Subway Singer Supreme

The dumpy black man with a Louis Armstrong mouth could sing.

As he belted out what sounded to be a church hymnal I'd never heard before, a tall lanky white guy in khakis and a black bomber jacket tossed a buck into the cup he had set in front of him. I thought momentarily about doing the same, but then remembered I didn't give the guy who did a spot-on Smokey Robinson last month, and this guy wasn't nearly as good as he was, so I should hold off and maintain my giving-cash-to-subway-singers standards.

When I saw him whip out a phone from his pocket though (and not a cellular phone mind you, but one of those seemingly ancient home phones, complete with a handset, cord and receiver), I knew this guy had some crazy trick up his sleeve (or perhaps another phone!) As he stood there silently holding it for a moment I was wondering where he would go with this and how awkward it might get. With subway singers, things can get awkward sometimes (i.e. the cracked-out dude at the Chicago Red Line stop that sings Walking to New Orleans over and over again completely off-key using a repetitive knee slap that he brings all the way from center field to keep cadence.)

I looked at the lanky guy in khakis and the short middle-aged women next to me and they were wearing the same looks of concern.

But when the guy energetically broke into:
"No New Year's Day
To celebrate
No chocolate covered candy hearts to give away
No first of spring…

I just called
to say
I love you…"

Well all took a collective sigh of relief and smiled. It was like one of those moments at a wedding reception when a drunken uncle grabs the mic from the best man during the best man speech and everybody gasps in horror thinking he's going to go on some drawn out tangent that ends up being totally offensive but instead says something heartfelt and succinct and the crowd takes a deep breath and thinks "Aww, wasn't that nice?"

For the first time in my almost-year in Chicago every single person standing with me at a train stop was smiling. The middle-aged women next to me started laughing, leaned over and said something about how sometimes on a Friday afternoon you need something like this to smile to.

I dug into my pocket and pulled out a wad of singles and dumped them into his cup. This guy didn't have the vocal range as the Smokey Robinson doppelganger, but he smoked him in enterprise.

Just before the roar the upcoming Red Line train drowned him out I heard "I Just Called to say I Love You" morph into some sort of imaginary phone conversation between loved ones.

"Naw baby, don't worry. I'll be home soon, I promise," he was saying into the phone. Those that had just walked down the stairs to the stop and had no knowledge of the context as to why this man was talking an obviously disconnected home phone would have likely thought he was insane.

As I boarded the train I myself was wondering the same thing, or if he was just an exceptionally creative subway performer.

Then I realized a critical element of being an exceptionally creative subway performer is being insane to some degree.

Which is kind of sad.