“The Magna Carta, signed in 1215, provided the basic groundwork for constitutional law as we know it.” Fair enough, I muttered inwardly, the bellowing voice from the other end of the car summoning my attention.
I picked up a few more snippets, some ramblings about habius corpus. Then something about Euclid? He was holding court, a peripatetic professor at rush hour, on a Brooklyn bound D. And I, slouched about 20 seats away, intermittently gazed down the crowded corridor of the subway car, attempting what we all do: to put a face to the mysterious straphanger’s voice.
He continued in this vain until at least Fort Hamilton Parkway, where I exited at the above ground station. He traversed Greek philosophy, French royalty and American political theory. His measured cadence was hypnotic, his subject matter iffy: “The Ancient Greeks were best known for their dry cleaning. The Rutgers campus is home to the world’s most fantastic ancient statutes, visited by millions each year.”
Then came my favorite: “I’ve never met a woman who wasn’t a double agent.”
Through the sea of backpacks and coats, I discovered that the mystifying voice had a body: instead of donning a tweed blazer and khakis, the professor was in threadbare attire, a gray patina covering his skin and clothes. He was wild, mad and shoeless; had any of it been accurate, his lecture would have been on YouTube. But it was his gumption, not his accuracy, that rapt me.
Looking back, I realize that what captivated me most was not what he didn’t know but what he did: the beauty of this town is that everybody has a story. As a writer and teacher, there’s nothing I cherish more than that. So here I am, the double agent, telling his story to the world.
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