Brother, can you spare a raft?

There was a man standing at the center of Fulton Street Rapids today, staring at a payphone.

I'll call it the Fulton Street Rapids because it is a landing in the middle of four different ramps at the Fulton Street subway station in Lower Manhattan; each ramp is going to a different train line, and each ramp is a river of blurred humans with subway-tunnel vision. It's a commuter riptide, a class 5 rush-hour rush. A leisurely pace at this crossroads could get you trampled or, worse yet, spited by the underground hordes.

As I said, there was a man standing alone at the center of all of this, right in front of the pay phone. He was definitely dirty, probably homeless, likely under the influence. I could see him playing with the coin return lever, holding the reciever, and then looking around at the people walking past with a confused and pathetic look on his face. It was a silent, transparent and laughingly awkward plea for money this guy was making. But the people just rushed on, ambivalent or oblivious.

Now, the reason I am able to recall this so clearly is not because I'm particularly observant between trains. I made a point of slowing down this time and watching this man because he did the exact same thing yesterday. Same spot, same clothes, around the same time with the same "wait, you have to pay to use these things? can't somebody help me out?" face. This was his stationary routine in the middle of everybody else's frenetic routine. Same fake phone call, different day.

I didn't give him a quarter. But if I see him there tomorrow, maybe I will. Maybe I'll just flip him a coin in a cool way, say something profound and detached, and then strut off into the rapids again...