What Are You Into?

The F train.  Oh, the F train.  I wish there was a song about the "F," as there is one about the "A."  I would do Ella proud if I could scat some sentimental vocable about the ace aspects of the "F."  But there are none.  It is perhaps the smelliest, and the slowest of its sisters; suffering from systematic breaks in its choo-choo make-up.  But last night, I was happy to be waiting a long time for the "F."  Instead of "f__k" it, it was a fare-well-spent. It gave me a chance to observe life underground; and experience an untold amount of spiritual wisdom.  It came like this.  A man was selling vintage comic books, a great array of "Spiderman," and a group of his mighty cartoon cousins.  Initially, the man was having no luck engaging the nonchalant crowd.  Repeatedly he cried out in earnest "Two comics for one dollar, five for ten."  And then came the mantra: "What are you into? What do you like?"  Slowly, just barely dribbling in, another man wearing a three-piece suit stared intently at one of the myriad muscle-clad super-heroes; so intently, that I thought maybe he himself was one of those heroes sprung to life.  I fantasized about his days spent as an office drone, and his nights spent saving gotham.  But no-matter.  As the man-in-suit, cum superman, spent time looking at a few of the comics, a few others, men and women, sensing something was in the air, started flocking to the comics and the man selling them.  Again, “What are you into? What do you like?” blared and blotted out the other inconsequential subway platform noise. Here, I thought in the most unlikely environment -  a microcosm of the workings of the world we live in.  It takes just one person to be interested in something or someone, and then lo and behold, the interest fans out and over, like live volcanic ash blanketing and sparking its surrounding region.  People started buying the comics in a rush, one, two, three, four, five.  The man selling, kept on with his incantation – “What are you into? What do you like?”  Apparently the crowd liked it all, because by the time the “F” rolled in to the station, the stash was practically gone. 

Comparatively, right now I am slow to catch on.  I continually invoke: “What are you into? What do you like?,” sounding rather grimly, like the sleazy query a sex-worker must ask her john of the hour.  I have “caught on” in fits and starts in the past, and the popularity lasted for a time, and then it went away, as suddenly and mysteriously as it entered.  I admit that I am not the popular girl right now.  I guess there is no formula for it; just a lasting inner impression, that good or bad, this too shall pass.  So I will continue to do my time, and others will eventually get on board.  And to that, and in the spirit of things considered, I will improvise a nonsensical vocal retort, something to the tune of “scat-a-tat-tat” a la Ella.