Ellison's Ghost

The following is a true story. Except one detail, if you can find the lie, I will give you a prize. Blair


The train smelled of diesel fuel and close quarters. I sprawled all gangly over the seats nibbling orange peanut butter crackers and reading Invisible Man. The train pulled through the night oblivious to the Midwestern cold. I was tired, cooped up angsty tired. I thought about visiting the lounge car again, but the competitive conversation reverberating off the bulkheads made reading impossible. My insides craved some action - action Ellison was not giving me.
I was returning from an interview at a tiny liberal arts college in Indiana. The trip from Florida was an act of heroism – maybe heroic enough for the admissions department to overlook the fact that my GPA made me appear slightly retarded. I was the kind of student professors wanted to take a chance on – capable of great things, possessing a wealth of ideas and intelligence but with a disappointing lack of what academics call “give a shit.”
I fell asleep, aware of the cold air seeping into my sock through the hole in my sneaker when the train stopped somewhere in Ohio. I feigned reading while new passengers boarded, awkwardly stumbling with too much luggage. They were too encumbered to even notice me. One man was apparent , in a grey short brimmed hat with a burgundy band, a white oxford shirt and his canary yellow tie tucked squarely under a burgundy vest. His luggage looked as if a bomb had gone off near it. He pushed the bag forward with a burgundy polyester leg.
It looked as if someone had taken a rasp and attacked his face with it, scouring the deep brown flesh until it hung in meaty chunks from his cheeks. His eyes matched his tie, yellow. I looked directly into those infected eyes and nodded. This was the action I was looking for.
The man sat kitty corner to me, allowing for observation. I returned the neighboring seat to its original upright position, and was able to see him as he settled into his seat. He pilfered through his belongings, shifting from his pockets to the luggage to the pouch in the seat in front of him. He shifted his legs, crossing and uncrossing them compulsively without deliberation until he suddenly folded into sleep. I opened Invisible Man and began to read.
The man awoke and began searching again. His hands made rodent noises as he scraped his long yellow fingernails across everything he touched. His movements, gnawing, grew louder and more desperate. Suddenly he piped up, his voice as textured and coarse as his face. His words erupted from some other organ, someplace more southerly and dark – feverish.
“I’m Gonna kill all you motherfuckers!”
That woke everyone up, and not just a little bit either. I snapped up and peered into the man’s seat. It was darker there, like the light was being absorbed by something.
“I need a cigarette!”
I looked at the old woman who sat across from him and in front of the man in the vest. Her arms drawn up close, eyes set straight. She must have believed him, at least about the first part.
He repeated: “I’m gonna kill all you motherfuckers”
He stretched out the all you for effect. I peered into the unnatural shadow around him and could not make out any movement.
He belched out “I need a cigarette!”
He continued to cough up more strangeness:
“First they had me on an airplane, now they got me on a bus. I know, I’m gonna kill all you motherfuckers! I need a cigarette!”
This wouldn’t last long. Earlier, while reading in the dining car, I witnessed a fight between a drunken man with a bluish tattoo of what looked more like a large bruise than a mermaid or a bulldog or whatever bullshit forty year old men liked when they were younger. The man argued with the bartender and threw a drink in her face. Within seconds, the train had stopped, and the man and his luggage were tossed forcefully overboard. Amtrak was not to be fucked with. I waited for the coming confrontation while pretending to read.
The conductor appeared in the doorway with a flashlight. Systematically shining his light into each row of seats, a few people stirred, the old woman looked at the conductor, motioning toward the lunatic.
“This motherfucker can’t see me. I’m hidin’! Who in the fuck do y’all think you are messin’ with! Now I am hiding; he can’t see me.”
The conductor continued, unphased by the fact that a lunatic in a strange outfit was screaming out that he was invisible and was going to kill everyone on the train. The conductor passed the lunatic, who was still shouting, without lifting his flashlight to even acknowledge the seat had an occupant.
I was blissfully observant.
“Y’all motherfuckers are bigger than me! You got no power over me. You can’t destroy me, ‘cause I’m too motherfucking small. I’m like a lepton motherfuckers! I need a Motherfucking cigarette!”
I wanted desperately to have a smoking habit. I searched my backpack for something to offer the lunatic. He continued his rant about power and the establishment’s inability to nullify him. He complained about being “shuffled around” and “packed away”, never rising from his shadowy corner.
