Commutants and commutiny

Hypothesis (as yet untested): I would write much less about trains and busses if I spent less time on them. However, with a 90-minute one-way commute...well, you get the picture.



Actually I'm -glad- I don't have a car, at the moment. (I'm not even going to touch on the issues of cost, insurance, repairs, hassles, and $2.50/gal for gas--I'd say my carlessness was an act of compassion to the environment, but the sad truth is just that I'm broke as hell and incapable of changing that fact despite working 45-50-hour weeks.)



To begin with, if I had a car, I'd never get any sleep. I consider the rides to and from work as an extra three net hours of sleep--no small potatoes, for one who loves sleep as much as I do.



And then, too--there are the things I'd miss, if I had a car. Such as....



Purple Line Train Sketch #1

Davis Street. Girl gets on, fashionable. Olive-skinned, blondish-streaked dark hair; maybe Hispanic, maybe Italian, maybe not. Pretty, in the way that expensive clothes and accessories can make girls pretty. She sits in one of the sidewise seats, plops her satchel next to her. This satchel costs more than my cable bill, probably.



I cease to notice her--the buildings and roads outside are more interesting to me--but then I notice: something smells funny. Like something Ted the Consultant brings for lunch when he comes to work on the database; a salad, maybe. Not a good salad.



I look up and the girl has a little plastic tray perched on one crossed knee...Sushi. Little leaf-wrapped rice-centered vinegary blobs of stinky sushi. She picks her way, delicately (of course), through the entire tray, opens the little Wash-n-Dri wipe, wipes her hands.



I go back to watching the graveyard by Irving Park. (I once looked at an apartment with a view of the cemetery; at that point in time I think it would have suited my attitude pretty well. But they turned down my credit.)



A few minutes later, I look up. The girl has just taken, out of her Big Expensive Bag, a Small Expensive Bag. From this bag she removes an eyelash curler, and proceeds to curl her eyelashes. Lash by lash by lash. It takes a good three, four stops, plus a five-minute "waiting for signals" delay at Belmont. Then, mascara, blush, lipstick, lip gloss.



Between the nasty sushi, the expensive gear, and the eyelash curlers--why, I wonder, was I not surprised

to see her get off at Fullerton??? If I'd been looking for a character-sketch of the Lincoln Park Trixie in its native habitat, I don't think I could have come up with anything better. The one thing that would have made it perfect would have been a long, shrill, highly-detailed personal call on a teeny little cell phone, in concert with all the rest.