by John McGovern
I am the world.
What else is there?
It was the usual schlepp to work. The LIRR all the way into the biggest shithole on earth: Penn Station. The way the automated voice said it, like you were fucked the second you got there. It smelled like old Subway sandwiches and decaying homeless people. All you saw was stupid commuters walking around without a single thought in their heads, too many of them.
Another day.
Bright, warm out, the summer just ended. The school year just started. Vacation season over. The kids back in school.
The feel of a slow week, only Tuesday. Something about the day was familiar. The phone won't stop going off.
Buzz buzz buzz buzz. Like a gun in my pocket. Shit.
Buzz.
Shit.
Buzz.
It was all shit.
Even if I got the job, it wouldn't change anything. Was I even going into the city for a job? It’s hard to tell. I couldn’t remember. Those days were over, where I knew what was happening or why.
Nothing felt good anymore.
I was nervous.
Was it an office job? Some kind of admin assistant position? I'd sent out too many resumés. Maybe it was one of the restaurant jobs I applied to? I couldn’t remember. Did the office need a barista? I couldn't remember. It didn't matter. I needed the job, or I was there for some other reason that eludes me now, some force driving me that I could feel but not see.
I slept for an hour or two at most. But maybe I didn’t sleep at all.
When I woke up everything was moving slower than it should. I felt as if the night before, the alcohol running through me, were still happening.
I knew I was already fucked.
The dread of the early September morning when the summer is over. I'd lived this day before.
I left the side door of my house and took a moment to pause. Usually I moved fast to avoid running into neighbors. I looked at the car in the driveway, a shitty Honda about to crap out any day now. I walked to the edge of the driveway and looked at the three closest houses across the street, all with identical 1500 square foot lots. The town had cut the trees down in front of all of them. I turned and looked at the rickety green fence that divided my house from the neighbors’ whose driveway lay next to mine. It was a border as precarious as the DMZ.
The streets were emptier than usual. No one was out walking their dogs and the cars were all parked. No one was driving.
Something was not right.
I didn’t worry about it because it meant I would get to the city that much faster for my interview, or whatever it was I was going there for.
The houses on the ride to the train station, each rectangular lot with a couple of cars in the driveway, looked more appealing than usual. The lawns seemed to be announcing more natural verdant settings. But it seemed like there was nobody home inside of any of them.
I made it to the station without being stopped by a red light. All the lights were green. The classic rock station was even playing a song that I liked, “Sympathy for the Devil.” The smoky voiced disk jockey announced the name of the song in the usual perfunctory way, but the timing of the song felt deliberate. It seemed to be a sign of good luck. To a lapsed Catholic like me it almost felt like a prayer.
I stopped at the Dunkin Donuts next to the station for an iced coffee.
I knew how this day ended.
On the platform at the LIRR station I waited for the 7:55AM train. I sipped my iced coffee.
The straw was orange and I bit the end of it. Click click click.
Twelve likes, forty likes, 300k followers, 10.5 million followers, screenshot, text message, iMessage, no filter. I don’t like this fucking song anymore. Pause, pause, pause.
Nothing would change.
I had lived this day before and I knew what was coming.
The voice announced that the train was delayed eight minutes due to traffic signal issues.
I walked over to the newspaper stand and bought a bottle of water. The water from the sink was contaminated with the shit you sprayed on the lawn to kill weeds. You could taste the difference. When you drank the bottled water, you didn't think about how you were going to die.
I walked back to the spot where I always stood.
I scrolled a bit more on my iPhone. Click click click. Read a couple lines of some bullshit. Buzz. Click. Bing. Buzz. Click.
Four unread messages.
GMAIL. Inbox. 10,586 unread messages.
The announcement for the train's arrival time came over the speakers. The train was already slowing down as it reached the platform.
The doors of the train opened and the commuters were lined up on the sides to go inside. They were all looking at their phones. It was the usual flood of white-collar stiffs and the union hard-asses with their stickered helmets.
I got an aisle seat in one of the four seaters.
The woman sitting next to me was doing some online shopping on her phone. The guy across and to the left was asleep, and the guy next to him was overweight and had a ponytail and had his phone tilted sideways and was playing some kind of race car game that involved moving the screen to turn.
I watched a video on my iPhone of an Internet comedian do a talk where he joked about online dating. The comedian was an average Joe but he looked well-fed and healthy. Getting old sucked, he said. The crowd laughed. He was wearing jeans and Converses and a plain grey shirt and was cranky in an acceptable way. You wouldn't expect him to show up with a gun anywhere and it made you wonder if his life really sucked as much as he said it did. Either way, the audience laughed. They were having a good time. It was clear they related to him. Friday night. No one on this train was having fun.