The Puerto-Rican woman with the adorable two year old, loomed nervously over his seat. In her left hand was a packet of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Here,” she said, “take the cigarettes. My daughter is sleeping. Would you please be quiet.” Her voice trembled, but her resolve was firm. He lifted his hand and a cigarette appeared between his craggy fingers.
“You already have a cigarette. Do you need a light?”
“Yeah, that’s what I need. I need a light.”
He reached out with his other hand to reveal an old brass lighter, worn, but still functional. A raspy, crackle erupted from his lungs and if you couldn’t see his face, you would think he was coughing. His jaundiced eyes were wet with mocking tears. The Puerto Rican woman slinked off.
He laughed on and off for a few minutes until he announced loudly that he was going to lie down. He stood up, unfolding his pixie stick frame from his cave, stretched himself out on the aisle of the train and fell asleep, snoring from the same moist organ that he spoke and laughed with. It smelled like burnt fur and cheap liquor. I looked down at him while he slept, canary yellow socks under the cuffs of his burgundy pants. Despite the smell and the snoring and the death threats, I remained relaxed.
Another conductor entered the train, big gut hanging over his belt like a fertility symbol. The conductor stopped in front of him, shined his powerful Mag-lite directly into his horribly scarred face and paused. he didn’t budge. The conductor nudged him with a patent leather toe. He didn’t budge. The conductor hovered over him as he slumbered in the aisle. The conductor was doing some sort of math in his head. The conductor stopped figuring, turned around, and lumbered off toward the dining car; presumably to get some help to toss him from the train. I waited watching as he slept quietly on the floor.
The motion of the train and the darkness though won out over my watch-standing and soon I was lulled off to sleep. When I awoke, he was getting up and re-contorting himself back into his old seat. The smell of a lit cigarette stabbed at my nose as he began smoking in his chair. I skooched my butt lower so I could better observe what he was up to.
He smoked, rigid in his chair. The cigarette, a non-filter, was smoked down to the butt and extinguished on the arm of his seat. Ralph shifted around a bit, fidgeting, searching for comfort. A fart trumpeted from under his seat - a half note with timbre vibrato, and of course a stench, all sulphur and nitrates. The smell was the opposite of cleaning chemicals. The odor hung and clung to the air in the car for a few minutes until it was finally beaten back by notes of diesel fuel, old coffee and sweat.
He remained silent for the rest of the night. Looking at him through the crack in the seat as he slept in his chair, the muted light of dawn rhythmically chopped by the motion of the train, He looked peaceful. I finished Invisible Man that morning, just as the train was pulling into Union Station in Washington D.C. where I would switch trains to ride back toward Miami.
Shuffling off the train, I made my way to a newsstand and picked up a copy of the Washington Post. While waiting in line for coffee and a muffin I read that Ralph Ellison, author of Invisible Man, had died of pancreatic cancer the night before.

Homophobia: How I stopped being an asshole...sort of

Back in the days when I was an asshole…I know what you’re thinking: “Blair, how could a smart, good-looking, modest person such as yourself be an asshole”? Well, it doesn’t require nearly as much effort as one might think. No, I used to be a homophobic asshole. I was a teenager, which answers about 90% of the asshole equation right there, but the question still remains: “Why was I a homophobic, and what stopped it?” The second part of the question is the easiest to explain so I will begin there and maybe move on to intellectually speculate (read Bullshit) about the bio-philosophical reasoning for homophobia.
I stopped being a homophobe in the February of 1991. I had just graduated high school, and my sister was getting married in Providence, R.I. My family was staying in a hotel in downtown Boston near a family friend. After my sister’s wedding, my family made the trek back to Boston and I snuck out of my hotel into the icy Boston night. I walked around the city a bit, got coffee at a bar near Fanuial hall, and eventually hopped on the T (read subway) to head back to the hotel. I was bleary-eyed from insomnia and trying desperately to stay awake so as to not miss my stop. To stay awake, I started doing what I always do: observing people. It was late on a Saturday night, and there were all manner of the club crowd and college kids and roughnecks co-mingling in the air of the T.
I looked at the pretty girls first, conjuring up my best Penthouse Forum letters. Then I looked at everyone else, until I stopped at a gay couple. Two men, one dressed in overalls that hung from his hips, the other bundled up in a sweater and collared shirt. I saw their hands and fingers touching like self-conscious teenagers on a first date. The man in the overalls looked at the man in the sweater casting a gaze on his lover that I had never personally seen, but immediately recognized as love.
