Poorly Thought Out Musing on Race and Sex. And Crossword Puzzles.

Over the years, our tightly knit readership has grown to learn much about each other, through blog postings, comments, party stories and other means. As some of you may have learned from my comments, I commute to work in New York on dilapidated New Jersey Transit trains. While the commute is arduous, crowded, noisy and often foul-smelling, I have my rare moment of Zen every Friday afternoon. For on my Friday commute home, I become a train beer guy. I allow myself a 24 oz. can of beer to sip on while I head to the chaos that is a home with two children under 3. I used to drink Foster's oil cans, but I've been enjoying Heinekens of late, with an occasional Corona mixed in when I feel extra tropical in Penn Station. When I board my train and find my seat, I have my headphones on, a large beer in one hand and the Friday Wall Street Journal crossword in the other. For 45 minutes, I am king of my one-seat palace. I don't answer e-mails on my BlackBerry, I don't pick up cell phone calls and I don't talk to anybody. It is me, music, beer and 30 Across, a 1973 Rolling Stones hit that is five letters. Angie. Duh. You gotta do better than that, puzzle creators.

Each of these components to my commute home serves a purpose. The music piping through my headphones drowns out yappy passengers (to some extent). The beer makes me feel like the guys on the roof with Andy in Shawshank. And the crossword mentally occupies me. Whenever I lose an element in this combination, I become extremely agitated.

Which brings me to my commute home last Friday. With my boss traveling, I made the executive decision to leave the office at noon, take a train towards the beach and get scooped up the missus on the way to the Jersey Shore. I am generally apprehensive of off-peak trains because they tend to get filled with a detestable lot of societal detritus that errs on the side of screaming into their cell phones at loud decibels. So, naturally, my commute gets immediately ruined by a large African-American man who sits in front of me and starts loudly humming along with the R&B blaring from his headphones. As my ire starts to build, he gets a call and starts talking. To a lady. And it gets dirty. And loud. Quickly. And then it gets even dirtier. And it becomes the greatest sex talk I have ever intentionally eavesdropped on. It made me re-think a lot. I wanted to be single again. I wanted to be African American, to be able to repeat the things he said with a straight face to a woman I intended to bed.

I immediately started listening closely to what he said, scribbling the highlights in the margins of page W3 of my copy of the Journal. I couldn't keep up with all the highlights, but I got a lot from this man. To call him a 20-minute mentor is an understatement. A foul-mouthed Svengali is more accurate. Let's just say that I earned a PhD in booty talk in the time it took us to travel from New York Penn Station to Rahway, where he departed.

To give some context, he looked like the intersection of Craig Robinson, Jonathan Ogden and Isaac Hayes. A svelte man he was not. But he had the loquaciousness to offset the heft. And did his gift of gab ever offset his wealth of flab. The highlights from his conversation are below. I strongly urge you all to use these lines when talking to wives, girlfriends, single ladies and/or anonymous men you encounter in Port Authority bathroom stalls. I am ashamed I did not capture more pearls of wisdom. If only my note-jotting hand could keep up with his filthy fantasies.

Chapter 1: Background
"I been through some shit. I tell you that."

"Right now? I'm about to get my calisthenics on all weekend. Yeah, for real."

Chapter 2: Dirty Cell Phone Pictures
"I been sending you shit, but you ain't given me nothing."

"You gotta show me the twins."

Chapter 3: What I Will Do To You And You Will Do To Me
"I"m gonna take my time. Break it slowly."

"You gotta work it. Nurture it."

"From the tip of my hand to the bottom of palm. That's my size. Ain't nothing to be scared of."

"I'm 9 inches. Or 8 and a half. I'm not standard. And it's straight. Ain't got no curve or nothing."

"Like I said, I'm a gentle giant. Ain't into that snatch and grab shit. I take it easy."

"Tell those bitches right now. This nigga don't share. I'm stingy."

"I just want you to sit on it. I wanna have fun, feel the walls."

"I'm a professional. I take my time. Ain't gonna hurt nobody."

"I treat that pussy good. It's like a little kid. You gotta pamper it. Spoil it."

"I'll do it every day. Shit that's what it's for. No doubt."