Click click. Promotions. Important. Save for later. Spam. Deleted. Archived. Click.
Open new tab. Google search. Train times. Open new tab.
Click click click.
Go to work, go home.
The ride continued like this for a while.
The conductor came and clicked my ticket with his hole puncher and stuck it in the little metal flap on the back of the seat in front of me.
I started to think I would die right there on the train.
The train was overcrowded, people standing by the doors and some in the aisles, and the lighting was shit, too bright, and the noises and the automated voice made you feel like everything had always been this way, would be this way indefinitely, would not change until it all went away. When you looked out the window it looked like everything was going to shit until you reached Long Island City where there were big glass towers going up but there was a dumpy rail yard between where you were sitting in the train and the towers and you'd always see some emotionless guy who worked for the railroad out there walking the tracks smoking a cigarette, his day ruined before it began.
After that we hit the tunnel for a couple minutes. I always liked the tunnel. The rest of the city and the island was an eye-sore. It had already done me enough damage for a lifetime. I didn’t need to be looking out at it and thinking about what it all meant.
The train arrived at Penn Station. I heard the brakes as they were applied as usual.
Everyone stood up before the doors opened and waited with patience for their turn to leave.
Out the train and up the stairs to see cops on steroids with semi-automatic weapons and Starbucks and linoleum lighting and bums picking through the trash and the mobs of people. They come from everywhere, from New Jersey, Amtrak, the subway lines, and the bus terminals.
I had the thought that one day I'd show up with my headphones in and wouldn't be able to leave. I'd walk towards one of the big escalators that bled out onto 34th and 7th.
When you reached the top, you’d hit the open air walled in area where the military guys hung out, more of them than usual if there was a holiday. But no matter what exit I tried I'd be unable to leave. And the people would keep walking around with their headphones and hard hats and trench coats and dead faces. My world would start to end. I'd live off big cups of beer and pizza and coffee, Tex-Mex wraps and cheeseburgers. I wouldn't even be able to bum a smoke off a suicidal businessman because I couldn't get outside. I'd get to know the schedules and the shitters. All alone in my own hell.
I went to take a piss.
There was a bum in each of the stalls by the look of the shoes. One of them was yelling in the stall.
You fucking piece of shit. None of you motherfuckers understand. Get me outta here!
Get me the fuck outta here!
Bing. Bing. Bing. Buzz.
I finished pissing, washed my hands in whatever sewage water they pump out to me in motion-activated spurts like rations. I thought how I had no idea how they programmed it to do that, how it was some futuristic technology I couldn't understand.
I saw the future.
On the way out the other men look at you as if they're deciding whether they want to kill you.
The day was going to end how it always did.
I rode the escalator up from the station tunnel where it emptied out around the corner on 7th. I looked at the military people and they were laughing.
The car horns and the headphones were competing for attention. Buzz. Shit. Buzz.
Shit.
There was an Irish Pub on the corner. A Moe's Southwest Grille. Verizon Wireless, Starbucks.
Horns and honking and the smell of roasted peanuts. Tourists carrying too many shopping bags, the faint smell of air-conditioning from the department stores, out of shape security guards.
I started to scream. No one noticed.
Or if they did, they were pretending as if they didn't. One lady looked at me briefly. S he was busy looking for empty cans.
Buzz. Shit. Buzz, shit.
I crossed over to 6th Avenue. I thought that the fear was over, the worst of it gone. But it started to hit me again.
More sweat. More chills. I didn't know if it was the hangover or my nerves or if I was
sick. I tried not to shit myself.
I don't know how it ended last time.
I wasn’t where I was when it happened. The papers falling down from the sky and the clouds of ash chasing people as they ran down the street. I convinced myself I was dying, made it through, passed out, woke up in sweat and a dry mouth, heaving and screaming, no longer wanting to live.
And then it started all over. This is the train to Penn Station. The next station is PENN STATION. It was going to happen no matter what I did.
You wake up and pick up the phone from the shelf and scroll through so you don't have to think about anything else.
Bing bing bing!
No one looks at you.
They look into the box and they don’t see you. I've lived this day before.
It's warm and the summer is over, but the air feels unnatural. It's September, I think.
Bing. A text message. The standard iPhone ring: Dut dut dut dut dat diddle-at dut dut.
Dut dut dut dut dat diddle-at dut dut.
I was afraid to look at who was calling. Buzz.
The horns going off.
