Private Transportation

My apartment in Chicago is nestled along a section of iconic scaffolding, the elevated train tracks which our city calls "the L." Through the apartment's large glass windows facing west, the tracks are visible for miles before vanishing into the mouth of distant property. When I first toured the apartment, it was near twilight and I was treated to the postcard of a passing train -- the rust-steel worm retreating dutifully into the sunset. What a pretty omen, I thought, how industrial chic!

As long as the shower pressure was strong, the apartment would do just fine.

Several years later now, I have lived a happy life next to the train. Its regular roar has become second nature and for the holidays, there are a few decorated train cars in rotation, caroling through the cold December nights. One day, on the street beneath my apartment, I witnessed the most darling little picture of gentrification, the time a car thief waited for a passing train so that its noise would cancel the sound of shattered Range Rover. It reminded me of the signature moment in "Godfather II," when Michael Corleone embraces the coincidence of a passing train to help muffle his murder of a rival mob boss and the chief of police. Good times.

Suffice it to say, there is a cinematic quality about the train and the "L" has set many a scene throughout the canon of Chicago films. While my personal favorite remains with Elizabeth Shue brushing back the Vice Lords per "Adventures in Babysitting," most will remember Harrison Ford's visit in "The Fugitive," or maybe Tom Cruise's joy ride in "Risky Business" (and yes I realize that it was actually the suburban Metra, and that Rebecca De Mornay could never execute the "reverse cowgirl" on the blue-line). Nevertheless, for non-fiction passengers like me, the train can still pack a solid punch of human theater. On my morning commute, for example, I march amongst the work-force zombies, herding up the stairs towards the platform. Lining up along the vacant track, we await our routine fates of public transportation: will the train be crowded or is today an obscure Polish holiday? Will I find a seat or will I decide that I sit all day and should do some good standing? Will there be a cute girl on my car that inspires me to recall Rod Stewart's "Downtown Train?" These are the questions. Every so often, when the train finally arrives, a car door will pull up perfectly in front of me as if the universe is affording me some exquisite gesture of servitude -- for I am the chosen one! It will follow, of course, that I end up the sardines-style loser of a staring contest versus the outstretched armpit of a smelly third-shifter (perchance a large nasally fellow who allocates the deli meat at O'Hare). Sorry, God.

But once you're on the train, you've got some options. While the majority prefer to withdraw into their fortresses of personal technology, I like to look around. I like to study the banner ads and I like to see what other people are reading (two years from now, and I will have completed the Stieg Larson series by osmosis). I'm also susceptible to the "eye game," -- the empty non-verbal flirting franchise that we have all frequented and which married dudes play to test whether or not we've still got "it." I am always humbled by the girls who know how to play the angles in the reflecting windows, and I can also guess the difference between the girls who will make it, the girls who might not make it (tick tick tick), and the girls who will probably never make it (the ones who have succumbed to the practical purse, the white cross trainers, or the clever reuse of a plastic grocery bag). Other times, when I am buttoned up for a big meeting, I like to mess with the gay guys, the masters of the eye-fuck. Aside from a Jewish basketball league, is there anything better for your self-esteem than a Zegna suit on a train full of homosexuals?

At the end of the day, on the ride back home, there is an aura of loneliness aboard the train, as if the passengers are being sentenced back to the bore of their own company. I am always fascinated by the possibilities of what lies beneath the surface of these exteriors we project, and I am always buoyed by the capacity for story that must inhabit a given car. For a couple of stops each day, we are all in it together. You never know who you are sitting next to and you never really know how it will end.

Sometimes there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and sometimes, there's just an airport.