Rush hour last night, for anyone on the red line, was a genuine nightmare.  I left work at 4:30, and did not get home until nearly three hours later.  I was too wound up to write about it last night, but I feel obligated to recount what happened here, for future generations.

I got on at Park, and, honestly can't remember if there was an announcement before they closed the doors and pulled into the tunnel, but I'm not sure it would have mattered much either way.  It was bitter cold outside, and you expect some delays in extreme weather.  And the fact is there are only so many ways to get where you're going using mass transit, and the alternatives were not enticing.

I mean, from work I take the green line a few stops inbound to Park and then the red line to Davis.  Pretty simple.  But an alternate route would mean changing modes of transport, not once, but twice.  Green line subway to No.1 bus to red line subway at Harvard.  And during your average everyday rush hour you can wait forever for a bus.

Plus, when they make those announcements —"schedule adjustment," "traffic ahead," "disabled train," "fire in the hole!" I figure nine times out of ten they're lying anyway.  I'm not a conspiracy nut, but I don't believe anything the T tells me.  I just have this sneaking suspicion that everything they do to inconvenience their riders they do purposefully for the sheer pleasure of it or out of spite. 

And I know that's not entirely fair.  I have actually met conductors who were not only competent, but accommodating and kind, sometimes above and beyond the call of duty.  Still, when it comes to rush-hour delays, you have to ask yourself: do they have anyplace else to be?  I mean, they're at work, not on their way to or from.  The answer is obviously no.  Their shift ends whenever it ends whether it takes them thirty minutes or three hours to get you wherever it is you're going.

So if they announced "delays ahead" I didn't pay any attention.  I figured they were just trying to get their last minute fuck-yous in for all the Downtown Crossing holiday shoppers, and after ten minutes or so they'd get bored with sitting in the station with the doors open until the back cars got so packed you'd need Vaseline to get in and out without chafing, and we'd be up and moving again.

After about ten minutes at Park we heard an announcement that the next train to Alewife was pulling in behind us, the first truly bad omen of the evening commute.  The doors closed and we pulled ahead into the tunnel, which is when the real nightmare began.  Because there we stood for the next half hour, not moving, with only periodic and frankly bizarre updates from the out-of-breath conductor about the disabled train ahead as clues to the true gravity of our predicament. 

It was like hearing staticky dispatches from the mothership.  "The creatures, they're — SHHHHCCHHHHTTT — AAAARGGGGHHHH — SAVE YOURSELVES!!! — SSSSCCCHHHHHHHHHH..."

Lest you be tempted to find this funny, I am way beyond the point where I find anything humorous about anything having to do with the MBTA.  So when the gallows humor kicked in (Why was the conductor out of breath?  Because he'd been up ahead pushing the disabled train out of a snowdrift yuck yuck) it made the car even more claustrophobic than it already was.

There was a group of four or five lads — possibly from Tufts — regaling the car with tales of spring breaks past.  One had drunk thirteen screwdrivers in one sitting once, and then — surprise! — thrown up face-down in the hotel bed he was sharing with his mates.  They could not salvage the bedspread.  They had to flip the mattress.  They dragged him to the bathroom and left him there under a cold shower for the rest of the night. 

All of this was told as if it were an actual story and not simply a series of chain reactions.

I've never fully understood the point of such "stories," to tell you the truth.  I had a couple of dates not too long ago with a guy in his mid-twenties, a grad student in fact,  who was fond of pointing out places around town he'd fallen down drunk, or puked, as if they were local landmarks.  Granted, some of them were.  And there was always a little "story" attached to each place, along the lines of "I was with so-and-so, and I fell right into that bramble bush there, threw up all over myself — I was all scratched up and vomit all down my shirt!  It was so much fun!"

That's not exactly what I expected when I asked about your hobbies, dude.

When finally we inched our way into Mass General, with all the passengers from the disabled train, and then some, waiting to get onto our already packed train, I decided to get off and assess my options from the emptying platform.  I had a date for drinks, and thought maybe we could meet somewhere on Beacon Hill instead of in Cambridge, and by the time we'd wrapped it up the tangled traffic would have untangled itself and I could get home in plenty of time for a booty call.  Just another Monday night.

I also knew there was a train right behind ours, too (the automated announcement that it was pulling in to the station had already been tripped).  So if my friend didn't want to venture into Boston for drinks and the MBTA had actually resolved the trouble ahead, I could hop on a slightly less crowded, hopefully quieter train, and ride home in style. 