No one had ever looked at me like that, or if they had, I was too wrapped up in my own teenage narcissism to notice. I knew that was love, and there was noting wrong with love in any form. It was at this moment that my homophobia ended. I watched them until my stop, got caught, and remember smiling- both of them smiling back at me as I left and went back to the hotel.
The next morning, after eating breakfast with my ultra-religious father in a gay bar, (another hysterical story that I will tell at some point) we flew home. The moment on the train stayed with me. It was the moment when I learned that love is bigger than sex, race, or sexuality. It is subtle and delicate and beautiful, and I finally got to experience love myself a few years later.
As to why people are homophobic- I have no clue. All I can say is I wish they could stop and take the T one night and just look at the world around them. Maybe, just maybe, a few of them might see the nature of love and choose to preserve and protect it in all it forms.

The Bus: Another Draft

Living in Miami without air conditioning should be banned by the Geneva Convention . The humidity defies any wind that attempts to stir it from its low squat over the peninsula. Rorschach thunderclouds swagger in from the Atlantic, dropping the temperature a good fifteen or twenty degrees. Compact low pressure systems arrive all bolster and noise. Overheated bodies anticipating the cool of a summer shower are thwarted by the tepid rain that dumps in a torrent. Sweat commingles with dirt and grime to form a sort of paste on the skin that turns the average resident into a compulsive; showering three, four times a day or night.
Philip had showered at midnight – a cold shower that shivered in his ribs until he adjusted to the cool. He thought about sleeping in the tub but the dripping faucet would keep him awake. Instead, he opened the windows and placed fans strategically around the living room of the cramped apartment to coax a faux cross breeze over his body.
Viscous South Florida humidity drew around Philip, clinging to him and the sheets on the sofa where he rested on coarse cushions trying to sleep. It is 3 a.m., his mother was still at work, polishing the marble floors of some offices in Coral Gables. Philip swapped sides of the couch looking for some respite from the dank air in his apartment. He thought about showering again. Instead, he picked up his book and turned on his flashlight, whacking it a few times until the light focuses on the pages of the Fritz Leiber book he found while clearing one of his neighbor’s apartments.
Philip knew it was too hot to sleep. Eventually, he would read himself into exhaustion, more a drifting or falling into unconsciousness than a restful night of slumber. In a few hours his mother would come through the door, eat breakfast for dinner, and slog off into her room to sleep for a few hours, then she would rise and head off to work driving an unlicensed shuttle bus from the airport to one of the hotels on the beach. In the evening, she would hop into another van sipping strong coffee to stay awake while riding with her cousin to polish the floors of the towers in the Gables, or on Brickell.
Philip, too young to work legally, spent his summers clearing out the apartments of the evicted for his landlord; the same landlord who refused to fix the A/C units in the buildings, and who drove up to the complex in a faded red Maserati. He was a real son of a bitch, cheap and angry, the worst kind of boss. Philip would be roused by a knock on the door. The landlord would bitch about the lack of good help that spoke English or god forbid, even showed up on time while he led Philip to the recently vacated apartments. Philip would spend the morning moving all the furniture into a rented truck, sometimes on his own, sometimes with help who usually smelled of beer. He would empty the apartments, was given cash at the end of the day, and could keep anything he found.
Usually the apartments were trashed. Holes punched in the drywall, wax and food stains in the carpet, but sometimes the places were eerie, like the apartment had yet to accept the fact that it was abandoned. Philip found books, lamps, clothes, pots and pans, canned goods, CDs, videos, weird tchatckis and even a transit uniform. Philip tossed most of the stuff into the truck, usually keeping only the books. The transit uniform, was so random, so incongruous, that it had to be kept if only for novelty; a perfectly pressed Miami-Dade transit uniform, complete with patent leather belt and dark green trousers hanging cock-eyed in the closet of a filthy Miami Gardens apartment. Philip took the uniform and stowed it in the army footlocker that served as dresser and armoire for him.
On the days that Philip wasn’t working, he would walk to the local branch of the library and sit in the air-conditioning reading at one of the wooden chairs until his narrow ass started to get numb. He browsed the aisles, looking for books on knights, Roman gladiators, books on internal combustion engines and reptiles. Philip wasn’t a discerning reader, but the free time of summer, coupled with his lack of friends, provided the best opportunity to absorb undifferentiated knowledge.
