Monday, October 22, 2007

Lassitude

okay, dude from the bus, I promised so I’ll deliver: here’s a little transit tale about the train, and its various rides and riders.  Looking back, maybe I could have made it more interesting but the truth is just as I write it here.  I guess I’m okay with that.

It had already been a really long day.  In retrospect, maybe that’s why it went down the way it did, so to speak.  Maybe I was ready for it. 

I’d been up early, in an unfamiliar (though accommodating) hotel; had a small, cheap, rushed prefab breakfast; endured hours of interview after interview; and then hustled back to the airport to fly away home.  My late flight was delayed and overbooked; I landed in oaktown queasy, roadworn and burned out. But I’d started noticing a strange repetitive pattern: At the Burbank airport - an unusual spike in the number of beautiful women.  On the plane, a cattle call flight which I boarded late when few seats were left, I wedged myself between - two beautiful women.  As I walked out of the airport, more beautiful women.  I was tired, for sure, and not feeling my best, but it was hard not to notice the uptick in ambient hotness.  Sometimes they even chatted me up - clearly out of boredom more than any active interest, but by the time I caught the bus link to BART and yet another lovely lady favored me with adjacency and smalltalk, I had to ask myself what the hell was going on. 

The BART station where the bus delivered us was crowded - much more so than usual.  An A’s game had just let out and the platforms were jammed with fans: mostly young adults, mostly male, mostly toasted and boisterous, a foamy sea of team colors - white, green and yellow.  They shouted and slapped backs, compared team-themed jerseys and hats, and un-self-consciously exchanged guy-hugs.  I could smell cheap beer and footlongs and after the day I’d had, it really wasn’t working for me.  I realized that I had a pounding headache.  The trend I’d noticed toward pulchritude had clearly come to a close. 

Ten long minutes later, my train arrived and I joined the ballcrowd storming the city.  When the doors opened a flood of us flew at them like seat cushions out a busted airplane window.  I was part of a mass exodus from the Coliseum station, seemingly the only one in a suit with two days worth of work on his weary shoulders.  I struggled to mid-car, where some empty slots on the benches promised interim respite. 

Except… every available spot seemed to place me in the middle of a party I was grateful I hadn’t been invited to, leaving me surrounded by high-5’ing drunkards.  I didn’t want to hang out with them on the train any more than I’d relished their presence at the station.  I didn’t want to stand with all my bags, either, but these yahoos were giving me scant choice.

Except…

One seat looked a little more promising.  The other three around it in its little pod were clearly occupied by a very tipsy coterie, but I was pretty sure they hadn’t started at the Coliseum.  I dragged over my bag and my suitcase and my worn-out self and claimed my place. 

At first I considered it improbable that this seat was even available.  Then again, it was a single and the crowd was full of groups, and of course, there was the intimidation factor as well.  Maybe some dudes were nervous about sitting with that crowd. But really, what were they going to do, make fun of me?  I somehow didn’t expect that to happen.  As I settled in with a muted “hello” I felt that I’d taken the seat reserved for me by fate.  I am sure I noticed a bunch of dudes tracking my choice. 

To my left sat a slender young woman in toreador jeans, short stylish heels, and a tight black sweater; across from her lounged a well-nourished young woman with a great tan, a flat, bare midriff, well-fitted white trousers and a bikini-top halter that cupped her substantial mammaries in a pair of sparkly knit pouches tied enticingly behind her neck; next to her - across from me - was a tall, slim, leggy young woman in a black microskirt, strappy shoes with clear latex spike heels and a crop-collar top that somehow managed to be both demure and slutty.

They were leaning together, gossiping, giggling.  I kept my earbuds in as a show of respect and restraint and pulled out my notebook to read some old essays, since I was pretty sure I’d be too distracted to do any serious writing.  Within a few moments, my seatmates were passing around a bottle of a highly diluted brown liquid, and then the blonde across from me leaned forward to initiate a conversation:

“You ride BART very often?” She turned back to her haltered friend and chortled.  “Sounds like a pickup line: ‘Do you come here often?’” I grinned ruefully.  I was double her age - it was not a pickup line.  It was, at best, a practice flirt.  I opted not to grab the bait like some rapacious old catfish; rather, I leaned into the back of my seat and locked her eyes with quiet self-possession as I pulled out an earbud.  I answered her; she offered a comeback; the conversation stumbled as the train sped on rubber wheels through bayside Oakland.  All three joined in, asking a predictable round of benign questions - how often I flew for work, what I did, what I was writing.

I deflected each inquiry with a few brief words.  Eye contact was steady and unflinching.  Keep it above the clavicle, I reminded myself, as they started pulling out the big flirt guns.  First the leggy blonde started squirming on her seat as she chatted me up, ineffectually tugging on her tiny skirt’s elevated hemline; then she leaned over to the halter chick and attentively - and none too gently - adjusted the other’s boobcups, tweaking the upper edge of the fabric to reaffirm nippular coverage.  It was hard not to smirk at the blatant display of unvarnished wiles. 

Finally, the toreadorette to my left rotated toward me, initiating full-on conversational intercourse - which was mostly along the lines of how the three of them were high school friends, now attending a not-too-nearby university together; they were riding in from the old neighborhood of their common youth to attend a bit of a party some guy of their acquaintance was throwing near the Embarcadero.  They all kept taking dainty but regular sips from their bottles of pale brown refreshment, and batted their eyebrows endlessly.  It was tag-team chat-flirt badminton, and I felt like the shuttlecock. 

As we left the west Oakland station and descended into the transbay tube, all three of them started pulling longer, luster swigs from the rapidly-depleting bottles of cocktails they were passing around.  At Embarcadero station they dragged themselves to their feet and prepared to hit the street: they’d failed to ensnare me as a trial conquest, but it was understood that I wasn’t really in season. 

As they slinked out across the gap between our still-crowded train car and the station landing, a bleary A’s fan shouted out at their posteriority, “Sluts on the train!” His slurred slur fell loudly and flatly to the rubberized floor and lay there, repugnant and embarrassing.  He’d soundly confirmed my choice of seats.  Better a friendly slut any day of the week, I thought to myself, than to sit next to a boor like you.

and now, off to the playground with Z, and then maybe to find him more accouterments for his halloween costume.  He’s going to be an alphabetical robot.  Yeah, it was his idea, but it’ll be cute anyway.  It’s a gorgeous day; I get to stop wearing a bandage over my sutures later this afternoon; bargaining begins in earnest; and we enjoyed the hell out of the Trolley Dances yesterday.  Details when the calendar eases up.  Till then, enjoy your ride - wherever it takes you…