By Joshua M. Bernstein

A FEW AFTERNOONS ago, I was waiting in a Chinatown subway station reading something as filthy as the floor: Dirty Found. It’s the pervy brother of Found magazine, which publishes, yes, found ephemera like grocery lists, notes to parents and family photos. Dirty Found, conversely, offers sun-faded pics of naked men at full mast and Polaroids of topless women. It’s a XXX voyeuristic stew, hardly public reading. But, like ogling a car wreck, I couldn’t tear my eyes from a picture of a plump derriere. What woman agrees to a rear-end photo shoot and who then loses the picture?

I’m so puzzled I hardly notice when a coffee-colored guy in his mid-thirties strolls over. He gives me, then my magazine, the once-over.

“Your … girlfriend?” he asks in uncertain English, pointing at the tushie.

“Um, no,” I say. I try to explain Found magazine. “It’s a mystery rump,” I add helpfully.

He nods, then shreds New York’s golden rule. With iPods, newspapers and several inches of subway seat, we create bubble worlds that help us cope with the chaos of 8 million. This trick only works along with an unspoken social contract: Don’t touch me, talk to me or look at me, and I’ll leave you alone. It’s socially alienating, sure, but it keeps the crazies at bay. Or so I assumed, until my unwelcomed companion licks his finger, reaches over and flips the page. A shirtless man smirking, his stonewashed jeans unbuttoned, revealing a small surprise saying hello. My fellow reader points at the picture and smiles as wide as the Atlantic. Oh no, I think, not again.

Several Julys back, I was waiting at a Williamsburg bus stop at 4 a.m. I’d spent my money on cheap beer and even cheaper pizza so a cab was out of the question. While I read a book about NYC’s 1977 blackout, a gentleman with short hair and a green windbreaker crept close, placing his palm on my back and his mouth near my ear. His warm breath reeked of whiskey.

“Do you mind if I fondle you while you read?” he asked in a slurred Slavic accent.

Though I was impressed by the man’s brazenness, I replied by shoving his chest, and yelling, “Nooooooooo!” for extra emphasis. Like a cockroach illuminated by kitchen light, he skittered away. Then I tore up my agnostic membership, praying hard and fast for the bus’s arrival.

And now, I was once again wearing a sign that read, foreign men, please hit on me while waiting for public transportation.” Having temporarily tired of naked dudes, my neighbor again licks his finger and turns another page. We see a story written by a ninth-grader. It’s titled, “How to Eat Pu$$y.”

“You write?”

“No, no I didn’t write,” I say, indignant. I’ll gladly admit that I spent the 22nd year of my life writing C-list porn for a Chinatown smut merchant. It’s a fact of life, as much as I like chewing my toenails. Still, in my thousands of words penned, I never published a treatise on that below-the-belt matter, much less as a high school freshman.

Once more I try explaining Dirty Found, its voyeuristic thrills, the joy of glimpsing fragments of lives, (like the movie Memento) and trying to cobble together a story from its images. In short, I don’t read Dirty for my libido’s sake.

He grins brightly with wide eyes—the international sign of “I’m humoring you.” Then he turns over another page. Oh, great. Another man without his pants. And another. And … in one of the MTA’s few moments of brilliant timing, the train rumbles into the station. I grab my filth and board the train. He follows behind. It’s around 1 p.m. so the car is mostly empty. I select a comfy seat, one of those end ones with shoulder support. That way, only one person can sit beside you.

“May I see it again?” he asks, taking the empty seat.

Perhaps what happens next is because I’m an ex-Midwesterner. My heartland heart beats just beneath my hard, city veneer. In nearly six years of New York living, I have kept my “ma’am” and “sir” manners well-polished. I hold Duane Reade doors for wrinkled old ladies and I readily relinquish my subway seat to pregnant women. Heck, I even say thank you to bodega owners as they pass me a six-pack of something cheap and sad through a bulletproof window at 3 a.m. Twenty-one years of Ohio are hard to shake.

I pass him the publication. He starts looking at pictures of despicable acts, of things best kept hidden. I stare at the floor, concentrating on a blob of spilled soda. It oscillates back and forth to the subway rhythm. This motion, evidently, gives my neighbor a nifty notion.

He starts rubbing shoulders against mine, quickly, like he’s warming his hands on a frigid winter morning. His lips curl into a grin, baring sharp, tiny teeth. What other words lurk behind those teeth, I’ll never know, because the train pulls into the next station. The doors open with a whoosh of stale, welcome air. Though I’m six stops and 50-odd blocks from my destination, I blurt, “That’s my stop.” I snatch the magazine from his hands and sprint into the station, burying my problem deep in my bag where it belongs.