#46: Woman Who's Somehow Convinced Herself She's the Linchpin in Ushering Me, and a Subway Full of Other Strangers, Into the Waiting Embrace of Jesus

Time of Offense: 8:33am, May 16th, 2006

Particulars:

If you've ever taken the subway regularly for a few months, you've probably gotten familiar with the phenomenon I like to call the Suspiciously Empty Subway Car, or SESC. Much like the Suspiciously Empty Freeway Lane (with the stalled car fifty yards ahead), or the Suspiciously Empty Grocery Store Line (with the old lady paying in pennies and asking for a price check on every third item), How an SESC works is that you only ever see one when, logically, you shouldn't. It's rush hour; your subway stop is crushingly packed as far as you can see in either direction; every other car on the train looks like a sardine can of irritated shoulder-to-shoulder commuters; but somehow you're lucky enough to walk into an a completely or half vacant car, thinking, "Man, is this ever too good to be true."

And, natch, it is. It's usually after you and about fifteen other hopeful souls have piled into the SESC that you'll notice A) the dank, foul-smelling pool of homeless man's urine covering the floor; B) the impossibly large pile of homeless guy poop left on a seat; or, if you're really unlucky, C) the homeless man himself, smelling like dank urine and a large poop combined, and spread out over three seats, fast asleep, while forty people cram themselves into the far side of the car with their coats over their noses. Believe me when I tell you that I don't care how aggressively liberal you consider yourself with regards to the homeless — the day you spend a forty-minute commute in an airtight car discovering what a man smells like passed out drunk in a pantload of unpleasantness, you will hate the homeless, passionately, with every atom of your being.

So it was last Wednesday that, as soon as I stepped into a mostly-empty car during morning rush hour, a slow inward groan built up inside me as I looked around for poops, puddles or a pile of sleeping hobo. Oddly, though, I couldn't find a thing. It'd seemed I'd actually managed to find an SESC in New York City, in the busiest hour of the day, with nothing actually wrong with it. Pow-zoom, yo! I mentally high-fived myself as I sat down with my New York Post and coffee, in a window seat, no less, for my 30 minute commute. With all the seats free I wouldn't feel guilted into having to give mine up for an old person or pregnant woman; plus, not having anybody crammed into the seats next to mine meant a day I wouldn't have to spend playing How One Earth Is It That The Person Next To Me Smells Like That, And How Can They Not Know?, or the ever-popular I'm Being Forced To Listen To Your Bland, High-Decibel Conversation, And It Turns Out You're an Idiot. I was actually going to get a quiet and spacious ride to work — a pleasantly unexpected embarrassment of riches. The fifteen of us settle into our seats, the train pulls off, I take a contented sip of coffee, and a small Pakistani woman stands up and starts yelling at us about Her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

This, then, was the reason for the SESC. I did have to give the woman credit. She clearly knew her audience — more specifically, she knew we were an audience that, Christians or no, had no interest at all in her shrieking at us about the Lord. To compensate, she'd decided to quietly wait for the car to fill up before pouncing on us. You have to admire someone who's that honest about how undesirable what they're trying to sell you, and the way they're trying to sell it, truly is. She's making no bones about it here. "I'm freely aware you have no interest in hearing this, because really, who would. So I'm going to wait patiently until you're trapped before springing this on you."

It's insidious really, and it grates me on a politeness level as a Canadian. I've resigned myself to the fact that there are people out there who are evidently so eager to convince to believe the same things they do that they'll actively take to the streets to find me. Fine. I don't agree with it, and to be honest I'd sort of like to slap them, but I can say "No thank you" as well as the next person, and after a decade of practice at living in a big city, I'm a seasoned veteran of the 50-Yard Ignoring Stare.

As illustrated above, the 50-Yard Ignoring Stare tends to work best for those living in big cities, and works thusly: that when encountering someone outside of your home that is clearly, vocally and perhaps even dangerously insane, one picks a point on the horizon some 50 yards away that has for some reason become immediately interesting. One holds contact with this point until safely away from the person who might otherwise have, without provocation, decided to dive at one's neck for reasons known only to your assailant, and possibly the mind-reading psi-angels warning them that the government thinks they know too much.

