I am going back home later than usual tonight. It’s been a long day and I’m really hungry. But thanks to my subway ride, now I’ve found the ultimate appetite suppressant: foot surgery advertising. I am sitting across an ad with a rainbow-colored headline that screams: “Minimally invasive bunion and hammertoe surgery!” … with pictures.

Suddenly, I don’t feel hungry anymore. I don’t know what’s more disturbing: the “examples” of the grotesque toes (I wonder if the people who posed for this consider themselves as having a modelling career) or the picture of the smiling surgeon holding up a scalpel while he looks at you with seductive eyes.
I decide to close my eyes and get that image out of my head. As I lean back on the seat, I start to listen in a conversation coming from the next seat:

“First, her hand was cut off but she still wouldn’t cooperate” – I hear this in a deep voice with a heavy italian accent.
“I hate when dat happen man, what’d you do den” – somebody else replied, now with a Newyorican spanish accent.
“We had to keep going. We chopped off part of her arm then.”
“I haven’t done dat yet. I hope they don’t ask me.”
“You get used to it. Last time I saw her, we cut up to her elbow, but nothing. She’s a tough one”
“Damn man, let’s see what we find today.”

“You do whatever they tell you to do, if not, they fuck you up, man.”

At this point, I am picturing two characters from The Sopranos. I realize this might be a private conversation I am not supposed to be listening in into. So, very slowly, I get my iPod from my backpack and discretely lower my head to put on my headphones. I hope I can pretend I’ve been listening to music all along and these two hitmen don’t realize I heard everything about their last victim.

When the train finally comes to a stop, I open my eyes again and, moving my head to an exaggerated imaginary beat, look back to see the mafiosi: two nerdy-looking medicine students wearing scrubs, getting off at the stop near the NYU hospital.

It turned out to be more ER than Sopranos… dissapointing.
I start feeling hungry now that I don’t fear for my life anymore, so I look up to the hammertoe surgery ad again. Ah! Perfect. Not hungry again.