last thing these guys expected me to whip out was a cell phone.



















This scene played out for a few more minutes until my dad got there, when we both had to show some form of ID, to make sure he wasn't my pimp, and I could be released into his custody.

Long story short, now that I'm a full timer, I've learned A LOT about the daily commuting routine, from the commuteheads who have been doing it day after day for years now, and I'd like to share some of this with you.

There are a few unspoken rules about commuting on a bus, that everyone just seems to inherently know. IF violated, one can expect certain excommunication from the inner circle of friendly nods and preferential seating.

First off, don't make noise. Ever. In any form.
Don't talk to the person next to you.
Don't allow your iPod to be audible to anyone except you.
Keep phone conversations extremely whispered and limited to the phrases "I'm on the 6:30" or "Pick me up in an hour".
And if your cellphone or blackberry actually makes a sound instead of vibrating....
well, only God can save you then.

Second, how dare you recline your seat all the way back.
And don't even think about putting your briefcase on the seat next to you to bar people from trying to sit there. You think you're the first one to ever try that? Grow up.

Fatties? Beware! This bus is filling up. Just because you're huge doesn't mean I'm not going to need that seat next to you. (That's not to say I want it.) But save yourself the embarrassment of having to get up to let me in, and just slide over to the window.

Now, there are a few exceptions to these rules, sort of like a peak/off-peak system of when they are in effect. For example, the noise rules are only in effect until 9am and after 4pm.

Last week, I had an early doctor's appointment, and got on a 9:30am bus. By this time, the bus is mostly filled with older women, just going to spend the day in the city. These women spend the entire ride talking about their kids, their grandkids, their medications, that new Nathan Lane play, and the horrible service at Murphey's Grill the other night. And they don't care WHO hears it.













We call this bus the Yenta Express.

The Yenta Express is widely considered the least desirable bus to be on, however it also comes in ghetto-pregnant and Spanish-speaking varieties.

On Friday's return trip, I encountered a type of commuter I had never seen before: secret alcoholic commuter.

This is the man who's week was SO stressful, he literally can't wait until he gets home to crack open a few cans of Bud. This man sat next to me, and concealed between his leg and the window was a brown paper bag with not 1, but 2 cans of Bud in it.

I watched out of the corner of my eye as he covered the can top with his hand, trying to muffle the sound of the can cracking open as he slowly let the fizz out. He then removed a straw (A STRAW!!) from his inside jacket pocket and proceeded to sip down the beer for the rest of the ride home. When he got off the bus, he left the empty cans in the bag on his seat, not even bothering to throw them out. Sad.











What drives a man to drink regular Bud from a can through a straw on a bus? Is his job really that bad? Or has 20 years of commuting finally gone to his head? Does he now live with PTCD - Post Traumatic Commuter Disorder?

Luckily, my tour of duty as a commutehead will not be long enough for me to find out, but it's good to know the rules from day one. They could come in handy in the future, because a minuscule, tiny part of me will always be one of them.

That's all for now. I'll be back soon with more stories from the road and the workplace. To end with, a quote:

"A story. A man rides a bus for many years. And he goes to work. And afterwards he comes home, and he sees that whatever else he may do with his life - build a house, love a woman, change his son's diaper - he will always remain a commutehead. And all the commuteheads, driving and riding, they will always be me. We are still on the bus."

ooorah.


-evan