I’m waiting for the subway at 12:36 am after my coworker’s Passover Seder where only 1.5 out of the 15 attendees were Jewish (the host’s husband recently converted). My first Seder was several years back, when I was dating the German. She went to high school at the English language school in Munich, which was apparently quite prestigious. All her closest friends were Jewish, and many of them found themselves in New York in the second half of their twenties. The proceedings of the Seder were in German and Hebrew, so I didn’t really follow. Afterwards we drank wine and listened to J. Cole.
The train finally arrives. Two doors open: on one, a gruff man with a bicycle flipped over and a wrench, performing repairs beside an open 40oz of malt liquor. On the other, a seemingly bland group of normal looking people. My fiancée pulls me towards the second car, as I eye what exactly the guy is doing to his bicycle. As it turns out, the group of people we sit next to are all French and reek of cigarette smoke, which makes her nauseous.