The jogger who perspired on me at 34th and Park Wednesday evening.
I was making my way to the 5:46 out of Grand Central, and you were jogging (or maybe it’s pronounced yogging?) on the sidewalk, heading south. We were both going at a pretty good clip.
You were a man of about 28, brown hair, healthy looking. You looked like one of those guys who’s still in his honeymoon period of living in Manhattan–work at some downtown banking institution, drinks at some overly loud Murray Hill watering hole, with any luck a walk home with some staggering Third and Long trollop.
You wore a t-shirt that said The Funk Inside. I’m not quite sure what The Funk Inside refers to, my funky friend. A band, perhaps, that does mean versions of Sly and the Family Stone songs in bars near the University of South Carolina campus. An annual fraternity party, maybe. I don’t know.
And I don’t care, except you failed to keep your funk inside. There was a narrow space between me and a woman pedestrian, and instead of slowing down to let the space widen, or go around us altogether, you attemped to squeeze through. In the process, your arm sweat transferred itself to my arm.
It wasn’t the Funk Inside I was concerned about. It was the Funk Outside–the Funk now affixed to my arm.
I felt the cooties the rest of my walk to the train, Funkmaster Flex, and then for another 45 minutes on the train, and even into my bike ride home, during which my sweat finally defeated your sweat as I labored up Heartbreak Hill on Broad Street.
Cut back on your bar tab at Brother Jimmy’s, oh Funky One, and join a damn gym.
Skeeved,
Trainjotting