We Can Not Ask for More, We Can Not Ask for More

The other day on the subway I had a chilling experience that revealed how deeply the commercial world is prepared to penetrate our private lives. I was on the F train going to work, in my usual caffeine buzz as yet uninterrupted by congress with another human. Like many New Yorkers, I work on creative tasks at home, ones that require me to descend into my unconscious, probe for symbols and memories, confront fears and monsters and often cry uncontrollably before I’ve even had my morning muesli. Then I go on the subway to a job where a few conversations about the humidity level or the problem of bees in someone’s garage can chase the cobwebs away.

But the subway is a zone of perpetual anxiety. It’s underground, it has been cited as a terrorist target, it can contain freaks and horrors. Of course most riders have books and of course I had my face buried in one when ‘they’ got on. But the long, identically colored purple and gold robes caught my eye and I looked up to see a group of young women, all in long black wigs and medieval-looking ceremonial robes, file onto the subway and take seats or hold poles. There were a lot of them – maybe ten. Even the most weirdo-hardened New Yorkers blinked at them briefly, made ‘huh?’ grimaces at each other and then ignored the women because they were, you know, weirdos.

But I couldn’t stop glancing at their faces. They had expressionless, tranced out eyes. None of them smiled or talked to each other. They stared into space creepily. They resembled a surreal vision out of a Bunuel film or haunted people who have been kidnapped and taken over by dangerous cult leaders – fresh from a stint with David Koresh or Brian David Mitchell. Their long, flowing hair was consistent with the image of deranged cult leaders who demand multiple wives in traditionally feminine robes with long hair and accommodating ways. But were these women being sexually tyrannized? Or were they going to appear on Broadway? My heart thumping uneasily, I scrutinized them surreptitiously for signs of unwilled subjugation.

Like most of us, one of my deepest fears is of blank-eyed women in black wigs and long robes appearing to walk among us. I had a recurring nightmare when I was little about a nun – what’s scarier than a nun? Grown-ups dressed in robes petrified me – I also had nightmares about the Ku Klux Klan. Grown men in sheets and pointy hats that obscure their faces? There is no better way to scare a kid senseless than to run around like that.

So I was frightened by the women in robes on the subway. Their eerie silence bothered me – why weren’t they laughing and joking together about their ridiculous wigs and those fake-gold robes? Why weren’t they laughing over the fact that they were all wearing the same lipstick? That’s not riotously funny, but you’d think they’d find something to take the edge off the strangeness of the situation.

They chose the creepiest stop imaginable to get out at -- 14th St. What on earth were they going to do up there? If they were going to Lincoln Center to be in an operetta, or uptown to be a barbershop quartet, okay – but 14th St. is a wasteland of discount luggage shops and fast food emporiums. Why did they want to ascend right there? I was even more weirded out. I stared at them as they filed past me and – this is true – as one of them passed me, she handed me a card and walked off the subway without a word. I snatched the card, thrilled to have a clue in my hand. Maybe it would give the name of their cult and I could help the police liberate them. Or if they were some weird religious group I could Google them and at least understand what the silent subway-riding-in-robes was all about.

On the card's thick, good-quality stock was only one line: www.jointhequest.com. Oh my God! I was part terrified, part thrilled. They hadn’t given a card to anyone else on the train. Did I look ready for subjugation? Did they see in me a longing to rise and join them as they shared their bad wigs with the bored pedestrians of 14th St.?

Could they read something lost and desperate about me? Because it’s true. I do feel lost and desperate. They’re right! I’ll go with them, and either save them or become one of them and maybe that’s the best thing for me because I’ve made a hash of my life, I’m fatally flawed and am doing more harm than good out here, as they could clearly see when they handed me this card.

When I got to work, I described the whole incident to my boss. As I talked, I started to get an all-too-familiar sinking, sick, cheesy feeling, which I saw reflected in her skeptical face. They were not a vision out of Bunuel – they were not a herd of lost souls in bad hair – they were advertising. It was true. When I looked up www.jointhequest.com it linked to the page for The Da Vinci Code movie.

Deflation, disgust, disappointment. Whoever those women were who got roped into that promotion, I was angry that someone came up with the idea to freak us out with their zombie-like aspects. Who among us doesn’t wish we were around to recognize and help Elizabeth Smart when she was still Brian David Mitchell’s captive? Who does not stare at those who give every appearance of being brainwashed because they’ve been in the news so much and always as piteously in need of our help?

Anyway, they misread their brand target. I might rise to join lost souls in long robes, but nothing could get me to the Da Vinci Code movie. I didn’t read the book, I’ve resisted the whole brouhaha because as a literary snob, I never read bestsellers. Movie theater? I need a ranch far from civilization where I can stop struggling with my ego-driven obsessions and give up free will then and there. Freedom is a burden. Advertising, though, is something worse than a burden. It’s a snake in the grass that preys on vulnerable people with overly vivid imaginations. It is our own Brian David Mitchell. (Analogy not perfect, but my point is rhetorical.)