The gate against fare-dodgers. A gate to prevent all entry, to keep you on the right side of the law, compel you to buy a subway ticket. No trespassing.
The gate prompts violence, makes you want to bang on it, scream for help; in New York City where the photo was taken, it makes you want to shoot through it with a gun.
I can’t reach out to the two people on the photo; their backs are turned to me - the woman boarding the train, the other woman about to take the stairs. Impossible.
The door on the gate has two locks; keys are needed. I don’t know how to pick a lock. I am stuck.
I wonder what’s behind me, on the other side of the picture? There must be a corridor, stairs leading to the gate where I stand, which could lead me out in the open. Jacques, the photographer who took this picture is no law-breaker. He must have come here from the street through some authorized route. So surely, if I turn back, I’ll find the exit. But I cannot see what lies beyond the frame of the photograph; the perspective is locked on the gate. If only he’d taken a 360° panoramic shot instead of this ridiculously claustrophobic view, I’d see the way out.
But what if the stairs never existed, or had vanished - as in some Kafka story?
NYPD officers come out of nowhere; they’ll slam me against the gate, handcuff me, beat me up. My luck is the color of my skin - white. Still, there is no escape. They’ll lock me up in some island prison off Manhattan where I’ll serve out a 360 year sentence for crimes I know nothing about. Maybe I’ll be condemned to death.
Do not panic.
I pull the door, gently. So that was the solution - gentleness. The person before me, purposefully or inadvertently, had left it ajar. I cross the threshold, pull the door behind me; it automatically clicks locked. I rush into the carriage just as the doors slide shut, shoving past the woman boarding it; I hear gun shots; the train hurtles into the tunnel. I am in an American movie; their colleagues are waiting for me at the next station. I run out of the carriage. 42nd street. I race through the labyrinth of corridors in this underground spider web. I am out in the street; yellow cab; to JFK airport. I’m seated on the plane; flight delayed; I can hear deep, loud voices, metallic sounds, noise at the front of the cabin.
I wake up from my nightmare, drenched in sweat.
I hear that Trump has succeeded Joe Biden as the 47th President of the United States.
