Well, you know I now have a whole raft of drunk-people-on-Metro-North stories. Here’s another. As I was riding home late at night recently, there was a drunk high school girl wailing hysterically. Her friends were trying in vain to console her. Nearby was a different crowd of high school seniors and college freshman, all guys, almost certainly lacrosse players. (I played lacrosse in high school and I know the type.) They were also drunk, and laughing uproariously at this girl’s misery. The girl’s friends tried various tacts to get them to shut up, ranging from reasoned (“Come on, guys. She’s had a hard night. Take it easy on her.”) to superior (“You guys are being so immature.”) to confrontational (“Shut the fuck up or you’re going to get smacked by a girl!”). Regardless of what they said, the guys just laughed louder, mimicked them, or dared them to go ahead and start swinging. Finally, the train stopped and the girls got up to leave. As the girls dragged their drunk friend off the train, they had to hold her back from lunging at the guys. The wailing girl shrieked at the guys and tried to claw at them and pounded the glass as she was led away. Of course this just made them laugh even louder.
As I watched these guys laugh, I thought very clearly, These guys are not human in the same way that I’m human. Since earliest childhood, I’ve never been able to understand why people derive pleasure and entertainment from making other people miserable. That instinct just isn’t in me. The sad thing is, they seem to be the normal ones. I was talking recently with someone about why I had included R.A. Salvatore’s Homeland on my list of favorite books. Since it’s a Dungeons & Dragons media tie-in novel, it’s automatically suspect among literary sf snobs. My answer is that when I read it as a teenager it perfectly captured my feelings. The book is about the drow, evil elves who live in cities underground and are totally amoral. The protagonist, Drizzt, is an aberration — a drow who actually has a conscience. For this he suffers, and will never fit in with his people, and eventually leaves them. That’s basically how I’ve felt for most of my life.
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