Hi everybody!
It's me, Mike here talking about a dude who fell asleep on me this morning who was on some sort of hard drug while I was on the train. He was 19-20, 160 lbs, bullring nose-piercing, and a weird ear piercing wearing a Tool shirt from a concert so long ago he must have been 13 years old to attend it.
As I sat doing my crosswords and listening to Beck, this young chap stumbled onto the train and sat next to me, on my left. As the train took off he immediately fell asleep and began doing that slowly drifting off thing we all do when we are tired for a day of school. But this young man had a dried scab on his forehead that was drifting precariously close to my shoulder. I cannot have some stranger's blood on my nicely ironed shirt before I go to make comics. NO! So, leaned forward and he fell behind me, jostling himself awake. Close call.
A few moments pass, and it starts happening again. He drifts closer and closer to me. I clear my throat and he straitens up. A few moments pass, then he just slumps over and rests his head on my shoulder. This would've been cute if it were James Holland of Made of Babies, but this man was no sexy looker like The Hollandaise. I don't know if I was empowered by the classic tunes of Odelay or the fact that I was worried about my shirt, but I popped his head off by thrusting my shoulder. I was angry. He looked at me, confused. The way a small child looks at you when you take away his/her toy for no good reason. I looked at him and said, a bit too loudly, "I'm not your fucking pillow, dude." Everyone within earshot tensed up. Was there going to be an altercation? Fisticuffs perhaps? No! My sleepy friend merely said, confused, "No, you're not." and went back to sleep. We agreed upon something.
My outburst did no good, as he fell asleep on me again. So, gave him a nice, chunky, open-mouthed, wet smoker's cough to the side of the head which barely roused him, and in no time I was at Union Square, ready to transfer trains. It was lovely. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
-Mike
