THE TUNNEL OF DESPAIR AND ENTERTAINMENT

There is a tunnel that connects the 1, 2, 9 train stop at 14^th street to the 6^th avenue L train stop. I used to walk the tunnel in my commute from Brooklyn to the upper west side and back almost daily. The tunnel is one cross-town block in length. White tile cover the floor, walls, and ceiling. Bright florescent lights illuminate the tiles bringing them to a glow. It feels something like the bellows of a spaceship containing the last people that made it off the earth before it blew up or melted.

I walked the tunnel fast and often enough that it almost feels like pacing. At some point, amidst studying advertisements lining the tile wall and cursing my hours at work, I dubbed it, the Tunnel of Despair and entertainment. The rotating cast of performers, painters, sellers, and sleepers provide the flowing foot traffic with constant entertainment whether they want it or not. The tunnel is often over crowded; the strumming guitar lingers behind me while the saxophone ahead competes for airspace in a melding of sorrowful sounds.

Joseph sits and draws pictures of common cityscapes like above ground trains or the skyline, but the buildings and trains in Joseph’s drawings are almost always under alien attack. He also draws, Run Away Corn, the image of a single stock of corn with a knapsack on a stick thrown over its shoulder. I own several of Joseph’s creations, though Michael says his artistic ability was stunted in fourth grade, I think his drawings are quite nice.

A black man sings songs everyone but he knows, like The Beatles, “I want to hold your hand”. He doesn’t know all the lyrics so he makes up new ones. He shaves half of his head and switches sides once his hair starts to grow out. His fake lyrics have been getting increasingly self righteous lately, and now he is selling small books titled “Jesus is the Answer”, next to his CDs.

Then there is Hambone. Hambone tapes pieces of cardboard over his entire body turning himself into some kind of over worked, deteriorating percussion instrument. He proceeds to pound out unrecognizable rhythms, more random thuds and slaps than music. He stairs strait ahead and does not stop this mechanical ritual for, what I imagine, is hours. He has never not been pounding away at himself in all the times I have seen him in the tunnel. Written across the piece of cardboard covering his chest is, Hambone The Human. Either Hambone didn’t have room on the board for a final defining word to add after human, or he just has a very sharp sense of irony.

I walked the tunnel the other day by chance. I entered nearest the 7^th Ave. end, and in the distance I noticed a man rolling in a wheelchair towards me. Besides a few other commuters the tunnel was uncharacteristically empty. I walked slowly examining the new ads and appreciating being back in the tunnel. Had it really changed so much since I last walked through? Had all the despair and entertainment been drained from it like rain water? Where was Joseph and where was Hambone?

As I got nearer the man in the wheelchair, I realized he was rolling backwards, he had one leg and no one to assist him, so he was moving himself by pushing off with his good leg. I looked to my left a little as I passed so I could see him. His eyes were closed and he had a grin on his face. He was singing “Lucky Star” the Madonna song.

“You must be my lucky star,

Cause you shine on me wherever you are.”

I smiled and walked down the stairs to the L train.