the 2 and 5 are in an abusive relationship

The 2 and 5 trains are in an abusive relationship. They are at their best when they are apart, and don’t know how to properly relate to each other when together. They try, though. They break up and make up in Brooklyn and the Bronx. In Manhattan they put on their best faces, go their separate ways and thrive. But, the allure of abusive love is too strong – so strong that even when they are at their most productive – whizzing through Manhattan at top speeds, this speed and efficiency only bolsters their egos, lets them think that they’ve mastered their issues so that coming back together will be a uniting of two strong forces. But as in any bad relationship, the pairing is not so much a sum of the two parts as it is a melding of the worst aspects of the two, as they infinitely seek the better half.

Let me explain: in Manhattan, the 2 and the 5 run express. So, if your commute is from uptown Manhattan to downtown, you might only know the 2 and the 5 as a lucky break that will get you to work faster. But, in Brooklyn – when the 5 decides to follow the 2 into Brooklyn – the two share a line through Flatbush all the way to Brooklyn College. This only happens at certain time so of day. Most other times, the 5 can’t take what it has coming and has to stop at the bottom of Manhattan. In the Bronx, the two come together almost immediately, at 149^th street, and continue onwards together until the Bronx Zoo, over some of the oldest, most rusted tracks I think we have in the system. After the Bronx Zoo, the two either fight or don’t. At times they are inseparable – riding together to the northern Bronx, happily to Nereid Ave. Other times, the fighting is too much for the 5 train to bear and it goes off on its own to Dyre Ave. Sometimes the 5 prefers to avoid the whole Bronx ordeal altogether and join with the 2 train only by chance, just to drop in as it runs express in the Bronx.

The relationship is doomed because the 5 train does not know itself. The 2 remains stalwart through it all, carrying of the largest burdens in the whole system – a three borough journey – a rare diagonal transversing of upper Manhattan, and the accompaniment of a fickle partner.