Saturday Night in Boston

It is quiet this Sunday morning, the sun promises to make its appearance up out of the horizon line of the Atlantic Ocean soon; last night as we were making our return, driving our car from the subway stop the moon shone down bright and round and interesting with a smudge of shadow removing what would have made a perfect sphere (do I mean sphere?  that is a circle, isn't it?  well, whatever is the shape of the moon when it is full).  I am not exactly shell-shocked, but not at all recovered from last night's Boston hours. so frightening, so alien to what I experience in urban situations, New York, Paris, Rome, and of course in contrast with much smaller, sedate, predictable, slow moving Sarasota, Florida.  We chose to go to a theatrical performance of a group that is famous for its stylized, campy parody of well-known narratives.  Last year we saw their "Mildred Fierce," performed to great acclaim in the East Village, and have been following their emergence in the Boston area from a peculiar dramatic taste of a bunch of gays into a well reviewed hilarious seriously silly dramatic piece available to everyone, although its performance venue on Boylston Avenue in a gay bar called The Machine suggests its more focused origins.  We set out from the south shore knowing that transportation would be an ordeal, but willing to make the effort.  Drove to Braintree, parked in the MBTA lot, boarded the train, and as we were happily ensconced in our books, heard the dire but forgotten news that we would have to board a shuttle bus at JFK for two stops to Broadway.  As I have already described, this is a painful ordeal for me since there is a painful series of stairs, up and down, more than once, no escalator available.  We were perplexed by the size of Saturday afternoon's crowd going in town, it was immense.  And then we noticed the Red Sox paraphernalia worn by the subway riders and our hearts sank, knowing that we would share space with them all the way.  Park Street where we were to wait to board the Green Line for Kenmore Square held a grimmer surprise; traffic on the Green Line seemed only to be loading on one of its two antiquated tracks, the crowd was immense, the wait was going to be long, the pressure of the bodies challenging.  Somehow my wonderful husband managed to position us near a potential door opening, and more or less using me as a ramrod jammed us into the humanity trying to board and into a seat.  Bravo!  The crowds surged to enter, the loudspeaker told them to stand back so that the doors could shut on the overloaded cars.  Somehow people were pushed back, doors were shut, and the train creaked forward, only to confront at the next stop an angry throng who were determined to board but a train already full.  Doors were opened, people pushed and shoved, finally relented, the doors shut.  I could only think of Calcutta or anywhere in the third world where public services are so pathetically meager and the crowds are immense.  Somehow we disembarked with the crowd at Kenmore Square and were swept along in the direction of Fenway Park in a vast throng, from which at the last minute we separated and went to our restaurant reservation and on to the theater.  The horror of it all was that the Red Sox game and our theatrical event ended at the same moment.  We were totally unprepared for what we confronted when back out on the street, the crowds of people surging out from the stadium blocking the streets and sidewalks and serious imposing mass upon those who were not flowing in their direction.  It was dark, young males hopped up on the extra testosterone by their identification with athletes in a sports event, bounded around, shouting exuberantly, smoking cigarettes, bumping into one another with joyous abandon.  We were terrified, and feeling lost.  At Kenmore Square the back up of people waiting to enter the subway station was immense and frightening; where were the police, or the MBTA staff?  There were no taxis available in all the surging crowd.  Nothing to do but walk. But where? To South Station?  We set out, then I had the thought at Massachusetts Avenue to take a bus in the direction of Harvard Square and get on the Red Line and pursue our original objective.  But, of course, the bus when it finally came along was filled to the overflowing with patrons of the BSO which had also just let out.  Empty taxis heading to Cambridge would not stop because of the weird law that they can only pick up fares in the city where they are licensed, in this instance, Cambridge, so must remain empty.  Finally we hailed one who was willing to break the law and we got to the Central Square Red Line stop, fighting our way through still more crowds of people, now all of them energetic, young, vital and moving at speeds and with an abandon that reminded me that I was a candidate for a nursing home.  The return to Braintree had the exceedingly frightening moment when the crowd riding up the escalator (yes, they have up escalators, just not any going down) to board the bus was jammed into the crowd already filling the sidewalks at the bus stop, and I was terrified that if I were to lose my footing I would be trampled to death.  A real problem, and the three or so MBTA employees standing down below shouting directions might have been more effectively employed.The psychological makeup of parody, irony, doubles entendres which had been reinforced in us from our theatrical experience, so completely at variance with the raw energy human energy of the night, shattered us completely.  We left home at 3:30 for an hour and one half evening's entertainment preceded by an hour and a half of drinks and dinner at a fabulous restaurant.  We got home staggering from the struggle and the pain at a half hour after midnight.  Boston in the evening?  Never again.