A person on the subway the other week at like 1am on a Saturday:

In a car with a lot of (younger) (white) and a few (Latino) kids all dressed up and coming from some EDM concert, a (scrawny) (30-something) (strung out) (white) guy with a huge smudge of blood on his face by the right corner of his mouth and also with large and open but somehow clean gashes in his arm like from a knife, who's speaking loudly and harrassing this (young 20s) (hipster) (possibly gay) (black) guy, asking him over and over again for just one cigarette.

"My life is like this!", he was like, pointing to the open gashes on his arms. "A cigarette would make me feel better.  Just one cigarette, man, that's all I'm asking!".

And, he said variations of that a few times, with erratic and sometimes long silences in between.

Eventually, he got off at a stop somewhere near downtown.

"I'm glad he's gone," someone said into the quiet of the car after he got off and the doors had closed.

And, everyone let out a breath and began talking.

"I didn't know what the fuck was going on with him," the (young) (possibly gay) (black) kid was like.  "And then he showed me those cuts in his arms!".

. . .

(From a distance, the cuts seemed healed over like there wasn't any bleeding or anything, yet it was like the skin had been pulled back on each side in a pointed ovalish slit, like from a clean cut where the skin had burst open but had never been pulled together to heal, or something like that.  It was weird.)