There Will Come Soft Trains
 mf



.
Its just something that my friend Michael once told me while we were eating
red hot Szechuan green beans at that chinese restaurant across from the Neon
chicken in San Fransisco. Michael and I were never lovers, we never wanted
to be lovers, we were never going to be lovers, and so we used each other as
resources, as spies in the mysterious camps of love. We ran across enemy
lines in the dark and when we returned tired but intact, we told each other
everything.

The thing that Michael told me was simple. He said that once when he was
riding on a greyhound bus he saw a woman stroke the fur collar of her coat
in such a way that he wanted to make love to her then and there. He said he
wanted to pass her a note saying that he loved the way she stroked that fur
collar. And perhaps that he thought of himself as a substitute fur collar,
his curly head or his pubic hair being gently stroked by that unknown hand.
But if this were my story it wouldnt be a bus, it would be a train. Buses
smell of piss and disinfectant and sandwiches wrapped in wax paper and cheap
clothes and sleep. I know. I once took the bus from Alburquerque to San
Fransisco. But trains smell of plush and overripe fruit and coffee and the
cold night of all the country between here and Chicago-and for this reason
trains are sexy and buses not. Plus, buses dont have enough privacy.
Of course one the most shocking stories I ever heard was told to me by my
now ex-lover Larry-Larry who was a friend of Michael's. Once Larry was on a
Greyhound bus-apparently these men did nothing but ride across country-and
it was night, the darkened bus rolled through acres of unseeable wheat and
corn. And somehow-and as this was Larry's story he didnt have to fill in the
details to satisfy me-he spotted this exotic looking woman across the aisle.
And somehow, without words, or plot, or money, she came over to him,
unzipped his fly, and climbed over him, hugging him with her thighs. The bus
rolled on, babies whimpered, old women dreamed about jesus, and this dark
woman rocked over Larry, pressing his flesh in bone, until they came
together and she got off at the next stop, somewhere unimaginable, Cheyenne,
Wyoming.
I didnt want to believe Larry about that woman, her skirts, I could imagine
her skirts-the denim one on top, then a red flannel one printed with small
yellow stars, and then even further underneath, close to her long dark legs
that were brushed with unshaven fur, a light white cotton voile petticoat
with cut out lace, and then nothing at all. What do I know. I wasnt there. I
didnt slip between them. I only heard long after flesh, after sperm, after
the cold green reflection in the sealed windows. But I believed.

And now I am sitting in the trains observation car, a plastic dome above the
silver swivel seats. Im drinking a pepsi and the bubbles catch my nose.
Outside its snowing, steer are standing in the snow along the mississippi,
dark and patient. Im glad Im wearing my good wool cape, the ruby colored one
with the torn satin lining. Gently I stroke the black velveteen collar, the
buttons match, when the cape gets wet it smells like my mother did in the
fifties.
A man comes down the aisle. Obviously its you. You are wearing jeans with a
heavy copper belt buckle and the two-headed snake braclet I gave you. I
wanted this to be about sex but it isnt anymore, its about love. I look at
you, I know everything about you, how you are missing a vertebrae, how you
have a BB pellet under scar tissue on your back, how you got your ear
pierced, why you have a tattoo, where your thigh bone is broken in two
places. I look at you. We dont do anything. We dont touch each other's
fingers or kidneys or nipples or nostrils or toenails or navels or earlobes
or lips.
We sit together.
Outside it goes on snowing.