Journey On A Train

“I like being alone around people,” as Amanda said. I couldn’t agree more. It really reminds me that I quite like people. That I don't mind having them in my personal space. That they're really rather OK creatures. People need people and this is how I get mine, on the train. Next to me, across from me, all around me. I catch public transport, I guess I ought to be at terms with people. They're curious things. So different. You don't get that sort of variation across other animals. Mainly I like people because they're so complex, they have so many eccentricities and such memories and contexts, they're so alert and intelligent and intense, they can communicate and think and feel – and I particularly love how easy that is to ignore. We can forget there's another human there so easily. Better than you'll ever see a cat ignore a cat, or a sheep ignore a sheep. We don't care. There's such a trust and an apathy towards other people. One thing I've learnt living in the city is that there is safely in numbers, safety in a pack. But it's not chiefly from rouge outside attacks, it's mainly protection from one another, from the pack itself. The only reason I trust that the girl next to me won't stab me in the leg with her nail file, or strangle me with her earphones, is because there's two people sitting opposite her, and three beside them. And the only reason they trust me not to throw my phone at them and pour water over their heads is because those same people are watching me. People would be outraged. I would be dealt with.

I like to look at the people. He is one of the few I've ever told about, or who has in common, my sordid people watching habit. Wondering what their lives are like. Their likes and dislikes. Noting their peculiarities. I remember this one time we were sitting in a restaurant and watching people looking at the menu on our window. He spies this one woman staring up at the menu along her nose, squinting and peering with a look of great concentration and scepticism on her face and he says “God, some people take food so seriously they look like they're buying plane tickets!” it made me laugh so hard. Once we were sitting in a cafe, trying to guess people's occupations, and I saw an unhappy balding middle-aged man in overalls getting into a printed van in a shady fashion, and I said “used toaster salesman” and we giggled.

People don't want to know people. We don't want to know why we're on this train. Our names, our pasts. We're all of equal worth I'm sure, but something, something judged in a split second, and completely disclosed by certain situations, makes some people worth talking to and others not. The classroom dynamic always used to fascinate me. I became good acquaintances with those people, I talked to them, I watched them, I remembered them – simply because we were stuck with one another. Granted this was a lot less than some people did. I heard of people becoming inseparable after going on school camps. There was some sort of strange sentiment behind those stories, the way they were told, reminiscent of a watered down sense of uniting through adversity, blown way out of proportion by a pubescent mind. I was always too aware of the situation, how much of a product of circumstance those friendships were. I never got closer to people for having to do “group work” with them. In fact it was seeing that kind of incompetence and recalcitrance up close that made me lose faith in humanity. It's seeing people out of school, people not bound by that sort of jumped-up bonding bullshit, those being courteous and kind all of their own accord – that make me think fondly of the human race.

Sitting on the train with a demon baby is not doing wonders for me though. It is the most manic-depressive baby I've ever seen. One minute screaming and yelling and the next laughing. The mother looks utterly confounded and affronted. First she tries to feed him his food: the spoon in his face makes him scream. She takes it away and he screams harder. I look at him through my glasses and he turns around and stares right back at me with equal detestation. She taps the spoon on the bowl and he laughs. She brings it back to his face and he grunts and wriggles. Then she puts it away and he shrieks. She opens up her bag and he goes dead quiet, watching with baited breath. She produces a biscuit and he smiles, takes the biscuit and waves it around like a trophy. He takes a dignified nibble and is content for a while. Then he starts happily tapping the biscuit on the stroller, but it begins to get more aggressive. Soon he is smashing the biscuit to pieces and yelling once more. The mother gawps at him, “why can't you just eat it?” she asks. She takes the biscuit off him. He screams some more. Then he is silent. For a good 10 minutes he does nothing. Then he starts to peep, and murmur and blub. I look at him through the stroller, he turns and stares at me with loathing. His mother starts to read a book. His noises grow louder and more frequent. She stares at him with the same look I did. He's quiet. She reads, he whines, she stares intently at him for a long time, daring him to make another peep. She goes back to reading. Then he starts yelling again. Big long vocal shrieks and long notes, shaking his head back and forth like a blur and almost convulsing. Scary demonic child. “What do you want?” she asks in an agitated voice. She taps him playfully on the hands with the book. He yells and recoils, then he laughs and puts his hands up and coos, as she does it a few more times, then he screams and continues to make a series of violent grunting noises every time he is touched. He gets more and more aggressive. Then they leave the train and he calms right down and starts laughing again and looking around. The woman next to them says “he's going to be a singer when he grows up. He's got a loud voice.” The mother smiles and tries to take the insulting compliment well. The other woman looks at the baby, the smiles and looks amused. Both women leave the train. The stroller turns and the baby sees the second woman again. He yells and writhes unpleasantly. Then they are gone.

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