In a Station of the Metro
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, black bough.
– Ezra Pound
1:19
I insert my ticket into the hairy slit of a cunt; a mechanical whir, before it pops out of the crack
of a perfectly-formed pair of buttocks.
I walk through, while the barriers of the next machine slam repeatedly on the swollen groin of a man
who hasn’t bought a ticket, who groans with pleasure.
At the top of the escalator, a young man is masturbating onto the black handrail; the glistening
globs of semen glide down, punctuating the rail at meter intervals.
Due to a minor technical asynchronicity, like a badly-dubbed film, my hand moves slightly faster
than my body, so I keep lifting it back up to my side.
I stare at a silver-haired gentleman in a gray suit sliding smoothly upwards on the other side—he
is holding a single, sustained note like his silver cane.
Workers with masks over their faces are trying to fix an escalator, sending up sparks, concentrating
as if in the middle of an operation like doctors, gynecologists.
I gaze up at the large explicit advertisements for sex. The man below me has his hand in his pocket,
trying to come before he reaches the bottom.
I am like Orpheus descending into the subterranean tunnels and stations of my unconscious, seeking
vainly for someone I have lost and know I cannot find.
Where the handrail curves down and begins its journey back up to the top, a woman sits back
straddling it, enjoying unceasing cunnilingus from the long rubber tongue.
A tiny ancient hunchbacked frail blind old lady sticks out her shaking hand for change, muttering
and mumbling, crossing her thin chest feebly with her other hand.
The man in front of me stops, digs deep into his pocket, pulls out his squat penis and crosses her
wrinkled palm with silver; she blesses him, nodding.
People are waiting on benches for friends, wives and lovers, staring idly at the porno frescoes and
murals and the people hurrying by, wanking and checking their watches.
The heavy and ornate brass chandeliers hanging above the track swing in the wind that’s pushed in
front of the train, like a woman’s ear-rings swinging from her earlobes.
A barely perceptible tremor, the platform vibrates beneath my feet, trembling like a tensed body
before climax; a thin tile rattles imperceptibly on the wall, like my retina.
The light breaks over the wall as the train’s headlights come into view down the tunnel, like the
first spark or glint of orgasm in the near distance.
The train bursts shuddering and screeching into the station; a man’s penis batters all the way
down the carriages like a boy running a stick along park railings.
It whines to a stop, brakes hissing like the sighing relief after coitus, the doors open and the
cramped passengers rush out pushing and shoving onto the platform.
They swim towards the exit like wriggling sperms on their way to the egg, finding the path of least
resistance, like tears of joy running down a face.
The driver pulls back on the lever like an erect penis, and the train groans into the life,
accelerating into the tunnel, whining to an ear-splitting scream.
2:21
I slip my hand down into the crack between the leather seats, as between a young girl’s legs; the
brown leather is smooth and cool, soft like skin.
I run the back of my hand tenderly along the edge as along the inside of a thigh, pushing my middle
finger into a hole in the fabric.
I move my finger carefully around and inside the fissure, and find a small node of plastic. I begin
to stroke it, teasing it gently with my fingertip.
I rub harder and faster, in more complicated rhythms and patterns, while the wheels scrape along the
un-oiled rails, the carriage rocking violently from side to side.
The train wails and screeches in the tunnel and my ears are ringing. I pull my finger out and press
my hands over my ears. It quiets down.
I take hold of the rigid pole loosely, caressing, stroking it between my finger and thumb like a
champagne flute, squeezing it with my whole hand clasped round.
Leaning over, I press my cheek against the cool metal, kissing it delicately, licking with the tip
of my tongue, tasting the acid sting of other people’s sweat.
An old woman shaped like a cube sitting directly opposite gives me a dirty look , then gets up and
shuffles to the other end with her bags.
I slip my hand inside my shirt and finger my nipples, pretending that it is someone else, fondling
my chest and belly in a mock-fumble, flinching.
My penis is hurting inside my trousers. It is bent to the side unnaturally and wants to breathe like
a man buried alive in a too-small coffin.
