A Stranger On the Train Thought I Was Tailing Him For Days

There’s gotta be something weighing on your conscience if you think every other commuter might be a P.I.

Do you ever notice the people who ride the train with you? Would you even be able to tell if you saw someone multiple times a week? Yeah, me neither.

One of the oddest things about living in a city is the way you can feel completely anonymous amid the constantly churning mass of humanity, yet simultaneously you end up seeing the same people in the same places almost every day. Logically it makes perfect sense — of course you’re going to see your neighbors often, even if there are a shit ton of them. But when you’re riding the train into the city with hundreds of strangers, it also feels wild that any of them could be taking notice of your routine. 

I never spent much time thinking about this until roughly eight years ago when somebody really took note of my daily commute and thought I was a private detective sent by their ex-wife to trail them.

I was riding the PATH train (it’s like the subway if it only went to New Jersey!) home after work one Thursday evening like I did five days per week. Most of my focus was on the book I was reading, but I couldn’t help but notice a fellow rider looking right at me as he boarded the train. He grumbled something under his breath and walked all the way to the other end of the car, as far from me as he could. At the time, I thought nothing of this. Seasoned commuters know that it takes extreme behavior to even warrant a glance and this fell well short of that threshold, so back to my book. 

Soon the train was pulling into Newport — one stop before my usual one, Grove St. — and I got off and started trudging towards the exit. Looking up through the crowd I noticed the man from earlier, about 20 feet in front of me, moving forward but staring back at me. We locked eyes for a split second and he visibly increased his pace. Again, at the time I thought nothing of this. 

I exited the station and started to cut through the Newport Mall which stands in between the PATH and my apartment. My commute requiring a trip through a mall is the most Jersey thing imaginable. And it was somewhere around Auntie Ann’s (where I grabbed a free sample as I always do, making me an expert on their menu despite never once purchasing an item) that I noticed the man was still staring back at me. What the fuck? Why was this guy seemingly fixated on me? I’m handsome, but not that handsome… 

Kevin Smith doesn't exaggerate one bit about the mall culture here in New Jersey. The Easter Bunny even got his ass kicked here a few years ago. And at 5:30 pm every Monday - Friday this place is packed with people forced to cut through the mall to get home from work.

My route took me out of the mall and into a relatively creepy parking garage (Jersey, baby!) that I also cut through. The crowd of commuters and shoppers had thinned out and I could clearly see him about 100 yards ahead of me, speedwalking at this point, and still constantly looking over his shoulder toward me. Then, right when he was about to exit the parking garage he turned to face me and screamed, “Why are you following me?!” 

“I’m not?” 

“Did my ex-wife send you?” 

“Sure. Sure she did,” I chuckled. 

“Fuck off!” he yelled while turning and race walking out of the garage.

I assumed this was the end of it. It was just another stupifying day in Jersey City and I had a fun tale to tell my friends waiting for me at the bar. I walked the next couple of blocks replaying the scenario in my mind, trying to figure out if there was something I had done to set him off and coming up empty. Then, about a block from my apartment, I see him coming out from a liquor store. I put my head down hoping he wouldn’t notice me, but of course he did.

“You followed me Monday! You followed me Tuesday! Leave me the hell alone!” 

This parking garage is admittedly very creepy. If somebody was tailing me through here, I'd definitely start running too.

He then bolted across the street, nearly getting greased by a pickup in the process, and sprinted down the block, never to be seen again. I stopped dead in my tracks and blinked, mouth agape. This was one of the most farcical encounters I’ve had in a life full of them, but it left me with two unanswered questions I still ponder: Would I make a good private eye, and what the hell did that guy do that led to him to be so suspicious of me? And while I’m nearly positive the answers are a) Absolutely not and b) Probably something boring like not paying alimony, I have considered tailing strangers on my way home just to see if I can do it. It’s a fun and harmless way to pretend I’m Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, and if this whole journalism thing doesn’t work out this seems easier than learning to code.