After having spent an entire week wallowing in despair for undisclosed reasons, I decided to go to the capital of the country I inhabit, which is the United States of America.
It would be more accurate to say I was invited to go to Washington, D.C. I was happy to go. I was even happier to have been invited in the first place. It meant leaving the house, and the momentary dispersal of anxious and wretched feelings that had been swarming in my brain. It meant someone had remembered me. It also meant I got to ride a train.
I went to sleep at four in the morning the night before I was to leave. I was supposed to catch the 12 p.m. MARC train bound for Union Station. I slept until 11:30, and upon waking, showered and groomed slowly. I had neglected to check the train schedule the night before, and had also conveniently let slip from my mind the knowledge that the MARC train runs hourly. By the time I had finished combing my stupid black hair and tying my stupid black shoes, the train was already arriving at Pennsylvania Station to take dumb and mealy-mouthed human beings to our nation’s capital. I heard it pulling into the station when I was just two blocks away. I jumped a fence. I avoided dogs. I ran like a psychopath.
By the time I reached the ticket counter, I was covered in sweat and my skin was red. My chest heaved and sank and heaved and sank.
The woman behind the counter was bored and tired. She was apathetic to my fate, punching keys seemingly at random. She yawned and looked at me like I was a cockroach that required too much effort to stomp on.
When I was asked which train I imagined myself being on, I told her, “The 12 o’clock, if possible.” She lazily spun her chair around to look at the clock behind her. I tapped my fingers on the counter. It was 12:02. The expression she wore as her chair turned back around was one that required effort and energy—and thought. It was a cruel and malicious and smirking face. Evidently my misfortune was screamingly funny stuff.
“If you gonna catch that train,” she said, “you better run yo’ ass off.”
So I ran. In doing so I broke a personal rule, which is to never run in public. The reason being is that my form is all wrong, and that it might offend the delicate sensibilities of anyone with half a lick of taste or decency to them. I am an obscene and offensive jogger to anyone with eyes.
By the time I had descended three flights of stairs, and had put violent images of my running into the head of every innocent passerby, I arrived at the train platform. The train was unceremoniously tottering away at a sad and joyless speed. I looked at the clock. It would be another 57 minutes until I could sit down on a train and shut my brain off with music and visions of the future.
I walked home and ate a cup of yogurt. I read my mail. I lay on my bed and watched the ceiling fan. I probably jerked off, too.
• • •
By one o’clock on that balmy and hellish afternoon, I found myself seated comfortably on a shabby commuter train. I picked a seat just below the air vent. I listened to Deerhunter’s Halcyon Digest, which is just about the best thing to ever happen to the world, and which was (and remains) the only thing I’d listened to for months. As mumbled psychedelic black-hole-infused bouncy basement-rock poured out of the tiny little buds and into my swirling ears, I imagined vocalist Bradford Cox sitting down with a guitar, his lanky arms bending and fingering and strumming guitar strings in intricate patterns to be be recorded and pressed and purchased by a young man who would, on an otherwise unremarkable train ride to Washington, D.C., listen deeply in order to escape loneliness and sadness, and whose brain would welcome such noise as therapeutic and lovely and achingly sad. I nodded off to asleep as “Basement Scene” chugged to life. The train chugged on.
At Baltimore/Washington International Airport, I was awakened by a clumsy stream of suitcase-toting out-of-town passengers. They were noisy and inconsiderate. They were also just as bored and foggy-headed as I was, and soon dozed off to dream dumbly.
A girl in a purple dress sat across from me. Her face was sharp and angular. It had been deliberately and subtly colored so as to accent the various facial features she thought everyone should notice. From the top of her skull there sprouted several shades of blond and brown hair. Her eyes were piercing green ones that examined her surroundings coolly. When pointed at human beings, they had the same effectiveness as a laser beam. People were scared by their light—by their honesty. They looked away.
At some point we made eye-contact. The look on her face told me that she might just as well have been staring at a soggy cardboard box. She looked on me listlessly for fifteen seconds and then found something far more interesting to point her eyes at, which was herself. Gazing into a pocket mirror she’d pulled out of her purse, she seemed dissatisfied with what stared back. She huffed and instantly fell asleep with her mouth open wide enough for a tarantula to crawl into.
