I have been a witness to many incidents in the train, being a train regular in two lines (the MRT, and the LRT line2). Why do I start this blog with this particularly nauseating one? Hmmm. It’s because after this incident happened I promised someone I would, so true to my word, I did.

So here’s my first tale among many about my insane train rides.

I was on my way home after having dinner and a couple of drinks with my officemates. I got to the Ayala train station just in the nick of time, so I hurriedly got my prepaid train ticket, inserted it into the machine, breezed through the short walk down to the platform, waited for the train, and boarded once it got there.

There was nothing different in the train, save for the drunk man beside me.

He looked a bit pasty as he swayed to the movement of the train, and after three stations was breaking out in what appeared to be cold sweat. Before we hit the fourth station (Guadalupe), IT happened. In an act only preceded by maybe, I don’t know, to me maybe the worldwide outbreak of the Ebola virus, the man puked. Right inside the train. Right there beside me. On the floor. On my knapsack. On my sandals. On the exposed part of my Bahama pants-clad gams. On my foot. There were gross amounts of masticated and half-digested bits of what obviously was Barfboy’s dinner all over me.

Barfboy was quite good-looking. In fact, he was very good looking. He had a boyish air about him, and he was fairly tall (I calculated this from the puke projectile – he was tall enough to hit the protruding front pocket of my backpack, but not my hair. Goodie). He looked like he was old enough to drive, but not drive his kid to school. Dressed in a tee, denims, and sneaks, he looked like an altogether pretty cool guy.

So what did I do. Actually, I could have prepared for the sordid disaster. I already heard him mutter under his breath, “I don’t feel so well”. That should have been my green light to emergency mode, which meant I could have reacted in two ways, both of which are fairly good solutions when a pasty drunk man was beside you in cramped train mumbles stuff like that.

1. Look for a barf bag – anything would do, as long as it is big enough to accommodate a fair amount of puke and will not dissolve upon the reception of colloidal food substances.
2. Leave.

During that evening, thought, it seemed that my early warning devices were kaput. So what did I do. What I did, for me can only be comparable to Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta. I helped Barfboy. I held Barfboy steady as he puked, then escorted him out the train while pacifying him, repeatedly saying, “It’s okay, I’m here, kaya ‘yan, ok lang yan”. I supported him as he staggered out into the Guadalupe platform, where he hurled again near the doorway of the train. I steadied him as he blew once more by the escalators a couple of feet away from the trains. On normal days he must be a real gentleman, as he woozily took out a hanky from his bag and wiped some of the not-quite digested scraps of gunk away from my bag, after which he proceeded to clean his own messed up sneakers. After that, the worst was over.

We rested for a while. There were no available benches, so I sat him by the stairs, where he seemed to regain a bit of color. He leaned on the wall, trying to salvage whatever dignity he had left, while I mulled around aimlessly, icking at the barf bits still sticking to my skin, trying to figure out how to clean my still kinda gloop-topped bag, but mostly waiting for him to be sober enough to board the train again.

My sweet readers (yes, all three of you) who I thank dearly for prodding on, by now you’re probably sarcastic. “You got this in a movie – this is sooo My Sassy Girl” “Stuff like this never happens to me, and I ride the train everyday too!” “You’re making this up, it’s just not possible, it’s too surreal” yada yada… but I tell you, with the honesty that the Boy Who Cried Wolf can never muster: this is a firsthand account. Do not doubt my veracity. Puke isn’t nice. Ask the evening shift janitors of the train. They know what I’m talking about.

So what maotivated me to do what I did.

It was definitely not kindness. I’m not a kind person – I bump strangers, I stare, I very rarely offer my chair to the elderly (in fairness to me, when it seems like the senior citizen has a real bad case of osteoporosis, I give way, and I always give way to pregnant women, but only if their tummies are big enough), I disrupt people by putting the volume so high on my player that it sounds more like a monster boombox than an itty-bitty mp3 player, I talk loudly on my phone when I get calls in the train. I don’t think it was sympathy, either. Unkind people don’t feel sympathy. Maybe occasionally we feel a deep pang down in the gut, but most of the time we confuse it with either hunger or a profound need for nicer shoes.

I think it was because I was a bit drunk too, and my alcohol-muddled brain thought that two drunks were better than one. Especially if the other one looked like a clammy half-twit (oh but a good-looking clammy half-twit!) who has a weak stomach and on an apparent motion sickness trip, but who nonetheless was obviously in need of some help. Help, which I felt, no one sober would offer.

I dunno. I don’t think I can trace it. There’s a lot of factors. But that’s the train – it’s a crazy ride. Things happen.

By the time the third train from the one we left in stench rolled by, he felt well enough to ride. So we did. It was pretty quiet. At 10pm trains normally are. Barfboy behaved like a gentleman. We sat down beside each other and didn’t try to do anything funny or vulgar or disgusting (thank heavens, I had enough of disgusting for one night).

Barfboy and I both went down Cubao. He could have had a soda or two at GoNuts Donuts to recuperate, took the bus home, stared at his grimy shoes, met the girl of his dreams. Hmmmm. Could have. Me? I went home – a jeep ride and a tricycle away and I’m nestled in my place of wrest. When I got there, I took a look at my bag, shook my head, sighed, got a tissue and wiped my gloopy bag and my grubby calves clean.

Tomorrow will be another insane train day.