And on the train, I don't have to push through the crowds afraid of being too far from the door. I've fantasized that one day the shadow box ads on the train will exchange the toll-free numbers of anti-choice crisis lines for short apologies from a manufacturer of something like premium baby formula. The same day, the New York Times will print the formal, full-page explanation:

This manufacturer, a pioneer in the promotion of mother-infant bonding, hereby announces, without any admission of guilt or acknowledgment of wrongdoing, that its famous and popular baby formula, marketed during the late 1960s and early 1970s under the brand name "Magnemommy," is now believed to have contained minuscule magnetic particles, which by court injunction may not be referred to by anyone as "shavings," but which, when consumed consistently, in particular between infancy and age two, form racquetball-sized magnets in the stomachs of children. It is further believed that said magnets may explain the attraction of such individuals when grown to things like Land Rovers, Banana Republic belt buckles, espresso machines, and the sliding doors and center poles of subway trains. We cannot deny these people remuneration.

Magnet-bellied commuters so fear the coat that they can overcome their powerful polar attraction and move to the center of the train. They fear arriving at Anderson Consulting with my Afro-black pubes all over their Brooks Brothers shirts. Of course, everyone knows that those boys – the Brooks Brothers – didn't even have pubic hair.

No longer confined to stretching my hand through a tangle of bodies to steady myself on the strength of one pinkie finger wrapped around a handrail, I've enough room to sip coffee, and have even taken to reading the Trib again. When we arrive at my stop, I can step off the train without the boarding passengers pushing against me, in violation of the most basic rules of physics and etiquette both.