earthmann

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.”