New Nighttime Stations

Fluorescent light hurting my closed eyes, as well as a sharp turn of the train, jolted me awake with the loud screeching sound that came with the brakes. I opened my eyes and was staring into a denim jacket, not belonging to me.

You awake? a voice said and I looked up to the denim jacket owner I was leaning on. A ringing in my ear and a feeling like it was in the beat of the base from a club kept pounding from within my head. Had I gone out? How did I end up here? I certainly was drunk, still tasting the alcohol in my mouth, feeling it pulsing through my veins and drumming in my head. It made me dizzy, but so again, so did he. I sat up in a sudden motion, not making my head feel any better. I apologized and wiped my lips, hoping I hadn’t drooled on him or snored. He smiled at me, almost like he expected me to talk with him. I was sitting next to him with every seat available in our row. I wondered what would be the rude thing to do, to move away from him or take up the space next to him.

Before making a decision he made a move and handed me my purse. I took it, confused by why he had it as well as drunkenly disoriented. He must have noticed my confusion. and said: You kept dropping it on our way here from the club, so I carried it for you.

We looked at each other for a couple of moments. I muttered the club under my breath as a recollection incantation. He seemed thrown off but smiled like it was a funny thing. After a bit of hesitation he asked: By any chance, you don’t remember me?

I didn’t but I did. He reached out his hand as a greeting and I took it as he said he was pleased to meet me. Again.

Right, you were at the party, I said, lingering on the name, it was at the back of my mind. He had to remind me again. Kai. Yes, of course. My cheeks and ears were heating up, reddening as it was clear he remembered my name. I turned away to cover my blushing face and opened my phone to look at the messages from Kate. They were all misspelled and made no sense.

Yeah, people moved on to the afterparty, but you were kind of out of it. So I promised Kate to bring you safely home, Kai said, peering at me. I only remembered flashes from the party. I hadn’t been keen to go out that night. I never wanted to go out, to be honest. But as it was her birthday and I couldn’t say no. I had done my makeup to make up for my lackluster attitude as well as putting on glitter on my eyelids, glossed lips, and sprayed my hair stiff. Almost like a costume, I put on the sequin dress and high heels to be able to match the others at the party and thus not stand out too much.

By the time I arrived at the club we were meeting I had already had a couple of glasses of wine to try to gear up to talk with strangers and put a smile on my sparkling face. As I went by the frames of my memory picture by picture I saw him in it. My friend had introduced him to me and he had reached out his hand to me as he said he was pleased to meet me.

I asked how long I slept and he told me not to worry, it had only been a couple of stops. That didn’t make me worry any less and I looked at the announcement board telling what station we were at. We had just passed my stop.

I jumped up and touched the cold window as my stop disappeared in a blink of an eye. This was my stop, I said and his dark eyebrow that spelled out every thought and emotion flew up in a panic.

He apologized as he explained I fell asleep before telling him what my stop was. We can just get off at the next stop, he suggested, but it was late and I didn’t even know if there was going to be a train to take back. The next stop after mine was closed anyway, so the train would pass it. When I told him he didn’t look too worried or annoyed by it. He turned his head to look forward, away from the station we missed.

So what is at the next stop after that one? he asked, a smirk lurking behind the apologetic concern. I looked at the same map. The name said nothing to me and I told him I had never been so far out.

I guess we will find out then, he said, a discreet excitement hiding in his calming words. I turned away from the window where my stop was out of sight. I sat back down next to him on the seat. I guess we would.

He filled me in on what the blackout had wiped off. How Kate had almost been thrown out when she danced on the table, the one guy that insisted to buy everyone shots that made us all gag, the dancing everyone would be embarrassed by tomorrow, and how I kept falling asleep as he tried to drag me to the train. I was beyond embarrassed by my behavior and sorry for him to deal with it, but he told it all in a way that made it seem funny and more of an adventure than a chore. Like how I insisted on buying churros from a food stand that I took one bite of before being ill, and how I wanted to lay down on a bench for the night to sleep. The people we talked to on the way, the things we saw, I almost regretted not remembering any of it. Having to miss my stop almost seemed worth it.

