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This morning there was a really smelly homeless person on the train. I saw some people moving from one end of the car to the other. Then I saw the people covering their noses and grimacing. The smelly person was coming from the front of the train. He kind of looked like Ol' Dirty Bastard but taller. He wore a Nautica jacket and baggy, gray sweat pants that hung over his Nikes that were falling apart. At first I didn’t smell him. He was walking through the car slowly, going from pole to pole and putting out his hands, putting them in his jacket and rubbing his face a lot. From what I heard I don’t think he could speak coherently. He came near me and I looked at his face. He turned around and I saw stains on the back of his pants - some brown, some red - elongated as if they were liquid-y and runny at one point. When I did smell him I got up and went with the other people who were visibly reacting to him. We all went through the in-between-cars doors and sat in the next car. A black woman was laughing and an older white woman was making an S.A.T.-word facial expression. The black woman said, “Oh, he smells so bad.” The older white lady said, "He's coming this way and he's touching everything. Oh god." All the people that moved with me were looking back into the car we just came from with concerned facial expressions. We saw that he was progressing through the cars behind us. After two or three cars he caught up to us and the white woman said, “Oh my god.” She got up and went to the doors and we all went through the doors to the next car. We rode there until the train made a stop. Someone said the next car was the last car. I walked towards and past the really smelly man, not breathing and staring straight ahead. I walked out of the subway car and then back into the car we had just come from. Eventually the original group that was avoiding the really smelly man headed towards the front of the train like I had done. They must have also had to walk close to and then past the smelly man. They caught up to me as I continued going between cars towards the front of the train. We were looking back into the cars behind us and we could see that he was "gaining on us." I thought, "It must be obvious to him that we are avoiding him. This person is persistent yet oblivious." I went through the between-car doors again and quickly. I went through three cars and sat down. I looked at the other people’s faces and thought about the people who are trying to escape the smelly person. I thought, "He’s following them because they keep trying to escape him." A well dressed, elderly Asian couple who had been with me as we escaped to the back of the train came into the car I was in. More people came into the car that I was in as it was moving. They were different than the original group. Two of them were middle-age Indian men. I went through all the between-car doors until I got to the very front of the train. The train was not on its usual line and stopped at each station for longer than normal. It seemed likely that the smelly person would be in the front car before my stop. As the elderly Asian couple entered the front car I was at the front end of it. My facial expression was like uncontrollably enthused. I got off at West 4th street and walked the rest of the way to work. I was early enough on this day to do that. On the street I thought, "My life is sort of like that smelly guy's life in that there is something definitely wrong with me but I don’t know how to fix it and people are moving away from me so I am just going to keep moving towards them until I figure out what is wrong, hopefully I get fixed soon."
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