Just now a person on inline skates zipped past me, making way down the aisle so quickly I couldn't make out their sex, which is most unfortunate since the skater wore very short shorts and I would have appreciated the opportunity to let my mind drift.

Stranger than the asexual skater is that she (or possibly he) garnered no attention from the other train passengers. No one, not this business man, not that mother, nor her two children, even bothered to glance from their respective newspapers and teen magazines. (The business man reads the teen magazines.)


I think in most of America, mass transportation is a bit of a freakish activity in itself,
the sort best reserved for bums whose shopping carts provide insufficient shelter from occasional rain,
and for single, horny mothers, caught in a devil’s cycle of poverty too severe to allow the purchase of adequate numbers of rubbers,
and for overachievers who drink heavily with such regularity and precision, certain governments have, in the name of public good, revoked their license to drive.

Mass transportation is far from the main stream. Even mentioning you happened to use the front bumper of a cross-town bus to prop your foot while you tied your lace is cause for all manner of suspicion,
not the worst of which is that you are some sort of hippie communist type who refuses to keep body hair at moderate lengths.

In my limited experience in America, it is easier to be a man with one testicle than a man without car.

An aside:
I really don't know what it is like to have just one ball, really, but being uni-balled is the sort of erroneous fact (like claiming to be Jewish) that I like to let slip in rooms filled with complete strangers.
I think it helps people regard me in a sympathetic light, which is especially important when you drink from a flask.

But yes, without doubt, it is easier to be a man with one ball than with no car.

Consider the following:

A girl calls her mom and tells her she met this guy named…
“…‘Joey.’ he’s very sweet when he drinks, and he tells good jokes when he’s sober, Mom. I think I really like him.”

“Oh, yes, there is just one thing. He only has one ball. His sister shook him off a ladder when he was seven. He snagged his Sack of Mexican Candy on a rung.
They tried to save the ball. They put it on ice, but before they made it past the nurse station it had shrank so severely that the doctors feared disrupting the atom it was orbiting.
Mom, what should I do? Does, dad have both his balls?”

“Honey, honey. If he’s a nice boy, and he sounds just delightful, who cares how many balls he has. In college I dated Jim Hanson, and he had three balls.
Well, at least, that’s what he told me.
Of course, later I learned it was actually a malformed twin and broke it off immediately, but that was so different, Jenny.
I mean… twins!
In my day girls weren’t raised that way.

or…

“Oh yes, there is just one thing… He doesn’t drive.”

“Honey what kind of bum are you hauling around.
Now you listen here Jenny, we’ve been through this with your sisters and we are not going through this again. You girls bring any more of those darkies round here…”

“But mom, he’s Jewish.

“Let me talk to your father.”

At first it seemed I had just happened to pick the car that all the cool kids liked. But upon a closer inspection that involved little more than eerily, slowly spinning my head 360 degrees, I understood the train was packed, yes, to the gills, with school children behaving in a carefree manner afforded by a lack of adult interference. They laughed at jokes whose punch lines I could not quite make out, talked about this one’s new girlfriend, and what not . Three pretty, modish girls not more than fifteen stood below, right outside my window, smoking suspiciously and watching with silent awe a particularly chunky girl roll down the hill from Old Town, lumbering to catch the train, her scooter wedged in her chubby armpit.

Old women on bicycles. Skateboards in traffic. More to come. when I find a free wireless cafe.

What a grand universe. Here I am in a Texas town so small they don't even have a post office, and I recieved a job offer for a bar in Muenchen. My biggest source of stress (had I allowed) is now nonexistant. I knew was going to work somewhere in Munich. I knew that much. You don't see many headlines reading: Dumb yankee starves to death in Eurpean capital. But still, anyone who thinks you can just roll into town and fill an empty position in some bustling Irish pub has probably applied for the job the same day one of the employees broke both legs after falling off a ladder, which is convinient, but you can't keep bank that kind of fortune.

Now, once again, it seems that the gods have paved my path. It could fall through at some point, but in the mean time I am free to let my mind solve other problems, like how to burn wet leaves.

The rain has stopped, back to work.

I am officially on the road. Bags are packed. I have no home. I have no key chain. I have no pillow. I fly out the thirteenth of September, heading for Muenchen. I have been dreaming of my return to that continent for so long I suspect that upon arrival I shall be suddenly overcome with the feeling of being in a deep sleep.

You see what I did there, huh? See dreaming of Europe... in a deep sleep. That's good stuff folks, and it's that kind of light-hearted writing that you are going to find more of on this blog now. Those days of whining about this dead dog or this lost love or this smashed car or that mole on my lower back that I had removed but still itches- those days are over.