I’m sorry. I said I would take you back, but guess I wasn’t much help, he said after the story caught up with the present. He had gotten me on the right track, held my purse, and lent his shoulder to sleep on. I almost felt like even his mistake had been of great help. No party had ever ended like this for me. I wished for the next stop to never come.

I was so conscious about the way I existed next to him. My stockings were torn after the night out, the make-up probably looked ok under the strobing light at a nightclub, but the fluorescent light on the train probably made the glitter glaring more than sparkling. The dress felt too short, my jacket too tight, and the outfit and the mask I had put on to fit into the party now made me stand out. He on the other hand looked like he would perfectly fit in anywhere he went as he belonged.

He looked so normal, in his denim jacket and jeans, but he carried them in such a confidence one can only claim, never be given. I tried to read him like tarot cards from the band t-shirt I took as one of his favorite bands, the tattoo almost hidden under his sleeve that looked like flowers. He was also wearing boots that one normally would expect people to wear on a mountain hike rather than on a night out.

What he worked with or what his hobbies were, they all felt too shallow to reveal his true self, but I asked nonetheless as I didn’t know any clever ways to steer the conversation too. He also had a hard time answering it in a single sentence, unlike me. I was Kate's friend and worked at an office. I couldn’t think of anything else. I went to work every day and came back at the same time, week in and week out. There wasn’t much danger of being promoted or anything, so I didn’t have to worry about being forced to try something new. I don’t know when I started to close off like a cone shell, stranded on the beach. I just knew I was afraid of being whisked away by the roaring waves that would take me out on the open waters.

He on the other hand started with one life in one sentence and ended with another as he was finishing it up. He was a house painter by trade but had majored in Spanish in college. He had thought about teaching it for a while but had ended up teaching English in Japan instead for a couple of years. He would like to start a band, but didn’t know how to play an instrument and was thinking of traveling again. Perhaps make use of that Spanish degree. But he would probably go to Mexico only to surf if he ever learned how to.

The way he sat was open, his arms relaxed by his side, his legs not bothering about taking too much space. I envied him in that like he knew he had a place and space in this world no one could take away from him. I was just happy that I was allowed to sit in the space next to him. His voice was loud and he didn’t care about the rest of the people on the train listening in, as if he was truly standing by his every word. He didn’t cover his belly laugh with his hand over his mouth as I usually did. I wanted to copy him and tried to laugh at all his jokes with a broad smile I didn’t hide.

As the train took forever to the next station, the world was unfolding outside of our microcosmos that tonight felt like it existed by its own rules. I didn’t even look forward to getting back to my usual stop, seeing the same streets I walked, the same buildings and people I passed everywhere. That’s how I usually felt. Like I was standing at the platform ready to board and all the trains kept passing me without stopping at the station. At least now I was on the train, at least there was a different view.

I was leaning my forehead on the cool window, looking out as I always did at those living their lives outside. The part of town was what we called the wrong side of the tracks. The view was of old brick chimneys and unkempt gardens with laundry hanging out. It was a dumping ground for used cars by the clogged-up river where not even swans or ducks wanted to hang out. Still, there was life going on. A mother on an early morning walk with a stroller of a baby refusing to sleep, delivery trucks outside of shops, and builders discussing their work on a building facade in their neon yellow vests and white helmets. It didn’t seem wrong to me, this was all right on track. I envied them.

I used to love trains, I said out loud like a piece of forgotten lore I rediscovered. I started telling him about the one time I went on an interrail with Kate through Europe. I spent whole days staring out from the window, looking at the people at the stations, living their lives in the world, wondering how I could get into the world as well. This is a common misconception about traveling I felt, people tended to think of it as a way to escape the world. For me, it was an attempt to join it.

From the window, he had the same view and I wondered if he still saw the same. He asked if I ever managed to join the world and I hesitated. I still loved trains. I still rode them, perhaps I was still watching it through the window? I looked away from the window and I caught him watching me. Our eyes locked and I didn’t manage to turn away.

The door to the carriage next to us opened up and a pair of security guards came in with their heavy coats and notepads to write out fines. People started to bring out their tickets or quarreled with them when asked to pay up for having a ticket. I looked at him and asked if he had a ticket. He didn’t and neither did I. We stared at each other for a couple of seconds, it was too late to buy one now.