• • •
At some point in my delirium I looked up and noticed we had arrived at Union Station. No one was the least bit enthusiastic about our arrival. In fact they groaned and lamented their immediate future, which involved carrying luggage through downtown Washington, D.C. while the sun stared on hatefully. I felt the same sting, despite the fact that my only possessions included a portable electronic music-device and a pair of $5 sunglasses that, when worn, allowed me to turn into a human being deserving of contempt and quiet judgment. As for why I dreaded an excursion in the sun, there is a simple explanation: bad genes. I am death-pale—and purpled under my eyes. I am as crisp and white and nondescript as a blank sheet of paper.
I walked side-by-side with the girl in the purple dress. She was just as she had been for the entire duration of the train ride, and thus the full length of time I had known her, which was unamused and huffy and solipsistic. Her wheeled luggage swerved in and out of my walking path, and she gave no more attention to me than she would a rotten log. I was invisible. I was air. I was happy that our relationship was more or the less the same as it had always been. At least there was stability; at least I could count on something.
• • •
Incidentally, I later spotted her browsing hats under the watchful eye of a weaselly push-cart salesman who had set up shop near the food court. In doing so, she became, and remains still, the only person I’ve ever witnessed to have actually paid these poor bastards any mind—or paid them anything at all, actually, which includes legal tender. When I imagine the thought that must have gone through her head upon entering Union Station, I can’t help but giggle childishly: “I think I’m going to purchase a hat today.”
• • •
Once inside the station, I was greeted enthusiastically by old friends. One of them, Ryan, held high above his head a piece of paper on which he had lovingly inscribed my surname. It made me feel fluttery and welcomed and loved—and remembered. It had been a long while since I had felt any of those things. I shook his hand. I exchanged hugs and greetings with everyone else, whom I was aware had been waiting a long while for me. No one complained or said anything bitter about my tardiness, even though they had every right to. I had, after all, missed my train, and so kept them waiting in a train station when they would have preferred to have been gazing upon famous works of art, and to have been walking and talking and breathing clean air and so on. But they accepted that, at least to me, a clock is an indecipherable ancient tool, and that time is a foreign language which I could never hope to comprehend or utilize. That and one amongst them, I’m certain, must have figured that I wasn’t exactly the happiest human being that day, and so I was prone to make unhappy mistakes which I internally chided myself for. They’re lovely if they realized this—and lovelier still if they hadn’t.
The air outside was stuffy and unkind. I was sticky with sunblock lotion; my head ached from the light.
We rode the Metro to the National Gallery of Art. We saw, here and there, the works of Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh and Henry Matisse, and of Jasper Johns and Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. I saw The Thinker, which I’d never bothered to see before. I even found myself in a room dedicated to still-life paintings—static bowls of fruit devoid of emotion as far as the eye could see. I sat on benches and couches and stared at everything the wall had to offer, which was famous artwork—some of it as old as God. The loveless drilling and grinding and spinning inside my brain let up and was replaced by a manageable and largely harmless pinprick sensation. It was enough to remind me that, indeed, something was quite wrong up there, but not quite at a level that turns me into a malfunctioning rubbery bath of chemicals. I quietly thanked art. Art said nothing in return, just continued to enchant and delight those who wished to feel wonderful and unburdened for a little while.
• • •
We visited the Hirshhorn Museum, which is a gray circular building that, if viewed from an aircraft, would resemble a moldy doughnut. The inside is just as monotone, just as clean and sterile. All of the furniture looks like it was stolen from the lair of a James Bond villain—black, leathery, ’60s-inspired. The artwork itself ranges from breathtaking and vivid to stale and downright idiotic. One of the better installations that we, I will phrase, experienced involved a pitch-black narrow hallway leading into a room poisoned by suffocating darkness—save for one blank wall lit up by a red lamp the color of blood. The idea was to stare at this wall—and only this wall, for there is nothing else to see—until, all at once one becomes acutely aware of one’s surroundings. The lot of us ambled inside like cattle, with only our quivering voices to guide one another along. Once we had all gathered in the main room, out of thin air tiny voices spoke to us, which were connected to tiny bodies which held out tiny hands. These tiny hands grabbed at our wrists and forearms gently and affectionately.