Bing.
Another day. Bing. Bing. Bing.
I've lived this day before. Buzz.
It keeps going.
Bing.
I'm going to die.
Bing bing bing.
Make it fucking stop.
Buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
The day ends the same no matter what you do, with the papers raining down from the
sky.
The glass towers beginning to surround me. I'm not the world anymore.
Another Starbucks, another Irish pub. A multi-purpose lunch cafeteria. A fake Little Italy pizza joint.
You're waking up while you're at work and you're falling asleep while you're still
awake.
Wah wah wah wah wah.
And the day already happened before.
A linoleum-lit tourist shop and a guy in a red coat handing out tourist bus fliers yelling in an African accent.
I put my headphones in: Well we all have a face that we hide away forever
And we take them out and show ourselves When everyone has gone
I checked my pulse.
The sirens again.
The sirens grew louder and more frequent.
Woo woo woo ewoo ewoo wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh It was coming again.
Buzz.
I can't remember anything. Buzz.
It all bleeds together. Buzz.
I stopped on the sidewalk on one of those Midtown blocks between Avenues, where street cleaners push garbage cans, and thought about lying down. I was close to giving up.
I lived this day before.
I passed a homeless guy with no legs, his stumps on flattened boxes and his back against the glass storefront of a Chipotle.
I felt the back of my neck burning. This happened before.
The paper flooded the sky like a slow rain. Bing bing!
There was nothing I could do. I looked at my phone. The glass buildings passed, all over, on all sides.
I got closer to Bryant Park.
The nausea and the spins started to hit me harder. I believed I was beginning to die. I could feel it in my gut.
My footing became unstable.
I thought I was going to fall over in a fit of agony, losing all voluntary control over my body.
I saw a group of European teenagers being led up the stairs to the New York Public Library. They'd get their pictures and go sit at a big fucking table at The Hard Rock Cafe afterwards and the teacher would bark at them in that disciplined European way. They were more cultured than us.
I went to a hot dog cart and bought a bottle of Poland Spring water. I chugged the
bottle.
I bought another one from the same vendor and sat down on the ledge off to the side of the main steps of the building.
There was a big banner hanging near the main entrance which listed the names of a few notable writers who would be participating in Q&A sessions at the library in the next few months.
I drank half of the second bottle of water in quick gulps. A hand touched my shoulder.
Bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing
bing.
I was facing Fifth Avenue.
Bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing bing
It was a stocky guy in his early thirties. He was thin but had functional strength. He looked like a cop or perhaps a federal agent.
He was all business, like everyone else around me that morning. There was something dead and emotionless inside him.
“Sir, please come with me.” He gestured with his hand.
His hands were twice the size of mine and he had the kind of jacket on that you would expect a security personnel to be wearing. The wonderful marriage of comfort and the law.
I felt powerless. Is this what I had been nervous about? He looked like he wanted to punch me.
Bing! Bing! Bing!
I started to walk with him down the steps. His grip on my arm got tighter and my legs started to give out.
I started to scream again, louder this time.
I could hear the sirens in the distance in the background over towards the river.
I felt the coolness of the concrete against the back of my head and my back and my legs. My eyes were closed and I started to have a faint dream about the heat of the sun from above the trees near where the corner of the park began.
The tourists were starting to look at us with curiosity. The man pushed his knee harder into my back.
The sirens grew louder.
The crowd wasn't just tourists anymore but busy workers with headphones in, some who had even stopped and taken their headphones out.
The sirens were taking over the city.
It felt good to be on the ground. I couldn't see the faces of any of the people anymore.
It made me feel alive again. The guy's arm felt stiff against my neck, but I felt like I wasn't going to die anymore.
In my pocket my cellphone was buzzing like crazy and at the same it started ringing the standard smart phone ring:
Dut dut dut dut dat diddle-at dut dut. Dut dut dut dut dat diddle-at dut dut.
My wrists felt cold as the man put handcuffs on them.
The sharpness in my stomach was worse than anything I had ever felt. The sounds of the sirens grew louder and drew closer until they were all that I heard.
Author’s Note: These pages are from the beginning of my novel The Island. The island in question is Long Island where most of the story takes place. The novel is about an aspiring tech entrepreneur grifter who moves his company from NYC to a Long Island town, inciting the ire of people who live there. The novel is written mostly in the third person with intermittent chapters, of which this is one, written in the first person. The first-person voice belongs to an anonymous mysterious figure. Trauma has severed his subjective experience from any meaningful relation to his physical environment including the land on which the action of the novel is unfolding.