I sit by the door on the train if I can.

I sit by the door on the train if I can.

Lots of leg room, lots of room in general. Someplace to stash the guitar, too. And sometimes, if I’m lucky, the door will be left wide open for the trip. Then the noise and the wheels and the rails and the wind and the stink and the day’s hot breath and the night’s cool sighing clamber aboard like a gang of drunken backpackers, free and wild and devil may care.

Then someone, usually a doughy-looking man wearing khaki pants heading for his desk job where he sits for eight hours then turns around and rides the train to his home in the suburbs where his mousy wife or better, his wild-ass wife who can’t for the life of her figure out how she ended up with this drip, shuts the door. Shuts out the world. Just like he’s done his entire life.