Coming home tonight on the Metro Red Line, I boarded at
Dupont Circle and took a seat in the end of the car. It was a lone seat facing
neither backwards nor forward but mounted against the exterior wall of the
train facing the aisle. Two young African American women entered with me and
sat together opposite me and in the last seats on my side, opposite the two
women was a man already sprawled. The man was black and wearing a black
toboggan hat and a puffy shiny mostly yellow coat and he had a duffle bag with
him that he was sort of cradling as he listed like a ship about to come free of
its moorings and we were still sitting still in the station...
And here's where
it gets a little tricky. Drunk? or Psychotic? Only people who are inebriated or
mentally ill are as carefree and oblivious of others in public. There was an
empty seat between him and myself, and he was kitty-cornered to the young
women. As we all took notice of him, I began reading my play program and the
women squirmed and pulled out their cell phones.
He, for his part, didn't seem
to take much mind in us. He was still in the thralls of his last meal and
speaking it's praises over and over and over again, "that was one fine
steak...he he he he, one fine steak and one fine baked potato! Ho ho ho ho...'at's
why I'm so tired... he he he" He chuckled as he spoke and sometimes gave a
little chuckle between every syllable as he repeat some form of praise for that
steak and potato. The next stopped arrived and both ladies got up and left the
train. It was a sparsely populated station and no one new got on. Neither fact
bothered my friend has he just droned on and rocked back and forth, now hugging
the duffle bag like a pillow.
As we approached the next station he said,
"I have never had such a sweet, juicy, perfect steak before in my
life." He didn't say it to me, but I still looked right at him and smiled.
And he noticed and looked at me and went into an even heartier rolling chuckle,
as the train came to a stop. He grabbed the straps on the duffle and stood up
and I said, to him, "That was a might fine steak!" And his eyes
twinkled and he replied, "Yes, it was!" and as he passed me toward
the entrance I called out to him, "Sweet dreams, my friend!" He shot
me a little side wave chuckling all the way off the train.
The older I get, the
more I want to just be a part of what comes my way...even just a little part.
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