On a sunny Saturday in September, my boyfriend and I decided to take the N train from his apartment in Astoria, Queens, to Manhattan, to get some brunch in the city.
Because God forbid we not be the physical embodiment of gentrification at all times.
The train was crowded that day, but we managed to get two seats together at the end of a bench. It’s our custom to pass time on the subway by silently judging the strangers around us and trading knowing glances with each other, sharing our unkind thoughts with the kind of telepathy that couples develop when they share a mutual love of being snarky, unpleasant people. And on that particular morning, our attention was drawn to a woman sitting across from us, who was desperately rummaging through her tote bag.
She had her arm buried up to the shoulder in this bag; she was digging through it like she was Mary Poppins desperately jonesing for a cigarette she’d dropped at the bottom of her magical carpet bag. We were starting to wonder just what she could be so desperate to find when her face suddenly lit up with triumph, and she pulled out her prize. I don’t know what exactly I was expecting her to pull out, but it certainly wasn’t an enormous, industrial-sized ziplock freezer bag, completely filled with peanut butter.
That’s not sugar she just took a spoonful of.
As we looked on in silent horror, she began to squish and massage the huge bag of peanut butter in her hands. The bag started out stiff, as if it had recently been in the refrigerator, but she worked it and rolled it and kneaded it until it was a warm, gooey mass of peanut butter in her hands. And when it was finally as squishy as her heart desired, she bent down and bit the corner off the bag.
She wadded the ziplock bag up like a it was a giant frosting tube, placed it in her armpit, and began squeezing out a long ribbon of peanut butter. Then she paused, made minor adjustments to the hole she’d made in the bag, and tried again. I just stared at her, open-mouthed, trying to figure out if what I was witnessing was actually real, or just an elaborate hallucination brought on by eating some bad Skippy’s.
Watching a woman ooze liquid peanut butter from her armpit was easily the grossest thing I’d seen in the last 30 minutes of my New Yorker life, but I tried to give this woman the benefit of the doubt. Really, I did. This is a city where everyone has to hustle, and for all I know, this poor woman was trying to shave a few minutes off of her busy schedule as a woman who dispenses peanut butter from a plastic bag professionally for some reason. This is a big city with a lot of strange people in it, and people will pay you to do some pretty weird shit.
By this point, half the people in the train car had stopped what they were doing to watch this woman give a deep-tissue massage to a freezer bag full of peanut butter, and we all looked on together with growing trepidation as the woman reached back into her bag and pulled out an entire box of saltine crackers.
As someone who has managed to be drunk, broke and hungry at the same time at many points throughout my life, I had a good idea where this was going.
Sure enough, the woman carefully laid out crackers across her lap like she was putting down bathroom tile, and when every inch of her thighs was covered with cracker, she commenced squirting enormous amounts of hot, gooey peanut butter across each and every one. When her entire lap was laden with peanut butter and every person with a peanut allergy within a 3-mile radius was probably dead, she pulled out another sleeve of crackers, and started smashing them down on top of the first ones to make tiny peanut-butter-and-public-cry-for-help sandwiches.
I was torn between gawking at her and wanting desperately to look away.
This is less intimate than watching a stranger consume approximately 4lbs of mystery freezer bag peanut butter on a train.
I did not think that human beings were capable of unhinging their jaws like pythons, but this woman put the limits of human anatomy to the test as she opened her mouth and began consuming her peanut buttery bounty. And when the pile of crackers and peanut butter in her lap was finished, she reached back into her bag for another sleeve of crackers, hoisted the freezer bag under her armpit, and began the process anew. I have seven years of formal post-secondary education in both language and human psychology, but I lack the words necessary to describe the sounds, smells and emotions this woman evoked as she scarfed down approximately a weeks’ worth of calories in squished cracker sandwiches.
I was so engrossed in the spectacle that I barely noticed when the train pulled into our stop; if my boyfriend hadn’t gently led me out of the train car and into the station, I might still be sitting on that N train, watching her eat what I can only assume was a literally endless supply of crackers and bulk-brand nut butter.
Pictured: this woman shopping for peanut butter.
My boyfriend and I wandered the streets of Manhattan for a while, suddenly no longer hungry. Who was Peanut Butter Girl? Why did she have the daily protein needs of approximately four Dwayne “the Rock” Johnsons? Why did she take the time to scoop large quantities of peanut butter into a plastic bag, when it already comes in a resealable, easy-to-transport container?
We eventually got brunch that day, but we did not get answers.
We will never have answers.
For more stories about the weird and wonderful people of NYC, check out my guide to convincing jaded New Yorkers that you’re totally not a lost bumpkin from Ohio.
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I nearly died laughing. Neighbors are probably worried.
Weirdest story that comes to mind is on Greyhound bus, sitting next to a veteran keeping a ferret in his bag. I think she had a tube for protection. I didn’t ask where she, uh, went to the bathroom.
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What a great story–though as someone who is deathly allergic to peanuts, I was reading it wondering how long til the next stop because even the smell makes me break out in hives.
There are, indeed, a LOT of weird things that happen on public transit. Probably my creepiest experience: once on the T in Boston, a guy got on with an enormous trench coat, long beard and wild eyes got on and sat across from us. Some teenagers were laughing rather loudly next to us, maybe about him, maybe not. But he seemed to think it was about him. Or at least he took a dislike to the young people. He opened his trench coat and took out a piece of paper and some very long scissors. Staring at them, unblinkingly, he slowly sliced the paper. Then, he tucked the scissors back inside his trench coat and pulled out a long, sharp knife. With the knife, he continued to slice the paper, letting the slivers fall onto the floor. The teens and gradually the whole car grew very, very quiet. It was chilling, and I think I held my breath all the way until the next stop, which, thankfully, was ours.
I could not stop reading, and wondering, and feeling ill at ease about the entire situation. I can’t make regular food in my kitchen without making a mess, so I am sort of in awe of her peanut butter and crackers on the train situation. Thank you for this. Thank you so much.
Dear. God. She will haunt my dreams for years.
That was a very funny story. As a fellow Astorian (Astorite?) I have seen some crazy things on the N/W trains, but peanut butter from armpit might take the cake.
Right? Riding the N is normally a relatively sane experience – it’s the 4/5/6 train that gives me most of my material for these stories.
this is genuinely one of the funniest things i’ve ever read
Thanks!! High praise!
Well I’m never eating peanut butter again.
Honestly, same.
This story is unpleasantly familiar–not because of the narrative itself, which is excellent as always–but because I have certainly encountered strange people doing fucked up things on trains, horrifyingly throughout the US (and one time in France where I literally watched a guy pull down his pants, actually shit in his hand, smear it on the window, and them sketch some honestly pretty intricate, almost artistic figures. Most people raced off, getting an usher, but I was too transfixed by what was occurring. I held my nose gaping. This really is a true story). Thank you for your story and I look forward to part 2.
Honestly, public transit is such a constant source of stories and inspiration that I don’t think I’ll ever own a car.