Sunday, May 18, 2008

Urine My Life

Jet's antibiotics finally kicked in yesterday. I was pretty pleased to come home from work last night (after another 15 hr. shift) and find no wet spots soaked in to the couch or bed. I took the opportunity today to strip the bed and couch cover and bring down two big bags of laundry. Everything has been laundered and vacuumed, and I'm looking forward to getting in to bed tonight with a set of freshly laundered sheets. And hopefully the living room will stop smelling like dog pee.

As a variation on a theme, Friday night found me getting on a downtown subway train around 12:30am to head for home. I usually travel an hour or two later so there were quite a few people in the subway at that time with me. In due time a train pulled in and everyone got on. A women entered the same car as I did. There were several people at the other end and only one homeless guy sprawled across three seats on our end. I took a quick whiff of the air to make sure that everyone hadn't abandoned that end of the car because he threw up or shit himself. Detecting nothing noxious in the air I sat down. As the door closed, and the train headed for 42nd St. I heard a sound. I looked over to see a very impressive stream of pee arcing over from where the homeless man was laying down right in to the middle of the car. I was shocked. As was the women who was sitting closest to him. She quickly got up and moved to the far end of the car. All the while, the homeless dude continued to pee, and pee and pee. Without ever sitting up or moving noticeably. In his defense, considering the sheer volume, he must have really had to go. I seriously began to wonder if he would finish before we reached the next station. As if on cue, the stream stopped just as we were pulling in to 42nd St. leaving only a massive puddle of piss in the middle of the car. As Times Square is one of the busiest stops in New York City, the doors opened and about 10-12 people got on. And they all walked right through the puddle of pee. Nobody made much of an effort to avoid it, and only one man speculated aloud to his girlfriend that it "might be piss". I only considered leaving the car when our next couple of stops caused the car to angle up enough that it was possible the pee would snake backwards towards my currently dry island of non-pee. It turned out not to be, and three stops later I left them all to their now sleeping and infinitely more comfortable homeless companion.

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