1
The train ride was going to take a good two hours, but I didn’t care. I had nothing better to do that morning, and a weekend in the Hampton’s in the middle of June seemed appropriate at the time. Arriving at Penn Station, we had three minutes to purchase our tickets. This was no easy task at noon on a weekend in New York. The hall was crowded with tourists and groups of children wearing the same patterned clothing. As I gazed out over the masses, searching for the most effective route, Evan pushed me forward through the crowd, and directed us to the nearest ticketing machine.
Walking through the room, punctuating our thought-out steps and missteps with “sorry’s” and “coming through’s”, there was an indelible sense of disgust coming our way. I could feel it just as I could feel the cool dampness of my shirt. At first I thought only the pasty, overweight tourists from Florida were staring me down, but even the young groups of children, there on a school-trip, seemed angry. I wiped the sweat off my brow and turned to Evan, “Hope they’re not coming with us. They seem hostile.” He shook his head and kept pushing me through the crowd. “They don’t let poor people go to The Hampton’s, man.”
With no more than two minutes two spare, we arrived, finally, at the ticketing-machine. When we finally maneuvered through its semi-faulty, overly dirty touchscreen interface, it demanded thirty-seven dollars for a single round-trip ticket. I shouted, “Good God, man. They really don’t let poor people visit the Hampton’s”. I didn’t have enough money on my card nor in my wallet, and turned to Evan with a concerned, yet calm, face. He pushed past me and purchased two tickets for both of us, and we made our way to the train.