Dreams and memories

[jack_babalon]

When I was a little kid my dad worked nights and my mom days. There was this gap in their schedules however that would've left me alone in the apartment for a few hours in the early evening. Since I was much too young for that option they worked out this arrangement where they would meet at a train station platform mutual to both their commutes and trade custody of me there.

This elaborate ritual unfolded with the elements of a cold war spy novel. Two lovers, racing the clock through the labyrinth network of the subway grid, desperately trying to reach each other in time to make the hostage exchange. I usually left with my dad around sunset (roughly just after the 3 Stooges)and returned home with my mother at night.

It became Daddy Twilight and Mommy Moon with the burlesque pageantry of early 70's New York in between.

My folks would take me by the hand and navigate me to the connecting trains through the towering crowds of corduroy suited business men, solemn rabbis, bubblegum disco kids, red berated Guardian Angels, sneering glam punks, obviously lost tourists, Hare Krishnas, afroed brothers with boom boxes and the strange men who muttered curses at god wherever they walked... I was Kid Dante getting the full ticket tour of the Inferno, I was Luke Skywalker on the F Train Creature Canteen, I was wide awake in the Cities dream of itself...

...and at night the train would stop along the tracks and while my Mom did the Times crossword Puzzle, I would get up from my seat next to her (having read all my comic books twice already) and step up to the windowed cab doors, look out across the city and began quietly making up stories to myself, drawing pictures in my mind that never came out right on the page.

Last night I went back. It was neither sad nor scary really. Just the quiet of a man returning to a place lost long ago. My parents were gone. The crowds weren't there. I knew I was being allowed a moment to see it in peace, the way a family might allow you to enter their home for a look around once you've explained to them how you spent your childhood growing up there.

The train pulled up. Empty. I got on. It looked more like the MARTA than the F really, I guess my dream budget found it cheaper to shoot in the recent memory neighborhoods of my subconscious.

When we came out of the tunnels to ride across the city I got up and returned to the window doors. The city was gone. There was a vaguely familiar beach on a hazy day. Suddenly I knew I wasn't on the train alone. I turned around and saw him.

He hasn't aged. I guess he can't really. He had a thin smile and that boyish gleam in his eyes. He told me it was September. I didn't understand and he just gave me this wounded look... like a solider with no one to come home to after the war. We both got off at the same station. though he disappeared once I stepped out onto the platform.

I didn't understand until I was riding the Northbound in to work this morning. I remember him and Robin talking about how friends seem to pass away more often in September than any other month. These were usually people I knew from the periphery of parties and scene functions. Whenever they got together they'd talk with the world weary wisdom of two aging army buddies having a drink. Their souls prematurely aged from the years of bad luck, drama and having loved all the wrong people for all the right reasons.

I don't know why that all came back to me, but there it is.

Anyway back to work.

Comments

[efire360.livejournal.com]

FYI. The Guardian Angels are still around. They stopped by in Atlanta a few years back.

[efire360.livejournal.com]

Oh my! I could fall in love with your ghost! Nothing quite like a punk keeping a little kitten warm in his leather jacket.

[meemeedarling.livejournal.com]

This is my favorite tale yet.

September

[redsalt.livejournal.com]

For whatever reason, some people live in dread of the coming winter and opt out, willingly or not.

I definitely recognize the "Little Kid Jack;" he still stares out of windows and makes up stories...damned good ones, too. :)

[vomikronnoxis.livejournal.com]

Beautiful.

~rl

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[girlsonfilm.livejournal.com]

"It looked more like the MARTA than the F really, I guess my dream budget found it cheaper to shoot in the recent memory neighborhoods of my subconscious."

I love this line.

[jackbabalon23.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it:)