So last night was a momentous occasion for me. I saw my first knife pulled on the subway. (My friend Don used to pull his knife sometimes when we'd been drinking heavily, but that was rather a quality of experience.)

I got on the N at 8th Street, Queens-bound. Across from me were three obnoxious louts in their mid-twenties or so. They were being very loud and rude, and a dirty-blonde 40ish women nearby got fed up and plowed into a shouting match with them. There was a lot of "Bitch" and "Fuck you" and "Suck my dick" and "You don't have one" and "Fucking dyke" and "Is that the worst thing you can say?" thrown back and forth, and then it started to get ugly, like the combatants were going to jump to their feet and grapple.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, this stocky, bullish, dark-haired women racing over from the far end of the car, and she tells the louts, "You're getting off this train at the next stop." So the head lout gets up in her face and says, "Oh, yeah?" and the women repeats herself, and the guy says, "You gonna make me?" and she says, "Yeah, I am. You're getting off the fucking train," and then the two of them are pushing at each other and that's when I realize that the woman has a knife out and that's how she's proposing to eject these losers from the train.

And, well, that's about all I know. The train pulled into 23rd Street then, and the tussle spilled partway onto the platform, and someone went running to tell the conductor to call the police, but I didn't see much else because I have an extreme allergy to cutlery. I waited down at the far end of the train for things to get moving again, while other people hung out the doors trying to see what was going on.

When the train finally got started again, ten minutes or so later, I noticed that the three louts had reboarded down at my end of the train. And that's all I know. But now I have my New York knife story.