Big City Livin

Everybody crowding in on the rush hour train don to the city. The uptown hoods with red gang colors, the ditsy post teenage drama queen, the lost stoner, the backpacking teens, the old people going to Broadway.
I hate the city. Nothing disturbs me more than the dark city subways. Bums pissing and sleeping, lights flickering and flashing, the deafening sound of tracks and screeching breaks. The city I dread but have to return to see my love. She's the only reason for me to step foot in the slums again.
The train is unrelentingly hot, and the business man next to me is going through every number on his Blackberry to talk his way through having a boring and uncomfortable ride, and to save him from awkward conversation with his co-rider, me.
This train is packed, and I've been jammed in with this insurance trader for almost 3 hours of hot, boring train. I could have sat across from the business man, next to the pretty girl with the cute face, but my dopiness got the best of me, so here I sit. She has an old business man next to her, and earlier the business man looked like he offered her something. Later, they would both disappear to opposite ends of the train, breaking my imagination of train-prostitution bathroom sex.
Christ, its hot on this train.
My co-rider mumbled something into his Blackberry side-kick. Some years ago, people would read books and newspapers, now all our entertainment fits in the palm of our money grubbing hands. 9-5 hacks in suits and ties. Fancy shoes and leather briefcases. Sometimes I wish I was a fancy businessman, then I realize my mistake.
I pause and imagine, like I usually do, and picture my train leading me to mortality, like trains full of prisoners to work camps. We're all enrolled in work camps, but some can't get out
The young couple next to me are cradling each other and the man has his head on the girl's lap, twisting his back sideways just to rest on her chest. Man, have I ever been in that position before? Controlling girls make you the bitch of the relationship, and some guys want that. Sweat drips down my forehead as I look at other people rolling up sleeves and exhaling heavily. I'm not the only one feeling the heat of this burning, Amtrak train.
We whiz past mountains and rivers, following the Hudson all the way down, past Poughkeepsie and West Chester, Yonkers and The Bronx.
Pretty girls keep walking past my seat, down the aisle to the bathroom. Swinging hips and bouncing tits. A sight to see without getting caught staring, and getting the awkward look from the girl your "eye-fucking" at the time.
The sun is setting, and amber is lighting the dim train and this notebook on which these words are being written, from the pen held in my hand connected to my brain.
My co-rider is in an all call on his I-phone, with both white ear-buds in, blabbering about locations of certain documents in the upstate area.

I'm ready to get off this train, but hesitant about being in Manhattan again. That dreadful place. If you like constant change, go to Manhattan. If you like plastic dreams and synthetic realities, white-washed in gritty projects and skyscrapers, with evil people saying evil things, thinking evil thoughts and playing evil games. Manhattan is not to be trusted. Not to be loved like a hometown because its unlovable. The burrow of NY almost completely surrounded by water should be sunk to rid the world of the eye sore of the downtown image. A booming metropolis that's on a steady decline into oblivion.


Sincerely Yours,
Alfred Lynch