And so I used the 50-Yard Ignoring Stare for four stops, during which Crazy Jesus Woman expounded her various and — I'm sorry if you're reading this, Crazy Jesus Woman, but it's true — totally made-up-sounding, off-the-cuff diatribes throughout. Whenever the train was in motion, it sounded like this:

AND JESUS CHRIST IS THE WAY FOR HE IS THE LAMB AND THE SKY FOR WHICH NOT WE WANT CAN YOU SAY TO ME THAT YOUR POSSESSIONS ARE THE WAY OR YOUR JOB IS THE WAY YOU HATE BLACK PEOPLE YOU SIT THERE AND YOU HATE THE INDIANS AND THE AFGHANI BUT THEY ARE THE WAY YOU ASSHOLES YOU MOTHERFUCKING ASSHOLES AND YOU CANNOT SEE THE FUCKING LIGHT OF THEIR GLORY THAT IS THE POSSESSIONS YOU MUST FORSAKE UPON THE LAP OF THE LORD OUR SAVIOR HE IS WAITING FOR YOU HE IS IN LOVE WITH YOU AND IT IS GOOD THAT IT IS SO

And so on and so on, until you're sort of waiting for the moment where they'll pull out the gun and start plugging away. Whenever the subway hits a stop, she shuts up and sits down, in order to let another gullible batch of commuters into the train. Once the doors shut and we're off, sure enough she's up again and yelling at us.

What's probably saddest about all of this is the fact that Crazy Jesus Woman isn't even quoting from the New Testament. That, at least, I could understand if not condone. the Bible's full of wisdom, after all; and even though I might not be interested in hearing it at that particular moment on the subway, I could at least sympathize with someone being devoted enough to the text to want to share it.

But Crazy Jesus Woman wasn't quoting from any religious text that I ever heard of — bitch was freestyling. You have to admire the balls on someone who has hundreds of pages of text freely available that religious experts testify is the Word of God Himself, and she's thinking, "You know what, it's cool and all that Jesus has a few speeches written out or whatever, but let me just do my own thing here. I hate memorizing shit."

St. Peter, what the fuck is that woman talking about down there?

Her? That's a frothing lunatic, My Lord. She's on a subway screaming at people that they should worship your son.

Ugh. Again with the son. I so regret that now. Is it working, then? Do humans like the subway screaming thing?

Oh, my word, no.

Then why is she doing it? And why isn't she quoting the fucking Bible?

Apparently she felt she had some points to add, Sir.

Right. Right. Because, no, totally, I took the fucking time to transcribe MY WILL through the voices of divinely appointed prophets — but yeah, fuck it, let's peg the fucking Gospel of Janice on in there, I'm sure she has some really cool points.

What, for reals?

NO, NOT MOTHERFUCKING FOR REALS! KILL HER NOW!

I got to the point where I was getting so fed up with her screaming, I was considering leaving the train and waiting for another one. Hell, I admit I might have even briefly daydreamed about walking over and beaning her head off one of the subway poles (followed, perhaps, by lots of shocked stares and me saying "What?") Luckily for me, just as I was getting ready to storm out, she suddenly bowed, thanked us all as if we were giving her a standing ovation, and walked off herself. All of this leading me to the most salient take-away point from all this that I was hoping Christians across America could pay attention to: what a complete turn-off this is for your religion in the eyes of potential Christians-in-waiting.

I was half-hoping Crazy Jesus Woman might open up the floor for questions, since after listening to her for a half hour, I was burning to ask: "Um, about this Heaven place you keep mentioning. Will you be there? Because I'm trying to imagine an eternity spent listening to this, and Hell's sounding pretty good right now." Seriously, guys: religion is, at the end of the day, a lifestyle choice. If this is the absolute best you can do, I'm terribly sorry, but no.

Think about it: Scientology's got every A-list Hollywood star you can think of; even Satanism managed to land a few rock stars to bolster its credibility. You don't see Zoroastrians hollering tumor-motivated nonsense at me until I give enough change or solemn nods for them to stop. Say what you will about these religions: at least they know who to turn away. Why is it that any time I'm forced to walk past a shit-smelling lunatic with a divot in his skull, two wandering eyes and a burning drive to tell me about a deity, nine times out of ten it's about Jesus? What sort of campaign are you people running where you think it's a good idea to have shitheads like this on the frontlines?

Kirk Cameron, Christians. Kirk Cameron. He's a pretty famous Christian. He's relatively good-looking. I'm sure he cleans up nice. And he strikes me as polite and generally well-spoken. Put his dumb ass on the fucking subway if you're that hard up for followers. I can deal with a suit-and-tied Kirk Cameron spouting Jesus-fueled nonsense at me and trying to hand me pamphlets. Motherfucker was on Growing Pains, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt. Keep the cleft-lipped illiterate bottom feeders making breadsticks in the kitchen for the next fundraising dinner.

It's not rocket science, Christians — if you're that desperate for my business, put your best foot forward. Put the gimpy, gangrenous foot that smells like poop under a blanket. That's called MARKETING.