Gangsters and the Blue Line

It was one of those Blue Line moments on the way home tonight. I took a later train than usual after getting off work late, and was riding through the hood around 8:00. The train was packed, standing room only and people at the stations were purposefully not getting on, opting instead to wait for the next train, presumably with some more room.

The lack of space didn't seem to keep people from making more of it... lots more of it, when the time came. Listening to classical music (currently enjoying Bach's violin concertos) on the train can lend a surreal quality to an already slightly off kilter situation. The thing about gangsters is that they aren't hard to recognize, with the way they tend to favor a primary color... hot or cold, blue or red... and the way that they tend to have tattoo's scrawled on their arms, necks and bodies... sort of like humanistic versions of cinder block ghetto walls, space claimed for whatever set they happen to be down for.

When I found myself sitting across from two of them, it wasn't that big of a deal. That's just life on the blue line, humanity in all of its walks, crammed into a big, electrical powered box on wheels rolling down the tracks. When another huge guy, decked out in blue hopped onto the train, all tatted up like seemingly half of the other males on the train, he didn't seem all that out of place. To the guys next to me though, he was.

In the space of a few hand gestures, and a few hard glares, the reality of the situation took a decided turn. The guys who were seated stood up, fixing the new comer with the kind of glares that conveyed, "You don't belong here." For his part, the new comer didn't seem to care, he seemed to find it interesting, wearing a smirk, his eyes saying, "What are you going to do about it?"

People started clearing out, making room... as if such things are normal in these kind of situations. Nobody wanted to get caught in the middle of whatever was about to go down. There was so much testosterone, and fear and anger hanging in the air, held together by a palatable tension. Clenched fists, the two guys next to me trying to figure out what they're going to do about the newest arrival standing so tall that he nearly bumped his head on the roof of the car, and built like an NFL reject.

It didn't make any sense to me. Why is it that three brothers can't exist in the same space as each other? What was it about that trio of cats that necessitated such posturing, such inclinations toward violence. Of course nothing happened... gangsters don't fight like that. Gangsters don't fight until there are a lot of them, or one of them is armed. Then it's on... luckily tonight it wasn't.