Commuters want you to think that they are important and the embodiment of cool. They also think they are the most important person on a train at any given time. As you ride the train you see them. Suited, wearing their fine woollen winter trench coats, quaffing their overpriced coffee that has a ridiculous name… They flick open their copy of The Metro with the other hand and stare at it without reading. They’re too good to look at anyone else but they assume that everyone else is looking at them. Despite the mundane reality of their jobs, for those few moments in the crowd they live out their own little fantasy, like they are Gordon Gekko in Wall Street… After all, who knows any different?
Of course they are none of these things, just another example of the hopeless, an offshoot of the common or garden moron, adrift in a world that they are too afraid to analyse for fear they might realise just how futile it all is. So they sit their with their doughy faces, smelling of the skincare products that the TV told them to buy, wearing the scarf that was in that magazine that called it “the must have fashion accessory for 2010” before saying the same thing about some watch the following month and nervously eying their fake leather briefcase in case someone – like a youth or something – tries to run away with the collection of office supplies they carry around.
There is something of the bovine about the commuter. Crammed into a small area they look to find a comfortable spot, seemingly unaware of the others around them. If nudged they moo a chorus that quickly reverberates around the carriage… “sorry, sorry, sorry” travels the full length of the cart, no-one really knowing what they are apologising for, just some weird tic that they know will prevent them having to interact on any meaningful level. They go back to their own private world, fixated on The Metro, trying to elongate time with their mind so the moments before work stretch out to infinity and the day never has to begin.
The truth is there behind their sad brown eyes… They are afraid even though they don’t know why. They know there’s something better than this but they don’t know what. They know they’d rather be somewhere else but can’t imagine where. They instead go through the motions, pushed forwards by imagined prods, and they trundle towards their daily destiny before coming out the other end worn down and broken. Five days a week.
Instead they try to make all of these mostly involuntary actions look like some statement of individuality, despite the fact they are unaware of how painfully uniform such statements are. There’s the “rebelllious wage-slave” commuter who bothers the others with their over-cranked but not quite LOUD iPod that plays whatever Kerrang Radio had deemed as being edgy that week, radio friendly rock but on their iPod it’s the version with all the “fucks” left in… There’s the “I’m too good for my job” commuter who takes pride in holding up a book on a subject they probably barely comprehend and aren’t even really reading anyway despite the bookmark placed at the halfway point… But look at the spine. Hardly a crease in it.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the “I’m a really successful businessman” commuter, who are often sad, pathetic middle-management types of people who work in telesales. Spoonfed a “dress for success” mantra during their twelve week induction course they had to spend the best part of their first wage packet on that suit they are wearing. They took out a bank loan for the shoes.
And the most fearsome of all is “bolshy businesswoman” commuter who will throw elbows with the same sort of gusto as a luchador and shout shrilly at anyone who even comes within a meter despite the fact there is no fucking room whatsoever. The trains taking people to Auschwitz offered a more comfortable and spacious environment… Try telling that to this creature. Still, can’t blame her for having a superiority complex. She probably is the lucky one who makes up one of the enforced female manager quota where she works.
All of them trying to peddle the illusion of personality, yet they are all the same cattle. Hilariously the façade is shattered irreparably when it comes to the simple matter of getting off the train. The doors always cause blind panic in the world of the commuter, their simple brains shutting down when faced with having to be proactive, even with the simplest of tasks.
They know when the light goes green they have to press it to make the doors open. They swarm on both sides of the door to do this and glance at each other timidly to see who is going to be the one to press it. Tension rises as the light takes longer than they had hoped to turn green and suddenly the first seeds of chaos start to bear their terrible fruit. The pushing, the blocking, the shouting… It’s like a Chinese fire drill. When the doors finally do open people swarm in both directions simultaneously, the coffees are now just scalding implements, suitcase corners are wielded like sabres.
“WE’VE GOT TO GET TO WORK… WE MUSTN’T BE LATE”
Then there are those greatest of days when the doors don’t open at all and they stand there, staring dumbly as a layer of sweat breaks out on their foreheads. They call into the office to say they will be late by an undetermined amount of time. They call loved ones making tearful calls like those made by the people in the Twin Towers before they came crashing down. Then the doors open a couple of minutes later… The train driver had just rolled into the station slightly early and was checking a few things. The doors were always going to open.
Panic over. Some awkward laughter. “I wasn’t scared for a moment”. Eyes roll up into head and the cattle go to work.