“It’s dark, but it’s okay,” said a human voice belonging to what I assumed was a mermaid or a shape-shifter.
“You’ve got longish hair,” said another disembodied voice, tugging at a few strands of the oily black stuff that grows on the top of my head.
A bolt of electricity struck my spine, and fireworks flickered and popped in my nervous system. I was almost positive I was about to be murdered.
“W-who are— . . . what is— . . . hello? Are you sirens? Are you going to molest me? Us?”
I continued to ask dumb and trembling sentences as two sets of hands fitted with twenty little fingers pulled gently at my arms and shoulders and hips and lead me to an seat that was invisible to me, and that was, apparently, bolstered to the wall at the far end of the room—the dark and spooky end.
“Look at the red wall. Stare at the red,” said the little voices, as though they were programmed, at this point on, to say nothing else.
“Look at the red.”
Fleshy caterpillars writhed on my shoulders and arms. They belonged to the guardians of the room—the girls who wanted to murder me.
I stared hard at the red wall. It resembled a room in sleazy motel you would take an ugly prostitute to. Gradually the room lit up for me. I could make out my hands and even the bodies of those around me. I could finally see what it was my captors looked like.
They were little girls in matching yellow t-shirts. The t-shirts were bright and had identifying marks on them, so that the accompanying adults could easily pick them out of a crowd, should any of their little lambs stray from the group. I felt dirty and weird. I closed my eyes and saw the color of blood—and darkness. It looked no different than any other time I had closed my eyes.
• • •
We later explored the sculpture garden directly across from the Hirshhorn, where, among other things, I had the fine privilege of entering and exiting, with my entire body, an enormous iron vagina which jutted up out of the lawn. It was grotesque and hilarious.
Yes, and there was the Washington Monument, and the National Mall and the Lincoln Memorial and all that. We saw these things from afar, and didn’t bother to venture the long distances required to admire them closely. The sun had created a day which made it hard to love or care about anything under its tyranny. We boiled and bubbled. We fried like eggs.
Whenever the sun got too pushy, which it often did, we would retreat to the subterranean world of the Metro Station. Large embossed slabs of concrete formed the dimly-lit ceiling above our heads. The air was cool but stale. It smelled like human beings and potato chips.
We zipped around on a long and thin metal tube. It was inexpensive and provided transportation for many, as opposed to only one or two. It was clean and bright and cheery. It was full of people who didn’t give a damn about any of that.
Our stomachs were empty and screaming, so we took the train to a station near Little China, which is arguably the worst part of Washington, D.C. The restaurant we intended to eat at was near K Street, which is where gruesome and inhumane and vile things are allowed to happen to women who have very little say on how their lives will turn out. We made our way over to a restaurant called Busboys & Poets, which is a wonderful name for anything.
Busboys & Poets was fancy without being ostentatious; it was colorful without being lurid. There were beautiful murals on every wall, and also vivid and chromatic painted portraits of famous African American visionaries and leaders. Dr. Martin Luther King and Langston Hughes and Barack Obama and Nelson Mandela hovered above our table, staring ahead, gazing into the future. I too tried to see the future. It looked like a sandwich.
Our waitress was a rail-thin Slavic woman. She was dressed entirely in black. She was tall, and her limbs were delicate and spider-like. I imagined she had once been a ballerina. She must have weighed 95 lbs. I fell in love with her instantly.
I had a sandwich made of compacted soy and vegetables served between two toasted slabs of rye bread. It came with a side of french fries. I ate until there was nothing left. I helped eat everyone else’s meals as well. I was feeling generous—I wanted to help.
• • •
The lot of us, fat with toothsome meals, reentered the outside world and squirmed under the oppressive heat. We sauntered down forgotten streets lined with derelict remnants of an age that had long ended. Dumb and hopeless human beings, who had lived their whole lives in squalor, and who would die in squalor, followed our path with bloodshot eyes. I saw them, too, until we had got too far away. They blurred and became fuzzy and forgotten. They didn’t mind. They were used to it.