I unfasten my belt and pull them over my arse, my erection swaying upright; kneeling on the seat, I
get into position, my feet hanging over the side.
I find the slit and widen it with my fingers, tearing it to make it bigger, pushing them in to make
space, spitting on them to wet it.
My penis eases into the frayed leather flaps, slowly, not wanting to pull the foreskin back, as a
train slides onto the track, pushing it long and deep.
I grab hold of the outside edge of the seat, like grabbing a hip, and smooth my hand across the hard
flat leather as though it were a firm stomach or a back.
I increase the rhythm of my thrusts as the train jolts and rocks, going faster when the train speeds
up, pausing when the train halts in the tunnel.
Confidently, I draw it all the way out to the tip, sliding it all the way back in one long dive,
going in as deep as I can.
I lick and kiss and bite the seat trying to find a cheek, a neck, a buttock, pressing my face
against it to inhale the smell of bodies.
My sweating skin slips on the seat, my palms leaving dark shining handprints which evaporate in
seconds; I stroke a flattened piece of chewing gum like a nipple.
The leather of the seat creaks and moans beneath me, tightening and yielding around my erection,
like the strong muscles of an anus or vagina contracting and dilating.
The seat bucks under me like a body climaxing, shaking and shuddering as it rattles over the tracks,
jumping and leaping under me violently, nearly out of control.
I come. The semen surges up and pulses out inside the seat; and again; seeping back out into the
crack. I collapse, lying like a beggar, breathing hard.
3:13
The stone brows of the larger-than-life-size marble statues of muscled Soviet heroes are furrowed in
concentration, like The Thinker, holding the arches on their backs.
I strain my neck to gaze up into massive vagina-shaped ceiling mosaic of a heavenly orgy, decorated
in gold and lapis lazuli, with lavish baroque plaster moldings.
Circular medallions stud the walls of this and every station, each one a bas-relief of a Greek pose
of every conceivable sexual position, reminding us of the possibilities.
While waiting for the next train, to pass the time, both sexes sit on the finely-carved,
veined-marble dildos sticking up from the benches, matching the décor around them.
Alternatively, the regularly cleaned busts and statues of revolutionaries and poets offer
well-placed penises and mouths and arses to be used and abused as is seen fit.
I trail my hand along a banister like an elegant arm, as I walk slowly up the marble stairs admiring
the beautiful arse moving in front of me.
In the corner of the stairs, like the crook of an elbow, the silver man is beating a stick like a
baton in time to his rhythmic beeping.
An enormous domed fret-work ceiling like a breast swells into the city, a huge, extravagant
chandelier hanging from the inside of the under-nipple like a cancer.
I rub the nipple of a light-fitting like a glowing breast: it glows brighter; they are fixed on the
wall at breast height, in all shapes and sizes.
A man slides a hexagonal piece of masonry out of the wall like a beehive and inserts himself in the
gap, caressed by the murmur of trapped bees.
The wall tiles have so often been replaced with others of slightly different colors, that the wall
is pixelated like a television screen seen in extreme close-up.
People lean against the thick marble columns, veined and crowned with swelling heads, lifting up the
ceilings, waiting, brushing their hands on them as they pass.
I am startled, as the red muscular nude statues step down from their plinths and start fucking my
fellow passengers with their large and stylized sculpted marble penises.
4:16
The windows are all steamed up, but a handprint lets me see into a carriage occupied by naked
writhing bodies, all connected either at the waist or head.
I step into the carriage as into a small, usually quiet local bar. My buttocks and groin are
molested; my clothes torn off as if walking through thorns.
Men with women sitting on their laps have their lips around the dicks of the men standing in front
of them, who are being buggered and rimmed from behind.
Further down the carriage, women sit on the dirty stained seats, legs splayed, with naked men and
women kneeling on the gray floor licking them out like dogs.
Opposite them, heads bob up and down in the groins of men who are sitting upright as if shocked by
the sudden cold of a toilet seat, breathless.
