I’m riding home on the train as usual: head bobbing, checking e-mail on the iPhone, reading a book until drowsiness sets in and the terror of missing my stop brings me to abrupt attention. I take inventory of my fellow passengers. The neck of the Cordon Bleu-uniformed chef-in-training strains at a crazy angle, his head bobbing in sleep. A couple and their four young kids occupy two booths, the kids sprawled in sleep, their dozing father’s mouth hanging agape, framed by a dark goatee.
The fellow facing me, sitting one row ahead, works his laptop computer and phone intermittently. Something glistening on his lower lip draws my attention. Gradually, the glistening stuff grows, forming a tiny pond of bubbles where the top and bottom lips meet.
Then he inhales. The tiny bubbles disappear.
He exhales, and the pond of white bubbly froth grows again, this time larger. Stealthily, I watch as the glistening glob threatens to grow large enough to descend from lip to chin and splash upon his computer’s screen. Surely, he knows of the threat; he’s not even asleep!
He again sucks in his breath. The spittle disappears in a tug-of-war against gravity. For thirty minutes, the battle rages unabated.
I steal a photograph, diverting his attention by imitating video game maneuvers on my iPhone. But it’s tough capturing moving spit on a bounding train while ducking the occasional roving eye of The Spittle King. I capture the mere glisten of the froth.
It all seems so normal to him, this spit-balancing act. Is he unaware of the gag-inducing display? A wedding band encircles his finger. Surely his spouse has attempted to set aright this dismaying demonstration of salivary locomotion!
It’s my train stop. No need to leave the show; it’s also The Spittle King’s stop. I wait for him to exit the train before me. I follow him, examining the pavement for wet, glistening bubbles in his trail.
As I turn toward home, I wonder what sort of King I myself might be. My own ingrained habits are invisible to me. But to the neighbors in my life, they glisten, distract and annoy.
Time to start the inventory.