By the time we reached the train station, the sun had begun to duck down beneath the clouds. It hid behind leering lonesome skyscrapers. I departed from my companions in an underground tunnel where long and thin metal tubes would take everyone home. We repeated the same lovely social dance that we’d participated in hours before—shaking hands, hugging. I got on a train going the opposite direction of everyone else. I waved from inside and no one saw. They were making their way over to their own train.
At Union I sat in molded plastic chair and watched a safety film produced by the Metro Transit Police Department. It was shown on a faded monitor. It looked smeary and old. A rotund smiling man explained in great detail how police dogs are trained and how bombs are detected and so on. I was there for so long that I ended up watching it one and half times. My friends were well on their way. They would be home and snugly in bed before I stepped foot on a train.
Eventually another drab MARC commuter train bound for Baltimore pulled into the station. It was the last train of the evening. I stood in line with deflated office workers and nurses and off-duty police officers. The most exciting thing any of us could possibly imagine happening, was to sit down in a stiff chair and nod off until the squeal of breaks awakened us at our destination.
I found a quiet window seat on car 7, which was a double-decker car. I chose to sit on the lower level, because most everyone else preferred to sit up above. There were a few businessmen scattered here and there, but car 7, at least where I sat, remained virtually devoid of any other humans.
Just as the train was about to pull out out of the station, a young German girl with spiky bleach-blond hair appeared. She walked down the aisle as though there was no question as to where she was going. When she got to my row, she turned to me, smiled, and sat down in the chair next to mine. Her clothes looked hand-made, and were entirely brown. She wore Greek sandals that had seen better days. She looked like Peter Pan.
Though I am usually a social and amiable person to share a row with, those feelings did not present themselves that day. I felt frazzled and weird just then. My head was filled with chalk and sawdust, because I was leaving someplace nice. I was on my way to Baltimore. So I didn’t say much, just looked out the window and listened to the same thing I always listen to, feeling the same way I always do.
A ticket-puncher came by. I gave her the round-trip ticket I had purchased in Baltimore. She punched it with a handheld hole-puncher and returned it to me with a smile. She said she liked my t-shirt. I plucked headphones out of my ears and fumbled through several sentences about how I was grateful she had said that. She turned to the German girl, who told her she did not have one. She said, in broken English tinged in a wonderful German accent, that she wished to purchase a ticket right then and there. That was possible. It was also twice as expensive.
“It’s ten dollars for a ticket while aboard the train,” said the ticket-puncher.
“I have . . . just . . . eight,” said Peter Pan. She presented a crumpled five and three ones that she’d pulled from a little leather satchel slung around her shoulder.
I reached for my wallet and looked inside. I had no cash on me—had left my last three ones as a tip for the Slavic ballerina.
I dug around in my pockets and found a pathetic-looking one-dollar bill. I handed it to the ticket-puncher. She wasn’t particularly happy to give the German girl a discount, but then again, there wasn’t a whole lot else she could do. The train was roaring along at 50 mph. We were halfway home.
“Thank you,” said Peter Pan.
She saw that I was listening to music. Without asking—and God love her for this–she took the little device out my hands. She asked me what I was listening to. It was Halcyon Digest. I had somehow made it to the last song on the album.
I gave her one half of my headphones, and we listened to “He Would Have Laughed” until we arrived in Baltimore.
When the train stopped, she stood up and bowed her head. I made her promise me she’d buy the album. She said she would.
I was slow to rise. I stretched my legs and headed for the exit. Everyone around me had a look on their faces like they were expecting the world to end—that they wouldn’t mind at all if that happened.
I walked the five blocks from Pennsylvania Station to my home in Mt. Vernon. The sky was orange and gray and spiraled. Thin clouds stretched themselves over the mass of abandoned factories and warehouses that make up much of my neighborhood. A band was playing loud and twangy instrumental music somewhere in the distance. A sonic blast of feedback and drums and sluggish bass lines poured out into the streets and reverberated off buildings that would never see use again. I felt the pavement tremble. With my hands in my pockets, I walked in the direction of that noise. I didn’t care where that ended up being.