A lady wearing a large black velvet veiled hat, a feather splaying from the top, lifts her
immaculate silk dress and lowers herself onto a filthy drunk beggar.
The train lurches in the tunnel—I instinctively shoot a hand out to steady myself and grab hold of
a solid upright penis, sticky and slippery with cum.
A woman lies back on a snooker table, while a man screws her at leisure; he removes his penis,
chalks it, then casually pokes it back in.
A fat woman stands up on a seat in her high heels and starts to strip; she tries to swing her
enormous breasts and collapses heavily onto the floor.
A man staggers down the aisle like a drunken sailor on the deck of a ship in a storm, clutching a
bundle of stolen dildos under his arm.
Two women with immaculately-coiffured hair who seem to be dying of thirst lick and suck and kiss a
fat, enormous, veined penis shaped like a totem pole.
I want to join in but the enticing glances of these unclothed, thoroughly fuckable women remind me
of the shame of my lust, like masturbating in a mirror.
The train sways round a corner, a woman falls into my lap directly onto my erection, like a quoit
onto a pole. She apologizes for her clumsiness.
A black woman has a penis in each hand, one up her arse, in her cunt, in her mouth, and one grasped
in each of her monkey-like feet.
The man sitting next to me snaps open his expensive leather briefcase and hurriedly searches through
all his papers for a clean handkerchief into which he can ejaculate.
I follow one of the women out of the carriage across the station and onto the escalator; I lift her
skirt, step up and take her from behind.
5:13
A couple is having a heated argument in the middle of the crowded carriage. The onlookers try their
best to conceal the fact that they are looking on.
She slaps him; he flings her against the door, so she slaps him again harder, to which he responds
by punching her hard in the stomach, winding her.
As she bends down to catch her breath, she takes off her pointed shoe and stabs him in the eye.
Blood spurts, and he howls in pain.
She kicks him in the balls and makes more holes in his back as he crouches on the floor clutching
his damaged testicles, moaning like a castrated bull.
They stagger out onto the platform, bloodied, blinded; he grabs her leg and drags her backwards but
she manages to scramble away and hobble drunkenly towards the exit.
He limps up the vertiginous escalator after her, but she kicks him and he loses his balance, falling
all the way down, taking people with him like dominoes.
She stares anxiously into the tunnel praying for the next train. He grabs her and throws her on the
floor, pulling her up the steps, banging her head.
He slumps her in a wheelchair and shoves it down a flight of steps like a pram; she flies in an arc,
burying her head in Lenin’s mouth.
He drags her free and pummels her to a bloody pulp, knocking out every tooth before fucking her with
a beer bottle that he smashes against her head.
She lies as one who has fallen from a great height, surrounded by a widening pool of blood,
twitching and spasming involuntarily like a large dog dreaming in its sleep.
A retired female shot-putter—a solid cube of compacted muscle—appalled by the violence, knocks
him to the floor with her handbag and hauls him onto the train.
The doors bang shut on his neck again and again like a mechanically-insistent, blunt horizontal
guillotine, until his head bounces like a child’s ball onto the platform.
Breasting the flow of the crowd like a salmon swimming upriver against the strong current, the
silver man walks past and gives a single bleat of a telephone.
6:24
In the few brief hours when Metro-3 isn’t being abused, the old men and women of the city descend
into this collective unconscious with brooms, cloths and antiseptic.
They open low doors into walls and metal trapdoors on the platforms, which lead to storerooms and
utility tunnels that you wouldn’t have guessed even existed.
Large industrial cleaners like driving lawnmowers are wheeled out and switched on, going up and down
the stations, polishing the floors to a gleaming shine, like new.
Bent figures with mops and buckets and cloths clean up the mess left behind by their offspring;
an empty hospital ward in the early hours of the morning.
The last stragglers left on the trains at the end of the line are shaken awake and hurried out of
the station so the cleaners can start their work.
They wipe smears of semen and shit and vaginal juices from the seats with absorbent cloths and
sponges; blood and mucus from floors, windows, doors, benches and stairs.
