The Run Away Train

I never liked trains. Or airplanes. Or cars. I guess I never liked traveling all together. Babies cry while adults cough and sniffle with an open mouth showing no concern for the people around them. The food is bad, the air is stale, and no matter how hard you try, there’s no good way to rest your head in a sleeping position. This train, however, is very different. I have no idea how I got here. I have no idea where I’m going. But thats nothing new. Am I in New Jersey? Have I left Manhattan? Either way, it doesn’t matter. This train has no babies or food or uncomfortable seats, or any seats. It has one thing, the most important thing, a bar. A bar supplied with seemingly bottomless bottles of liquor and a bartender handing out drinks to me and all the other passengers like blankets at a refugee camp. The most amazing part, is that none of the drinks cost anything. It’s all free!

Some people call me an alcoholic. My mother. My ex-boyfriend. The cop who picked me up outside of Wendy’s. People love to judge, but they never want to look at themselves. They hold a mirror up and force you to gaze into your own emptiness, while they stare at themselves through the untarnished beauty of a stained glass church window. My mother is a great example. Half human, half plastic barbie doll. A venomous soul sucker in Jimmy Choo stilettos. Like a leach, she sinks her fangs into the flesh of men and drains them of their blood until her bank account is fat and their credit cards are maxed. She’s had four husbands and enough boyfriends to fill every position on the New York Giants. She spent my childhood criticizing me for wearing sneakers and boy’s t-shirts featuring Godzilla and other masculine images. When I was thirteen she bought me a pink dress with white flowers on it. I traded it with a girl at school for a Spiderman comic. Two years ago I traded that Spiderman comic for fifty bucks and a handle of tequila. I never thanked my mom for the gift.

I need another drink. Everyone on here drinks all day and night. No one judges you or cuts you off and the party just keeps rolling. It’s as if this train wanders the city, searching for uninhibited souls, ready to kick off the shackles of their formerly droll, incarcerated lives.

My ex, Kyle, was a stereotypical lifeless, working drone. He was a low level finance guy who worked twelve hour days, crunching numbers to make some fat, rich, pig, fatter and richer while he shared an apartment with three other guys and spent whatever money he did have on dry-cleaning for the Brooks Brothers suits he had to wear to look professional enough to keep his menial job. Then, when he did have a free day, he spent it cleaning and doing chores and learning Chinese, which apparently would impress somebody at the firm he deemed important. No wonder he was dating me. The man had no idea how to have fun; But I don’t think we ever really liked each other. I think the whole time we were together he was trying to change me. As if he could save me from myself. I would get these lectures about the dangers of alcohol. His favorite line was, “If you don’t take steps towards your future, you’ll be stuck in the present.” He had no idea I had a flask stuffed in the toe of my boot I would take swigs of in his bathroom. I need another drink.

See, thats the problem with people. They spend their whole lives planning for tomorrow and once tomorrow is here, they spend that day planning for the next. Kyle would clean his apartment only for it to get dirty again. My mother would sell the jewelry she bought while mooching off of one man to pay for her elaborate life while waiting for the next man to show up. Everyone lives in an endless cycle of work. You get a job to pay for your house or apartment just so you can sleep and shower to go back to that job to do more work. You make money just to spend it on staying alive long enough to make more money. So why bother! What is the point in life! I need another drink, maybe a shot of Glenlivet, since it’s all free.

I hope this train keeps going. I’m not ready to get off yet. This world is a miserable place. Everything costs money. I’ve been living on the streets for seven months now. My mom kicked me out of her latest penthouse with boyfriend number eight hundred and twenty. Kyle broke up with me. They don’t want me around anymore. I don’t have anywhere to go. I need another drink.

My mom was a child star in the 70’s. She was in a few big Hollywood films until they threw her to the curb the day she popped her first pimple, the usual maudlin tale we’ve heard a thousand times. She met her first husband, my father, by the age of 18. He was a forty year old producer that promised her some big roles but never delivered. I think she really loved him, at least as much as you can love a narcissistic, father figure husband at an age when you’re supposed to be going to prom and taking your first puffs of weed in the high school parking lot. Of course, once she got pregnant with me, her tiny tot career was officially over and my benevolent papa filed for divorce. She was 20 years old with a baby and no where to go. I guess, considering where she was then, she’s done pretty well for herself. I can see why she hates men so much. They used her when she was just a child. All of Hollywood used her. Why shouldn’t she be entitled to use men now? And why shouldn’t she hate me. I ruined her life! I need another drink.

Man, this train car is getting filled with people! There must be a lot of people out there who are unhappy with their lives. No one seems very interested in talking or making friends. Actually, as I scan my surroundings, everyone is in their own world. People are just looking to numb their own pain and aren’t really concerned with the pain of others.

