I'm standing on the train
flash non-fiction
I can always tell when Red Sox season has started up again because so suddenly, as if commanded to swarm the tunnels beneath Boston by God or David Ortiz, I look up and I am surrounded by milky swaths of sunglassed and snapbacked heterosexual couples crowding the train—all wearing Red Sox gear. If this seems like an obvious observation, refuting obtuse obfuscation, it’s because it is. Not everything has to be so fucking smart.
Some other obvious statements that I have to make, as a bloodletting:
I hate when the train goes slow. I wish it would go faster.
I am standing. I wish I was sitting. People legs were clearly not made to stand in place for long periods of time. The intentional sway, the meager bend, these are fractionally temporary salves to the throb and ache. It is a failing of my public infrastructure that my little legs hurt.
It would be nice if there were less people on this train. They bump and shove and make an obstacle of my real human body. Don’t you know I feel every thing you do to me?
I need the people who do take the train to learn the rules of making room, letting people off before boarding, move all the way in, backpack stashed between your feet, etc. Our education system is failing. I can’t name a thing that isn’t failing.
Men should dress sluttier when taking the train. Short shorts, tank tops, exposed chest hair, thighs spread. For me—because I’d like to have something pleasing to peer at through all the shifting, clothed bodies. I wonder sometimes if I’m a pervert, then remember that I am and I’m pretty pleased about it. Is this an obvious thing to say? This is my life, I hope you understand.
There should be world peace—there is not and I will stand in a very long line waiting for whomever it is that must apologize to me for this. I’ll stand as long as I have to.
I’m standing on the train. The seats all swallowed by sweaty asses. I type these words into my phone. I want to tell them all that I’m a writer, I am writing, this is how I use my cell phone unless I’m using it for a different reason I don’t want anyone to know about. Normally, sitting, I’d have a book propped neatly on the knee of my crossed legs and, with my hair tucked behind my ear, I’d nod along thoughtfully to the words I am reading, smile if something funny has happened, frown when the plot turns unsavory.
I like when funny things happen.
I find bad things to be in poor taste. I stomach it.
But I am standing and cannot convey the same air of casual engagement, as to hold a book upright is to endure the story being jostled by slouchers and normies, ketchup colored jerseys calling me away from the page again and again. Forced back into this world which houses me. So I don’t read. Nothing can be controlled. I am miserably spinning.
It’s something, though, to hold nothing but a moment. Attention trained on even that which upsets me. Greasy mullets vs. balding crop circles, McDonald’s bag peeking out of a JanSport backpack, shorts hitting below the knee, pigeons picking at loose garbage past the dirty windows, the harsh overhead light of modernity. Everyone is swimming in it. We share this.
I play a game with myself in which I predict what stop a person is going to get off at based on their appearance: how they are dressed, what kind of facial hair they have, how many piercings—which could be problematic if I wasn’t batting a 90 average (baseball?). It’s just that I can see the pronoun pin on your Fjällräven backpack. I know you’re getting off at Harvard Ave. I love that you are who you are.
Does anyone notice me?—whatever. That game got boring. Notice me, what, standing around waiting to get noticed? How embarrassing is that. How embarrassing to toss myself out into the world and wait for what is right in front of me, and then ask more of it. None of this is in my control. I only have myself, my observations, the love I harbor for the ugly, constant world.
I’m just going home. This is the world I move through, crowded, reckless and resistant to my touch. To get home, I unleash the world on me. I’m part of it for a moment. I’m standing on the train, and so are you.
So good. Baseball? Baseball.
First, I love the fuck out of this. Second, the first paragraph gave me PTSD because I lived next to Fenway for 4 years, and those snapback swarms came rushing back into view.