They fill huge sacks to the brim with dildos, condoms, empty tubes of lubricant, hats, handcuffs,
whips, torn and stained pants, bras, penis rings, wedding rings, false nails.
Pubic hairs of all colors and sizes and fonts are removed, curling like commas and apostrophes,
ampersands, and speechless quotation marks—the punctuation of an illicit encounter.
The penises and fingers and mouths and breasts of statues, as well as the phallic ornaments adorning
each station, are wiped clean, brought back to a sparkling shine.
One of the large marble penises has been snapped off one of the statues, so it is wheeled away while
another one is fashioned by a professional artist.
An elderly woman wipes the arse of a statue affectionately as if it were her own child, and clears
the cobwebs from his armpits with a feather duster.
Every month, they tramp down tunnels equipped with special long-handled brooms with strong metal
bristles to scrape and scour the statues clean of all the accumulated grime and rust.
They scrub trains with the care and attention that a young man uses when washing his penis, pulling
back the foreskin, cleaning it thoroughly as a mechanic cleans an engine.
Workers go to work in the green light of the unseen machinery below the escalators, in rooms and
floors like mezzanines invisible to the casual and unknowing observer.
They check the machinery with the expert eyes of doctors, gynecologists, looking for the tell-tale
signs of problems and faults like curable but deadly sexual diseases.
Traps and poisons are primed and laid out for the rats and the crabs, which scuttle down along the
tracks escaping into holes in and under the walls.
Old men hang from cradles that are winched up to the ceiling so they can clean the inside of the
domes and walls where ordinary brooms can’t reach.
They scrub the black mildew from the grouting between the tiles with small, plastic nailbrushes, as
they would scrub the mold in their own bathrooms or the stains from their dentures.
The occasional tramp is discovered hiding under a bench, trying to sleep in the warmth, cramped
under in the dark, covered in dirt and smelling strongly of shit.
Boys and girls addicted to glue by their peers—homeless, abandoned, or those who have escaped from
poor, alcoholic and abusive families—peer out of tunnels like petals peer from branches.
The workers oil and grease the wheels and brakes of the trains and the tracks they run along,
testing the engines, checking the couplings between carriages, the automatic doors.
Like the trained and diligent staff of a huge sexual theme park, before letting anyone back in they
make sure everything is working perfectly to prevent any accidents.
It is entirely thanks to this swift and invisible work that Metro-3 can continue to function; the
cleaners are like the stage-hands arranging the props and costumes for a play.
But it is guaranteed that none of the passengers will even notice that the place has been cleaned
from top to bottom, much less breathe a word of thanks.
7:19
The train is full of young soldiers ready to fly into Chechnya for a surprise attack being launched
into the sky through one of the old, converted escalator tubes.
A dead train full of gray decomposing corpses being transported to a graveyard somewhere outside of
the city. They sit staring at the floor, at each other’s feet.
The train smashes through a barrier like a hymen into a unused tunnel and into the secret Metro-2,
through abandoned stations leading to vast, empty conference halls.
The train moves under the city, stopping at all of the important government buildings, where men in
suits with briefcases step on and sit down, hands in laps.
The train travels for hours in uneventful darkness like sleep, then rises above ground in the
countryside, stopping in a village hundreds of miles outside of the capital.
The train accelerates and climbs steeply, breaking the surface and turning upside down inside a huge
loop like a rollercoaster before diving back down underground with a gasp.
The train leans to the side and continues to lean, people falling out of their seats, falling onto
other people, as the train spins around like a corkscrew.
The train slides into station, like a submarine pulling into a secret underground port or dock,
taking on another crew, then continues its journey far below the surface.
The train accelerates rapidly, throwing people backwards and making them hang onto rails with
whitening knuckles, and disintegrates into nothingness as it passes the sound barrier.
The train accelerates suddenly, resembling a passenger airplane with a booming of its engines,
launching itself out of the ground, upwards and into orbit like a space station.