The packed train I had just gotten off closed its doors, pulled ahead, but stopped halfway out of the station, and parked there.  Not only that, but the inbound trains on the other side were now at a standstill too, and an announcement was made that there was another disabled train on the inbound track.  In other words, there was no way out by T. 

I called my friend, who was stuck in traffic North of town. 

Seeing as Mass General is an elevated, outdoor platform, and a bitter wind was blowing, I was actually worse off now than before as for getting home, although at least now I was not stuck stationary in a packed cattle car for an indeterminate length of time listening to desperate dispatches from the conductor and bad jokes from the peanut gallery.  I was at least free to leave.

I could still duck into a little pub on Charles Street, or sit for a spell in a cafe and wait for the rush hour mess to clear.  One thing was for sure: I couldn't wait on the platform any longer.  Nothing was moving.  And I was freezing my tits off just standing there.

It had taken me almost an hour to get from Park to Mass General — one stop.  My contingency plan: walk to a green line station, take it to Mass Ave, hop on the No.1 bus.  This is the nuclear option in this kind of weather, since buses are infrequent in the first place, rush hour traffic would be heavy on Mass Ave heading into Cambridge, and I'd have to wait outside in the cold.  But there was something about just standing around, helpless, hopeless on a T platform that the human spirit rebels against.  And there was a little fight left in me yet.

I left the station, walked up Charles Street, through the Public Gardens which looked like something out of a fairytale, with the snow and twinkly lights, and made my way down Newbury to Arlington Station, all the while debating whether or not to drop in somewhere along the way for a drink, and phone up some friends to join me. But I had a whole antipasto platter I needed to get home in tow, and everyone on my speed-dial was either on their way out of town or stuck in traffic on their way back in.

The ride from Arlington to Hynes was free from trauma but once I got to Hynes I could see a bus hadn't been along in a while.  There was quite a crowd out on the sidewalk.  I looked down Mass Ave.  No sign of a bus, and walked up to the next block where at least there was a little lean-to, and only a couple of people were waiting.  I was now a little over two hours into my evening commute.  Aside from the bitter cold, the weather was clear, and the streets looked good.  From here it would be an ordinary rush-hour commute, I hoped.

If that doesn't strike you as odd, it should.  An ordinary rush-hour commute is pretty awful on a good day.

The first bus that came sat at Hynes for three or four cycles of the stoplight, and was so packed it didn't even stop at my stop.  There was a cute blond waiting, too.  We exchanged knowing glances and I said, "well, we knew that was coming, didn't we?"  He smiled, and was just about to say "by the way, I think I love you," when a bloated, pasty, arty-looking ass-hat with a Dorothy Hamill haircut and a nasally voice snarked: "there's another one right behind it."

"There always is," I told him. 

But the moment was lost.  With my blond, that is. 

And then, by the way, there wasn't another one right behind it.  But that evil cow didn't care about that.  He just wanted to butt in on my business with the blond.  I mean, if Dorothy Hamill was going to be miserable and alone for the rest of her life, so was everybody else.

Some people.

When finally the bus came, we inched along in traffic for another half hour, seems like, before finally arriving at Harvard station almost three hours after many of us had begun.  The bus was crowded,  but not over-crowded, and aside from how utterly deflated and defeated everyone looked, it was more or less a regular evening commute from there. 

Everyone around me was on the phone renegotiating their evening plans, of course.  I'd missed my booty call, after the Dorothy Hamill incident I was now in no mood to arrange another.  Never mind me, I felt sorrier for those who were just struggling to get home to their families.  There was a young father with an adorable and extremely well-behaved toddler, who had been on the same train I was, and you could tell he was exhausted and struggling to keep his son occupied so he wouldn't get cranky and start crying.  So that neither of them would, in fact.  But dad looked like he was getting close.

Surveying the scene I was thinking: you know, Boston is better than this.  We deserve a transit system that works, headed and operated by people who are committed to making it work.  Period.  When things break down we should have confidence that they're not going to leave us out in the cold for hours on end to fend for ourselves.  There should have been a fleet of shuttle buses at the ready, or pontoon boats, or personal jet-packs.  Whatever it takes.

Just for the record, then:  the MBTA owes me my additional fare and a booty call of my choice.  But please, send him by taxi.