Throughout
my lifetime, I’ve had a strange inclination to look at strangers a certain way:
give them a name I’ve known before and fix up a little tale to go with them.
This started when I was merely a child who would be playing Star Wars at the
shopping mall or flipping off a fellow student just for the hell of it. “Never
talk to strangers,” dear old Mommy used to tell me. In lieu of going against
this, I decided to somewhat mock these strangers as characters I’ll just read
about but never have the chance to interact with them., almost like a character
you see on-screen or in a book. Obi-Wan, Neo, Santa Claus, Limp Bizkit, Jay-Z,
Mr. Rogers, it goes on and on forever until I need to discover more characters
for my mental arsenal.
Some years later I discovered Bob Dylan, and with this discovery came the song Desolation Row, a rather underappreciated song on his Highway 61 Revisited album that runs for eleven minutes containing poetry based on folks he sees at this particular place and tells us about their stories, while giving them well-known names to replace the real ones, such as Cinderella, Ezra Pound, Robin Hood, Joan of Arc, etc. The song had clung onto me like a sticker you didn’t want to take off. The lyrics, guitar, harmonica, and the length were what turned me on, but I really went for that orgasm when I paid attention to the surrealistic words that Bob sang aloud. This song was beginning to ring memories from weird experiences I encountered on the train.
One day going home, some jerk-off in casual clothing and shitty facial hair got my attention and gestured for me to take my earbuds off. I did so, and he said, almost calmly with a little hesitation but with much confidence behind the voice, “I gotta lay this on someone, and I can’t keep this bottled up.”
“Uh, okay?” I replied, trying not to sound
like a dick to this turdbag.
“I’m headed to the casino right now to do
something illegal, but it kind of isn’t really illegal; I’ve done it before and
nothing has happened.”
“Okay.” I tried to put my earbuds back in,
but he stopped me with a hand gesture as if I was slave and him my master.
“I just needed to tell someone that,
because I’m gonna kill myself if I don’t tell anyone. Okay?”
“Okay?”
“Thank you. Don’t tell anyone. Thank you.”
He retreated into a sleep-like position, taking up the two seats to occupy his
lousy soul.
I didn’t know what the hell to do. What was
I to tell the pigs about my occurrence? Would they arrest me, too? I didn’t
like to think about the pigs, so I thought about writing about it. Only back
then, I was scared to, like what if this lonely bastard had read this and went
on a manhunt for me?
Now I simply couldn’t give a damn. Let the
sucker try to track me down, that loser.
But I combined the love of the song with
the confusion of the situation to form a little bubble of inspiration that grew
and grew until I finally had the drive to put up a blog. I had started it last
year around summertime, and the idea was simple: recount experiences with
strange people or strange situations, perhaps with a slight Gonzo twist to it.
I wrote my past encounters with crying girls, weridoes and dopers on the seats,
stenches and sights too horrendous for the naked eye, and narratives. At this
point, I have almost 50 posts on the blog, and I’m shocked to see that people
are still reading it. Or it’s probably bots – if that’s the case, say goodbye
to my confidence.
But with the blog I always managed to be as
honest as possible, even sometimes giving names to these encounters with
someone from my past or a well-known figure to attach the memory with.
That was how the blog had come into
fruition, a simple love for a song that was mixed yet another awkward time
whilst riding the CTA. And the shit continues till this day, for I still ride
the public trans to get to where I need to go. My encounters still exist
nowadays, and there’s always room for more entries.