A miniature train arrives in the station to the bewilderment of all those waiting on the platform;
dwarves and amputees hobble out in business suits and soldiers’ uniforms.
An entire orchestra of musicians files onto a train and down the aisle, taking their seats among the
people trying not to stare, propping instruments between their legs.
The train rumbles under the Pushkin Museum of Private Collections, making all of the fragile glass
and crystal ornaments rattle like false teeth in their delicate cases.
The train emerges from below into a sky filled with falling snow; the air conditioning sucks it in,
so it is snowing inside the carriage of huddled coats.
The train is so hot that people are forced to take off their clothes to stop themselves fainting,
placing fur hats discreetly for the sake of propriety.
The train slopes downwards, beer bottles rolling down the aisle bouncing off feet, plunging
downwards like a submarine diving to the depths to escape attack on the surface.
The train stops in the tunnel. It waits in silence. The metal clicks. People sit patiently filling
in crosswords, reading books, finding it increasingly difficult to breathe deeply.
The train starts turning a long corner, until eventually the back of the train comes into view and
it is traveling in a large circle round and round.
The train is traveling through stations without stopping far from the center; I examine peoples’
faces for any look that might betray that this is not usual.
8:07
The catastrophic bloody aftermath of a Chechen terrorist bomb explosion, like the morning after a
huge and deadly bacchanal where the participants literally tore each other apart.
The orgy climaxed in a spectacularly violent simultaneous orgasm—the force of the massive
ejaculation flinging bodies into the air all the way across the station.
Blackened ears, noses, cheeks, lips, chins, fingernails, kidneys, livers, hearts, nipples, bladders,
shattered splintered bones and teeth, vertebrae and eyeballs cover the floor.
They tore and clawed and ripped and scratched and bit their fingers, hands, arms, legs, penises,
breasts, heads, scattering them around like bits of discarded clothing.
I pick up a perfect dismembered penis and the remnants of a woman’s loins and try to fit them
together like a piece of cheap, self-assembly furniture.
I gather together all the body parts I need and kneel down to assemble a full corpse, trying to
remember where each bit went, scratching my aching head.
The militsia cleans up the mess of corpses with mini-bulldozers; a tangling, jumbled pile of
mangled bodies are removed like a razorblade shaving hairs from smooth skin.
9:25
An enormous public toilet, men and women pissing and shitting in full view of everyone, grimacing
and serene like a sequence of gargoyles along a church gutter.
A splendid palace, where a masked ball is taking place. The guests in flamboyant dress, sweeping and
gliding over the gleaming polished tiles in perfect time and step.
A hospital, with patients lying motionless or groaning on trolleys and beds, receiving injections
and blood transfusions from fellow passengers dressed up to look like doctors and nurses.
An underground cistern, where fish swim in the shallow water that covers the tracks on either side
of the platform. Popular classical music is playing from hidden speakers.
A cathedral with rows of pews, an altar, an ongoing service, icons displayed and people lighting
thin candles like flower stems in front of them, kneeling, crossing themselves.
A library, every wall lined with books from floor to ceiling. The busts and statues of famous
writers line the platform waiting for the next train.
An art gallery, with portraits of tsars, artists, writers, revolutionaries staring out from where
they hang still on the walls, shaking and rattling when the trains screech through.
The Conservatoire, with oval portraits of famous composers, and students leaning dangerously far out
from the balconies to look down at the orchestra playing on the stage below.
A space station, with hundreds of bright round white lights like insect eyes beaming from the
ceiling, filling the station with light so that you have to squint.
A giant chessboard, where busy commuters play rapid and spontaneous games of chess according to
strict rules, moving from one checkered marble slab to another.
A station whose ceiling is an inverted, computer-generated representation of a range of mountains,
made entirely of gold, pointing down like abstract stalactites.
A botanical garden, with grass and flowers and bushes covering the floor, the roof supported by tree
trunks looming from the floor, the ceiling a canopy of leaves.
