If you have ridden transport systems in other cities, such as the New York Subway or the D.C. metro, you've probably abided by some rules of etiquette. Such rules may include: standing on the right side of escalators and walking on the left, allowing everyone to exit a train car before you enter or giving up your seat for an elderly person. These unspoken rules seem pretty common sense, don't they?
In Boston, things are different. When riding the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority's trains, it is truly every man for himself. Once you leave the lovely, historical, bustling streets of Boston and descend into the rat filled, smelly underworld of the T, nice people turn into sallow-cheeked, malicious, desperate, tunnel trolls. The smiling man who held the door of Dunkin' Donuts for you above ground, will body check you out of the way in order to make it through the closing doors of a train car in time. (But can you really blame him? It feels like some lines only come once every third Tuesday at exactly midnight, if it's a full moon and raining and the queen of England has her period and the mayor of Boston recently trimmed his nose hair.)
As a frequent T rider, I have determined that the only hard and fast rule of the T is that if you have to puke, do it in the tracks.
As any Bostonian will tell you, one of the great joys of the T is the loud, hellish, squealing noise the train makes as it pulls into a stop. This noise chills the blood of any unsuspecting tourist, and you can spot an out-of-towner a mile away by the look of horror on their face as they descend apprehensively into the screaming, gaping maws of a T stop. The sound of a thousand shrieking souls being burned in a fiery pit will remind them more of another kind of underworld than it will of a simple underground train system, but Bostonians will tell you it's all a part of the city's "gritty charm."
Now you're probably thinking, it can't be all bad—after all, thousands of people willingly depend on this system for their transportation to and from work, parties, drug-fueled orgies, family gatherings, baseball games, underground nudist polka music festivals, parks, restaurants and every other obligation or leisure activity under the sun. And you would be correct in that assumption, in fact, there are several marvelous things about the T.
The T is so often late or broken down, that saying you had troubles on the T is always a valid excuse whether its legitimate, or you just danced to one too many Beyonce songs in the shower that morning. Also, often, the T is free! (Not really I know) but only once in a blue moon will a gate attendant actually be at a T stop, so squeezing behind that friend whose mom sprung for the unlimited semester T pass is routine for many Boston dwellers. (Mom, I do not do this—don't worry—and when I see this happen, I pray for divine forgiveness for the sinner's soul.)
Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, the T is a judgement-free zone. When I first arrived in Boston, I was sitting on the T one day, minding my own business, when an old woman wearing nothing but lime green (down to her liberally applied eyeshadow and two foot tall top hat) casually took a seat across from me. I would be looking around wide eyed, fighting laughter and growing terror as I considered the possibility that the reason it seemed no one else saw her, was because she was a whimsical hallucination of my overworked, ADHD medicine fueled brain.
As I've become more and more of a seasoned T rider, I've realized my madness does not manifest in the form of imaginary color coordinated women on the T, but that Bostonians simply don't care. You can openly pee your pants halfway to Lechmere on the green line and loudly narrate the experience and most people won't even look up from their crossword puzzles. I once watched a man sit right next to a woman who was violently vomiting into a plastic bag and he didn't even pause his story about the stripper whose water bra popped and spilled in his drink, that he was relating into his cellphone. I know someone who swears they once saw someone grooming a standard poodle on the T.
If you're looking for efficiency, cleanliness, organization or speed, the T is not for you. If you're looking for high odds of coming into some kind of contact with another human's bodily fluids, a good place to people watch, a cheap ride or the chance to come face to face with rats the size of a shitzu, the T is the public transportation system for you.
