Day Ninteen - Train Ride

The train was still trembling when I awoke and was quickly disappointed that I was still here, still smashed beside an obnoxious teen with distorted headphones on one side and yet another sweaty guy who couldn't seem to find anyone who wanted to talk, on the other. That fact is why I closed my eyes in the first place. Solitary confinement would be a very welcomed alternative at this point, if for nothing else but to allow me to linger with my fleeting memories a few moments longer.

I had been taken from this harsh and musty train car and thrown lovingly back to a previous year, a time back during high school. I was closely watching my first girlfriend, Sheila, putting her suitcase, sack of audio tapes, and camera into her sickly-yellow car, a tiny Datsan. The car that would later be involved in a fatal accident, Pictures of the scene showed the bumper of the car, like a lip, folded up and tucked closely up to the rear seat, tires splayed outward as if in a gesture of defeat leaving not an inch for a hunan body to either escape or to reside in.

We were to be on our way, out to her Fathers' house in the deep woods of Culpepper. I never felt comfortable at his house, with Sheila's stepmother Bernette always fussing and constantly running at the mouth knowing no silence or self-censorship. They were chain smokers as well, which drove us, along with my feelings at the time for Sheila, to either stay locked away in her bedroom or else to explore the woods around her father's house. Impregnated with the smell of cigarette smoke we would always spring outside, regardless of the temperature, in hopes of extending our time alone together, and escaping to a more comfortable space.
Perhaps in fear for what might happen to his life, I never saw Sheila's Dad leave his house. Any changes could have killed him, or so it seemed to me then.

He would always make slightly crude jokes when we would arrive back into his dusty, cramped dwelling implying that we had partaken in actions that we had not yet totally enjoyed. It always felt dangerous to return for some reason, as if something inside of me was always on guard, and never able to relax, or as if I was stumbling into some sacred system that I was not only unaware of but that my presence there may have been making their ground unholy.

Despite all my uneasiness, what over-ruled it all, was my newly discovered emotions and the surging of chemicals. My recent discoveries would have allowed me to follow Sheila anywhere. It didn't hurt that she was a few years older than me, and because of that a little more dangerous in my mind. I was with her now, and with her slightly unconventional, quirky ways. I was, at that point, simply happy.
We were together, until the train shifted and I was violently taken away from Sheila once again. Once again I was alone, packed together with strangers.