A laboratory, with Mendelev’s periodic table inscribed on the tiles, where scientists wipe down
Lenin’s embalmed body every few years, and dress him up in a new suit.
A theatre, where everybody lies slumped, slouching on benches as if drunk, drugged, or bored to
death by the musical that they have seen hundreds of times before.
Public baths, where hundreds of naked swimmers splash and dive into the water, which the trains run
alongside of, coupling, playing, laughing and enjoying each other.
A prison, where groups of police officers are interrogating prisoners at desks with lamps shining
right into their faces, threatening them with frightening pointed dildos.
An artificial ice-rink designed and decorated to look like a frozen pond in winter, is skated on,
circled by nude figures of all ages, holding hands, smiling.
A gym of young athletic naked people leaping and jumping around, playing sports and running after
each other, falling over, rolling around on the tiles touching each other.
A factory, where row on row of nude female workers stand in front of conveyor belts to build radios,
televisions, fridges and kettles while singing stirring national songs.
A factory, where naked oil-streaked men wearing protective helmets construct cheap automobiles on a
production line flickering with sparks and the blue of blowtorches.
A station full of twittering and fluttering and swooping chaffinches and sparrows, and needless to
say, the floor is stippled with birdshit like a canvas by Jackson Pollock.
A station, destroyed by a terrorist bomb, body parts littering the platform like a field after a
rock concert, people putting them in bags.
A station on a bridge above a river, where you can see out from the windows of the train over the
city to the hills and towering skyscrapers.
A station like a beehive, the walls made up of hexagonal tiles behind which millions of bees are
humming like a turbine or the engine of a train.
A station of poplar trees in spring, shedding their seeds into the air like snow, crawling in your
hair, up your nose and in your ears like flies.
10:17
The train crashes headfirst into another train coming from the other direction, but the passengers
continue traveling through space at the speed of a speeding subway train.
A child leaves its mother’s arms and flies down the wagon, smashing through the window into the
next carriage, like an owl trying to escape from a house.
Passengers are flung down the carriage like dolls, cracking skulls, crushing ribcages, shattering
legs and arms and necks and hips on the rails that slow their sudden flight.
The train concertinas. Glass splinters shoot into backs, breasts and heads, amputating limbs,
slicing through stomachs and buttocks and thighs and fingers like the blades of a mad cook.
People collide with each other in mid-air like airplanes, cracking bones, knocking jaws and
shoulders out of place, snapping noses and burying teeth into dented skulls.
Eyes are blinded on the points of elbows; a boy is squashed by his family crashing into him like a
car, his sister’s head becoming part of his.
The two drivers are launched from their seats, their heads meeting with two cracked windows between
them like a man diving headfirst into a mirror or a waterfall.
One window has shattered into a perfect map of the Metro, with the circle line in the middle, the
other nine lines radiating from it like a web.
One man’s penis is severed, so he uses it like a dildo to fuck his dying girlfriend for the last
time, wiping it in blood to lubricate it.
His girlfriend’s breast has been lopped off; he sucks and kisses it, then pockets it and fondles
it to remember her, squeezing and rubbing it with his fingers.
One man’s penis has been pushed inside him by the impact, so that he finds he can bugger himself
from inside as if he is having a shit.
A woman has a handrail buried in her cunt like a permanent metal penis, and every time her body
spasms and shudders with the pain, she fucks herself.
A whole row of people sitting sideways on the bench have their heads buried into each others’
heads, as if they are resting affectionately on each others’ shoulders.
A man whose legs have been sliced off, drags himself with his arms onto the lower half of his wife’s
divided body, to be united for the last time.
A woman is sitting on a rail on the track, sliding herself back and forward over the metal, waiting
for a train to run its wheel through her.
A fireman pries the doors open with a hydraulic tool, like a strenuous penis separating the tight
wings of a stubborn vagina, before forcing himself through the gap.
The rescuers fuck the dying and the dead in the wreckage; the jagged torn metal and shards of
splintered glass lie around them like rumpled and disheveled bedsheets.
