On the Train Ever Forward

Widening the Gauge

Standing on the platform, I stared blankly at the train to San Diego, except I had no idea if it was the right train. A woman tapped my shoulder and asked me if this was the right train to San Diego. I said I did not know. She asked if I was going to get on it, and I said yeah, I guess. I didn’t really know what was going on.

I’ve been told these are the “best years of my life” for a little while now. College is seemingly the one time in your life when you have all the freedom and no real responsibilities. But as a Junior in college, a future of responsibilities was becoming more real. It recently hit me that my time is almost up. That pretty soon college would end and then what. Being home for the holidays felt overwhelming. Home feels different when it isn’t your primary residence anymore. My existential dread felt paralyzing in a way it never had before.

A few days earlier I had decided to send myself away for a couple days to visit my grandparents. Maybe leaving and doing something different would snap me out of feeling so caught in between.

I’ve been so awkward lately. At least I think I have. God I’ve been so awkward. I feel like whenever someone talks to me it goes right through my head. People tell me things expecting me to respond a certain way, and I sit there not able to respond at all.

Stepping on the train, and wandering aimlessly up and down the rows, I kept bumping into people— bumping into the same people. I started to feel like I was embarrassing myself. After so much humiliation I felt I had to switch train cars, so right before the train left, I jumped out, rushed down the platform, and stepped onto a different car. I didn’t have to do that. The train cars were connected.

I continued to aimlessly walk up the middle aisle. Every seat was taken. I continued on, not looking ahead, until I bumped into a man walking up the other way. I apologized for not paying attention, but he said I didn’t need to apologize, because I hadn’t bumped into him at all.

“There’s a bit of an issue, sir, since all the seats are full,” he said, “But the ones that are open are reserved for parties of three or more, would you want to sit with me and my wife so we could be a party of three?”

I thought why not.

When we sat down I asked them where they were headed.

Solana Beach, they said.

That’s funny, I told them, because I was heading there too.

***

I sat on the subway at the end of the line, waiting for the train to take me to the other end. It was early in the morning, I was barely awake, and when the train started, I felt myself start to fall asleep. Before I was old enough to drive, I had to get to school through public transit, and if you didn’t know, LA’s system is horrid. The seats started to fill up quickly, until all of the rows had at least one person sitting in them. It smelled of pee and garbage, and random men were doing pullups on the handrails.

Arriving at the next stop, the doors opened and people shuffled in and out, one of them being a woman roughly in her 20s. When she walked on she sat next to me. I was fairly used to things like this happening. I was fourteen years old. A non-threatening child.

I had witnessed and also heard the stories of all the terrible things people on the train would do, and choosing to sit next to a kid as a young woman was likely a safe choice in a crowd of unknown people.

I liked knowing that I felt safe, but it made me realize that I wouldn’t look like a kid forever. One day I would seem more like the man in the back doing pullups in full Cal State LA merchandise, than the kid I was now.

I wondered what that would mean for me.

***

Halfway through my freshman year of high school, in person school was cancelled because of Covid and by the time we were allowed to go back, a year and a half had already passed. I had to take the train for a few more months before I could get my license so I did.

Once again, I got on at the first stop of the line, at 6:50 in the morning. The train was quiet. There were rows and rows, with two seats in each one. Every row was taken by at least one person. Anyone who wanted a seat now had to sit next to someone else.

A woman walked on the train, and looked around the subway car. She started down the aisle, but instead of sitting next to me, she kept moving, further and further down. She sat next to another woman with shiny grey hair.

I was sixteen now and didn’t look like I did when I was little. I was taller and looked more like a man.

It scared me a little. Now it felt like I was part of the thing that made people uncomfortable, the source of fear. I wondered to myself if there was any way to escape it, or if every year I grew older was only another step in the process of betraying the women I was raised by.

Of becoming someone who didn’t look safe enough to sit next to on the subway.

***

The man and the woman sat across from me. Clearly newlyweds, they were quite obviously in love.

I talked with them about all sorts of things, like music, AI (it’s brought up in every conversation nowadays), college…

The woman said that she was back in college to get her second bachelor’s degree in cvil engineering. She had been a musician, but now wanted to start anew doing something different, but in order to finish her schooling she had to move to San Francisco for a while, since she started studying at SF state. The man looked sad as she said that. I guess long distance always sucks no matter how old you are. At one point the woman stood up to get a drink, and the man looked out the window for a moment, before looking at me,

“Honestly, Archer, I’ve really just been grappling with getting old,” he said.

I looked at him for a moment.

“But you’re not getting old,” I told him, “not really.” I mean he had just married his wife, and she was getting a new degree at a new school. He had just gotten a new job. That all sounded pretty new to me.

The woman came back with a kombucha, (typical Southern California), and brought an extra small cup to pour me a little bit for what she called a ‘mandatory taste test’. I thanked her.

“I was just talking to Archer about how I was grappling with getting old,” the man said.

“I think I’d like to live until I’m 150,” she said.

I thought that was crazy, I’ve never heard anyone say they wanted to live that long. She said she really liked being on earth, and I suppose I couldn’t argue against that. She asked me if I would like some chocolate.

The train came to a stop, and me and the man and woman stood up and moved to get off. I waved goodbye to them and started toward my grandparents and aunt who were at the platform waiting for me.

And the fear of what it meant to be a man, the existential feeling that I’d never be able to talk to a stranger again, or be seen as safe again, suddenly became fleeting.

I was still approachable. Somewhere between an awkward kid and a man on the precipice of independence. Just because I was growing up didn’t mean I was someone other than the person I have always been. The kind that cares about people. And wants them to feel comfortable. I may be an adult but I’m still someone’s son. I may be a man but I’m still a brother, a friend and a stranger who feels approachable enough to talk to.

Getting older didn’t have to change who I was.

When I arrived at my grandparents house, I walked up their stairs, now wooden, instead of covered with the carpet which I remembered from my childhood. I dropped my bags in my mother’s childhood bedroom where I would be staying. Me, the son, in a room where she was the daughter. A mother now but still the girl. Just like me, the man but still the boy.

I asked myself so many times what getting older would mean for me as a person. I realized it didn’t have to mean anything.