Itinerant Walkers of the Night

I had a delightful evening yesterday that I want to share with you wonderful people. I was relaxing at the Hollywood metro stop after a wonderful evening with my friend, Andrew. I was by myself, underground, and waiting for Godot (the train). Suddenly a vaguely threatening black man came and sat next to me. I immersed myself in my Dickens (a book) and listened to the man talk to himself. I remember wishing that there were more people at the stop, so somebody could hear me scream (we weren't in outer space and I'm no Sigourney Weaver). Well, my prayers were answered when two young hipsters strolled down the stairs. I gave a glance of appreciation to my saviors, but saw that they could barely see. They were goosestepping around on some sort of drug and pretending they were in the military. Hmmmm. Another crazy guy came down the stairs and started up a conversation with me. He had unfortunately fallen victim to four strokes and his birthday was on Sunday. Afterwards, he unties his strikingly brand new shoes and starts screaming “WHOO!” That’s about the time I stop answering his probing questions. For half an hour these four characters and I circumambulate around each other, furtive glances, periphery imagery and head-on scent. And the only noise comes from conversations to one’s self, which sounds like somebody is listening to a walkmen with the volume to high, but you look close and see now walkmen, just lips barely moving, while teeth remain bared. When would the train come?

The train finally came and my Camusesque crisis was averted! Or was it?? I sat in the train next to a kindly old gentleman. The smiling type, looked almost like Joe Biden come to think of it. I settled down with my book and the knowledge that my strange night was over. Well, the train lurched to a start which catalyzed a reaction in this frail old man. He stood up and looked at me and all his other fellow passengers. Then, and I swear to you, he started laughing in the most demonic and frightening way I have ever heard. It was so terribly creepy. It was out of an old horror film, his smile stretched across his flexible face as the laughter continued until....WHAM. He started punching himself whilst laughing. WHAM! Still laughing, now watch him do an impromtu pole dance as he continues to punch himself. WHAM! Suddenly, the ghost of Jerry Garcia is spirited inside this old demon:"DRIVING THIS TRAIN, HIGH ON COCAINE!!" He bellows out at the top of his lungs. More punches and more terrible, odious laughter coming from his mouth, more crazy joyless grins, more dancing, more insanity. He stood tall, vacillating from side to side with the lurches of the train, on his self-made stage as he swung toward me with his crooked, huge grin and snapped back toward a passenger to my left who feigned sleep to keep him at bay, as if she could conjure up a nightmare to defeat this real mare, who was gaining momentum in his dances, in his laughter; I wondered when the chthonic energy would dissipate and end this madness. At the next stop, I ran off my car and into another compartment away from this strange Minotaur of the train. As soon, as I step into this car, I am greeted by a wild-eyed weirdo about my shirt.

"Are you from Wisconsin?"

Oh, God! I hear that he's from Madison and am asked about my partying and banal shit. Then he inexplicably brings up the steam tunnels in Madison.

"These tunnels run from Bascom Hill all the way to the girl's dorm. You can see their bathroom from there,” He winked, “I know. You can see everything from the tunnels. You enter near the Abraham Lincoln statue and exit in the ladies dorm." A giggle ejaculated from his very core, as a shudder simultaneously rose from mine.

I gulp. I want to be off this ride to perdition. He also informs me that he was able to find a man who lived in the tunnels. The infamous 'Tunnel Bob.' That's when I stop talking to him. Luckily, he gets off in the next stop. Finally a normal ride...

...until a crazy, drugged up woman starts screaming for the doors to open and pounding to get outside the fast-moving train. Shrieks of horror emanating from her very being, as she hits the door as hard as the monster hit his face; for five minutes, I watch this scantily clad broad pounding the glass as the train went further and further into the bowels of LA. Finally, the train stops and she tears off into the night screaming as the doors fly open, pushed by their invisible master.

Luckily, this is my transfer point: Union Station. I just have to walk to the Gold Line and all we be well. I'll be home and able to get a good 6 hours of sleep for work. I find the platform strangely empty with a cold breeze whisping through and gently carrying old papers in a circular motion. I sit down on a bench and start reading my book. I notice that there is a bag of clothes on the other side of the bench and although I can’t smell it yet, I can still somehow detect its highly noisome qualities, scent unsmelled—urine and other fluids having played an atmospheric role in my journey thus far; and this soiled bag added to the mise-en-scene in my production. Piss at the Hollywood stop, piss on the train, piss at Union Station! I had heard the virtues of getting out in the city and seeing your fellow man on his quotidian routine, but here I could see no man. I could hear no voice. I could feel no touch. I could grasp no community nor sense any humanity. I could, however, smell piss. This scent wafting around in my cortex, functioning as a byproduct of the breathing, living and now dying night with only myself now for company. My book and I; me and the night, constant companions until the unsightly elements strike from above and attack from below. The feeling of fear, distaste, but never loneliness. Only while around the zombies of the night does that come into an unbalanced equation. Now, smell withstanding, I am good, I am fine, I am comfortable. Until a burly cop comes onto the platform and informs me that the last train just left and hurls me back to humans, back to the train station, back to the smell, the waste, the excrement, the drunkedness, the drugs, the incoherent babblings of the creatures in the city.

So now I'm stranded at 1 in the morning in a downtown train station. All the drunks and degenerates in LA are also here. Including a drunken drifter who looks strikingly similar to the late Patrick Schwayze (I know he's not dead; just dead to me). This man, strangely joyful, walks light as a nymph all around the sleeping room. Coos of an infant squirting out from behind his coiffed hair, as I try to sleep in the chairs, but the phrase "to sleep with one eye open" doesn't have much relevance. I felt uncomfortable with one eye open. I needed both, therefore no sleep for our lovely protagonist.

At 4 o'clock, a cold, nefarious replicant of the first cop informs me that the Gold Line is running. I, the itinerant walker of the night, am finally on my way home. I get into my car with two other misfits, both muttering to themselves, both pacing, both sweating, while I try to read. After four long stops I finally reach my friendly destination. And by friendly, I mean mildly terrifying. I had never walked back to my apartment this late (early?) and had to go through an abandoned playground to find my way back home. The road I took was winding as I glanced at the empty outdoor auditorium, which functions as the desiccated heart in this wizened body of a park. I got closer and closer to my destination, and could feel that everything would be alright. I would find my way home and this would all be some lovely story, some strange real life tale about my peripatetic wanderings. As I was thinking these thoughts, a strange color struck me from my periphery. A lonesome coyote that had wondered in from the desert was pattering across the field, right at me, fur so silver, tongue hanging out, trotting in that strange canine way where one foot out of four hits the ground, followed by another foot, and another and another until we repeat the process and create movement in a joyful yet careful way. The smile stretched on the creature's face reminded me of the Greek monster on the train, but also reminded me of a mirror. I knew that everything would be alright, as me and the coyote were just coming in from the bareness of the desert and although the night was long, it was also tender, yearning for contact of any kind, even a hand striking my face to feel numbness, at last.

The coyote was the fulcrum of my night and as we passed without exchanging words, I felt a surge of gratitude from my heart of hearts for this city I find myself so immersed in. Again, this decaying yet vibrant and mad city that is seeping through my pores after this mud bath of a night. I entered my sanctuary of a house with one ambivalent desire: to take a shower and wash the city off of me.