When you live in a city with over 8 million people spread amongst the 5 boroughs, you begin to realize that people come from all classes and ethnicities among mankind. Most of these people would not normally cross paths. However, the one place where all corners of financial stability stumble upon one another is the subway. Ah, the subway. The one place where a woman clutching her Louis can sit across from you while a poor street performer raps; all simultaneously while someone who smells like their last bath was their baptism in the late 80’s is trying to grope your cookie jar on the way downtown via the 4 express.

When I first moved to the city, I made the mistake of getting on the subway every morning on my way down to Midtown and smelling myself. I would constantly stand on the subway and wonder where in the hell that smell was coming from. Trying to casually smell myself and wonder, “maybe I did wait too long to wash my shirt" or, “oh crap, I forgot deodorant again” until three months later, it clicked.

The subway in the harsh Manhattan winters is one thousand times warmer than outside. If it took me, a college student with a ridiculously overpriced dorm on the Upper East side, this long to realize it, how long will it take someone who has nowhere to sleep to realize the same fact?

So here is where we get to the lesson. In New York City, the rush hour usually lasts from about 7AM to 10AM and then again from around 4PM to 7PM. If you haven’t ever tried to carry five textbooks, your lunch and a backpack through the subway system in NYC, consider yourself lucky. The subways pull up while an overly annoying voice speaks over the intercom: "there is a downtown local 6 train to Brooklyn Bridge/City Hall approaching the station. Please stand clear of the platform edge.” As the train halts and the doors spread, you notice, of course, there is absolutely no room. Just great. Only Old men screaming, “move in please” and even older women screeching back, “ah, shut the hell up”

Now, to expand more on the smells that this glorious city has to offer! You see, there are your normal smells: food trucks selling Halal food, warm nuts and hot dogs. Then, you have your not so normal smells like the odd fish smell that radiates on the corner of 45th and Vanderbilt, the guy who forgot deodorant and insists on putting his arm up on the subway railing only for the train to jolt and your face to land right in his pit.

Then, there’s my horror story.

It was another gruelingly hot spring day in Manhattan. I was just getting out of class during the mid-afternoon rush and I booked it to fight my way into an uptown train home. Packed in like sardines, sweat dripping from one to another, we all simultaneously hated life. Then it hit. I couldn’t handle this odor. I smelled my armpits but they were fine. I looked around and started taking into account the other passengers faces, then the door at the end of the cart slammed open and I heard a woman yelling.

Now instinctively, I go, “oh f*ck, I’ve only been living here for 2 months my parents are going to be so pissed if I get killed this early.” As a woman charges into the already full subway car, she screams: “Move in, move in, MOVE IN!” Finally, a hulking gentleman looks at her and goes, “calm down woman, what’s the matter with you?” To this, she replies, “HE PULLED DOWN HIS PANTS AND JUST STARTED SH*TTING!" Then the second she finished, as if it were on cue, the smell masked the cart and fifteen more people smashed their way into our car. At the next stop, the doors opened once more and one shoeless man dressed in torn sweats and a once white t-shirt left the cart wearing a smile like it was Christmas morning.

As the subway continued its way uptown, passengers disembarked and went to different carts. At every stop, I would watch the doors open to the cart next to me. Someone with their head down would walk on, widen their eyes, cover their mouths and run off.

All in all, I would just like to say that whoever said that the New York City Subway is extremely clean, is full of sh*t.