There’s a man with a scruffy beard in some old rags slumped over on the floor. I shake him and scream, “Hello, sir, can you hear me?” He barely grumbles. This guy is really checked out. I could hit him in the face with a gong and he wouldn’t flinch. At least he’s alive. Upon closer examination, I’m realizing this man isn’t too old. He’s probably not much older than me. I wonder what his story is. What kind of pain has he endured to become this detached from reality? Did anyone ever try to help him? Is it too late?

There’s a person up at the bar. They have short blond hair, a plaid shirt and a lot of tattoos and piercings. They look like someone who will talk to me. I slide up next to them with a smirk and the most brilliant opening line I can think of at the moment. “Hey there, how ya doing? Some train, huh?” They turn to me and hiss like a cat! I take a few steps back. Wow, are they even human?

Ok, now here is someone who will talk to me! I see a heavy set, dark skinned woman, dancing in the center of the car. She’s wearing ripped jeans, a low cut, floral blouse, and gold beads in her braided hair. She looks friendly. She looks like she’s here to have fun!

“Hello!” No response. Ok, I’ll just dance with her. So I start dancing. This seems fun for a minute. For the first time since I’ve been on this train, I feel like I have some human connection. I’m doing something with somebody and it feels great, except I’m quickly realizing that she doesn’t notice me. We’re both just dancing our own dance, completely unaware of the other. “What is wrong with you! Can you even see me?”

These people are catatonic, unresponsive. This isn’t a party. People interact at a party, engage with each other. There’s no human connection here. I’m starting to realize how much I miss that. I haven’t had that in a while.

For some reason, my mind is wandering to a time that Kyle took me to Coney Island. We rode the Cyclone, which is terrifying enough without three swigs of Jameson and an empty stomach. Afterwards, he bought me an ice-cream and we walked along the sand. He looked at me like he was looking through that beautiful, untarnished, stained glass, like he saw something beautiful in me I couldn’t see in myself. Maybe it’s not about what filter we look at ourselves through, but what we perceive that filter to be.

I suppose it's impressive my mom took care of me as well as she did, given her situation. She didn’t have a stable life, still, she made it as stable for me as she knew how. She always had a place for us to sleep and I was always fed. And then there were the petting zoos. Every time we had a big fight, she would take me to a petting zoo as a way to say she’s sorry. I loved them, and she tolerated them, which was as close as we would come to agreeing on anything. She always made a fuss about how short she looked in flats, which is necessary at a petting zoo. Hay doesn’t mix well with stilettos.

I’m getting tired. I’m getting tired of being on this train. It seemed like so much fun before. This was life. This was what living was about. But the longer I’m on here, I realize that no one seems to be having fun. Everyone is just a zombie, going through motions until it’s time to get off the ride. And there’s so many people on here! It’s getting so crowded. It’s like everyone in New York City is trying to numb their pain and no one is actually dealing with it. This train is dizzying. I can’t stand up straight. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’m ready to get off this train!

Maybe life isn’t about forgetting your troubles. Maybe, no matter what, we will have to deal with them, whether we work for a giant, soul crushing corporation, or we live on the street in a tent. The one thing that seems to make it better is human connection. I miss my mom. I miss Kyle.

The bartender can help me! They seem to be the only person not drunk. “Excuse me! Excuse me! How do I get off this train?”

“Can I get you a drink?”

“No, I don’t want a drink, I want to get off. How do I get off?”

“Here, try this whiskey.”

He put’s a glass in front of me. The temptation is there to pick it up. Two ice cubes bob to the surface, just the way I like it. It’s cold, with one drop of sweat running down the outside of the glass onto a glossy, oak wood bar top. Before I take a gulp, I look at the others around me, content in their lack of human connection, already dead to the world around them. I can’t. This isn’t enough.

Suddenly, I see a crowbar next to the doors of the train. Was that there before? I haven’t noticed it. Maybe it was there the whole time but I couldn’t see it. I’ll use this to pry the door open. As I start to engage my muscles, the door glides open with little to no effort. I stand on the edge of this train moving at light speed. Outside are just streams of light. I can’t make out any objects or people. How can I jump out of a train moving this fast? I’ll die! But if I stay here I’m as good as dead. I hear a voice.

“Wake up! Wake up sweetie.” It’s my mom!

And another. “She’s opening her eyes! They moved!”

Kyle! Kyle, that’s you! Where are you!

They don’t respond. They can’t hear me.

I’m coming mom! I’m coming Kyle!

I look down at my feet as they stand on the edge of the train, the colors whizzing by. I’m scared to get off this train. I’m scared that I won’t make it on the other side. But this is my only chance. If I don’t take steps towards my future, I’ll be stuck in the present.

One gulp. One breath. Close my eyes. Three. Two. One. Leap.