Tying the tie

Starting from the top and working down, the tie in this true story is setup. Working up from the ground, it is punchline. Worked in somewhere in the middle, allegory.

I like allegory, so …

I was on the subway, waiting for a train home after an evening of light drinking in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when a commotion started down the platform.

Subway platforms, whilst being the most impersonal of places, tend to be the most likely places for conversation. We are thrust together with nothing (or little) in common except for the events right in front of us. We have, probably for the only time, a shared base of conversation regardless of our race, class, education or temperament.

“Didja see that guy piss all over the floor?”
“Si!”
“What the fuck, huh? Reminds me of the time …”

Guys pissing and kids being cute are events that bind us in our universal humanity. God bless their full-bladdered, cute-being hearts. We owe them.

The commotion in this true story wasn’t about urine or cute, though. It was about a tie. Specifically a short, fat, canary yellow tie on a short, fat black man wearing an untucked canary yellow shirt, baggie, fat-man shorts, candy-cane socks and rainbow sneakers.

This specific man and this specific tie were having a hard time coming to terms. The damn thing wouldn’t tie and he was looking for help, but he wasn’t listening to it.

His first Samaritan was a ragged, old Hispanic fellow accessorized in glasses ripped off Elton John’s face. He tried, but Fat Man failed to grasp the “around and between” steps integral to tie tying. Fat Man was convinced “around and over” was correct.

Sorry, but if you have no “between”, you have no knot.

He asked me if I could help. I can tie a tie, a fact I avoided disclosing because I have a firm policy against assuming the role of Patron Saint of Lost Causes”.

“Sorry, man. If I could tie a tie I’d be a whole lot farther along in life.

Fat Man got angry … with the first Samaritan for being stupid about ties.

He said, “You’re stupid about ties. You don’t know shit.”

“I tole you, you have to go between. You don’t listen.

“You don’t have to know how to tie a tie to be a man,” Fat Man said to no one in particular.

“I tole you how to do it!”

“You didn’t tell me shit.”

The Samaritan turned his back to Fat Man, and said in low tones, “I tole you.”

A second Samaritan, a heavy set, grandmotherly looking Hispanic woman, joined the commotion by taking the tie from Fat Man and wrapping it around her own neck. In a blur of action, she’d tied the tie, slipped it over her head, dropped it around Fat Man’s neck and cinched it tight.

Fat Man looked down at his tie and showed it to the first Samaritan with pride. “That’s how you tie a tie, stupid.”

“I tole you how.”

“You told me ‘over’.”

“I tole you between.”

Ah, human bonding.