Train Car of Life

When I boarded the train this morning, I moved towards the center as I usually do (pat on the back for courtesy). There was no seat available so I stood, and removed my bag from my shoulder to the floor so that people around me wouldn’t be smacked by it. I accidentally bumped toes with a woman who was seated in front of me and slightly to my left. She looked up from her romance novel, her pretty hazel eyes surrounded by a sultry cloud of black mascara and dark eyeshadow. She smiled. I smiled and said “I’m sorry.” “That’s okay,” she smiled wider. And she softly repositioned her book in front of her and continued to read.

I read too, and held a novel in front of my face at an angle that slightly obscured the woman. But below the bottom edge of the book I spied her stocking covered legs—fish nets—and her patent leather boots, and the tight denim skirt and then above the top rim of my novel I could see her hair: tight, thick curls all black and juicy—the kind of hair you wanna hold gently and then grab tightly in fistfuls of playfully dangerous tension before a light teasing kiss on the—WO! The train came to a screeching halt. I realized I was looking at her, she was looking at me and she smiled again. There was CHEMISTRY!

But I was a gay man. AM a gay…well…What was going on? Who was driving this runaway lust train? I was as shocked by these fantasies as by the fact that the woman seemed to be reciprocating. What was SHE imagining?

I quickly averted my eyes back to my book to process my feelings and thoughts. This agressive fantasy was titillating but not arousing in the same way my sexual subway fantasies of men are. Those usually render me immobile for as long as it takes the internal repetition of the phrase “dead babies” to defeat my hard on.

I wanted to kiss this woman and touch her and I got off on the idea that she wanted me, too. AND I got off even more on the idea that in our sexual fantasy she wouldn't know I sleep with men. But then I'd tell her and it would turn her on even more.

Eventually, a slight pang of guilt made me feel like I was toying with her, leading her on.

I’ve always known I had a little bisexual in me. I had sex with men for years before having sex with women, and then I did that on and off for a couple of years before turning my attention to just men again. So here I was finding of a part of myself I thought I had lost. It's understandable to lose a part of yourself in a society where everything is black or white, right or wrong, Republican or Democrat, gay or straight. I think most of us stand closer to the center than to the extremes of the (bare with me now) train car of life. Choo choo.