Come on. He took my hand and we started to run through the carriage, pulling me along, not letting go of my hand as we dashed passed the passengers sitting in the hard seats or leaning on the poles. He was paving the way for me, taking the lead and being the one that pushed people aside, and made a safe passage for me to move onwards without any obstacles.

We passed nurses coming back from the night shift, backs aching and a smell of disinfectant, rubber gloves, and aluminum flooring still lingering over them. Drag queens were peeling off their eyelashes or still riding their high from the stage, twirling the poles, and dancing with the nightclubbers. A party of bridesmaids with the bride passed out on the chair sang Spice Girls songs and whistled their penis-shaped whistles.

People were sitting in their everyday coats, looking the same at night as they did in the day, those living outside the realm of AM and PM, those doing laundry at midnight and having breakfast in the afternoon, living the days and nights and lives according to their inner clock.

There were those huddled in all of their clothes with three plastic bags with their possessions and a few passengers were the early risers, ready to embrace the day, pouring cups of coffee and doing their makeup on their way to work as they overslept.

By the big group from the bachelorette party, we made a turnaround and slipped past the security guards. The party-ready women surrounded them and asked them to dance. We escaped them and saw them move onto the next carriage, away from us.

I turned to catch his eyes, the glimmer, the sweet smile as he laughed, exhausted by the escape. I tripped and he grabbed me, clinging his one arm to the pole. He had a hand on my back and told me to be careful in a low voice. I raised my hand to put it on the pole and brushed it by his hand. I had heard that one of the dangers of falling on the tracks was not only an oncoming train but the electricity as well. It could kill you in an instant after being electrocuted by it. I felt like the touching of our fingertips would cause an electric shock, but it wouldn’t kill us, on the contrary, I had a feeling it would resurrect me.

We were standing like that for a couple of moments, a couple of moments more than we should as strangers. He didn’t feel like that for me. It was then it hit me, it was here, I was at the right place, the wrong train to the right station.

The loud singing from the bachelorette party faded in the background and I didn’t even hear him when he said he thought we had outrun the security guards. I had to shake out of the moment, I had forgotten why we were there. It was how it should be, him so close to me, me not noticing anything around us. He let go of his hand on my back, and I felt the urge to fall again, even though my feet were firmly planted on the ground.

I can’t believe you forgot about me, he said and shook his head. I said I remembered him now, but his eyes narrowed, not really believing me. I told him about seeing him outside of the club first. He kept running into people he knew and talking with them and was late to the party. When he ordered drinks he didn’t say anything when the bartender mixed up the order. When people were dancing in a ring he kept on making the ring bigger to include more people. It made him tired. That’s when he first sat down next to me.

The whole time I spoke he kept quiet, the moving train made us sway back and forth as we clung to the same pole. You are fascinating, you know that? he said and I had to laugh. He insisted and he always meant what he said out loud, lying didn’t come naturally to him. You see things at this weird angle people usually don’t. Like the world is a flat picture and you are somehow able to see it from all angles.

Looking down at my shoes I told him what a weird thing it was to say. I managed to gather up the right amount of courage before I dared to look up again.

Well, I want to keep seeing you.

He didn’t answer, he didn’t need to. He looked at me, seeing me as I saw him. The train went into a tunnel and we became engulfed in darkness. Only flashing lights from outside of the tunnels made a heartbeat and I felt as though it was matching mine. He wasn’t wearing his mischievous smirk anymore, nor his polite face. It was a sincerity over him, an honesty that made me believe him when he said he was happy to be here. The darkness made us bold and I felt like we had already kissed. If it was back in the club we first met, right now, or even if it was going to be later. It didn’t matter, it was unavoidable, written in stars as writings on the wall. It was going to happen anyway so it was like it already had.

The train exited the tunnel and the light of the morning hit our faces, making us squint and we bathed in pink morning sun. Daylight already. It was a cold March and I had forgotten they had the crispest sunrises that were. Contrasting the heavy summer mornings when day and night merged, the mornings of March always gave a new beginning to the cold ground and crisp air that colored the sky in colors of indigo and pink.

We were going full speed ahead, with no security, no looking back and we were moving only forward in a dizzying and shaking motion, the whole train was about to join the world at the next station.