An early July bee sting led him to focus his academic pursuits on bees for a while. After reading the two books at the Miami Gardens branch, Philip checked the computer catalog to find that there were several other books at the main library downtown. Philip boarded the bus early one morning, when a particularly nasty high pressure area was basting South Florida with near record temperatures. Upon entering the bus, and paying his fare, Philip discovered a possible cure to his insomnia: the bus. It was air-conditioned, and it ran all night.
Soon, Philip was riding the bus every other day. First, to the library, then a little further. Eventually he worked his way toward taking routes to their impetus, linking himself back home in the late afternoon. Stepping off the bus at six or six thirty, his glasses would fog and dew would settle on his skin as he walked the two blocks to his apartment. Philip would sit toward the front of the bus, near the driver, and watch as the driver handed out transfers, tucking them under a giant clip for the use of those who needed them. Philip quickly learned what color transfers were for what days of the week, and how to operate the back door and wheelchair lift. Philip observed drivers as they took breaks – hopping off the bus into a store to get snacks and drinks. Philip would wait in the bus and read, once he chatted with a driver about the book he was reading, but mostly he sat quietly and observed. Twice, people tried to witness to Philip, vying for his soul like a commodity. The first time, Phil was polite, nodding and smiling as the man went on and on about how much Jesus could do for Philip; how Philip’s name was biblical, and how that was a sign from God. Philip told the proselytizer that he was named for his uncle who died in Vietnam. He then out-waited the man, nodding the blowhard past his stop on the bus, and forcing the proselytizer to walk a few extra blocks for his efforts. Philip was blunt to the next proselytizer though, telling the rotund woman he wanted none of her superstition.
That night, Philip rose from the sticky couch, folded his sheets and placed them on top of his footlocker. He pulled on his trousers and a t-shirt, heading for the bus stop. He boarded the bus taking his seat near the driver cracked open his book and began to read. There were a few others on the bus and someone had shit their pants; Philip decided it was the woman in the leather mini skirt over red satin pajama bottoms. She was seated rather uncomfortably in her chair and was making an effort not to be noticed in spite of her outrageous get up; she had to be the one that shit.
He took a tally of everyone on the bus: the bakery employee all bleary eyed and dressed in white, tired from years of abusing his circadian rhythms. There was an older couple who looked to be lost, and a group of European tourists who were definitely lost. Philip opened his book and fell inside, relishing in the chill of the air-conditioning. The bus tooled along its route with the driver glancing occasionally into the security mirror that allowed him to observe the bus passengers and their antics. Everyone appeared to be behaving themselves. The bus picked up another night shift employee near the hospital who appeared to be ill. A few stops later, and the older couple exited, chattering in Spanish. Philip continued to read. All that mattered was the successive collapse of sentences.
Suddenly, the driver stopped. The hospital employee rocked forward, nearly splitting his head on the seat in front of him. The passengers, all nine of them, looked up toward the driver expecting an errant vehicle, or perhaps a loose animal. They met with the glare of the driver staring into the security mirror. He waited a few seconds for effect then ordered one of the passengers off the bus calling him a degenerate. A plump Latino Santa Claus looking fucker in a tight shirt and glue stained cargo shorts, Philip hadn’t noticed, rose from the back and stumbled narcotically out of the bus’s rear door. The driver closed the door and put the bus back in gear, continuing his route. The hospital employee muttered a bit under his breath while rubbing his left temple, but soon fell back asleep.
Philip observed this driver; how he confidently and mechanically maneuvered the bus along its route. This driver was not chatting on a cell phone, or listening to music, or working a crossword at stop lights; he was conducting his bus through the steamy Miami streets. One would say he was lost in his work, but Philip would say the opposite. He would say the driver was found inside his work. The driver did not invite conversation, he simply drove the bus.
The bus made its way back to the stop near Philip’s apartment, all of the other original passengers were gone, the Euro kids, the baker, the hospital employee, all long gone. New passengers were on board, listening to headphones or staring out the bus window at the kaleidoscope of streetlights over wet streets. Philip stood up and walked to the back entrance of the bus, glancing back toward the security mirror to catch the gaze of the driver, who then realized that Philip had taken a lap on the bus. Philip smiled at him and left, heading back to the couch apartment.
School started the following week. Philip reprised his role as awkward mute. The student who would sit in classrooms, never being called upon, barely noticed by most of the teachers struggling to silence the cacophony of teenagers. Philip had the same history teacher for three classes over four semesters, and the man never acknowledged Philip’s gaze if they encountered each other in the hallways. Philip maneuvered the hallways, returning to quiet study and reading in school and in the evening while eating either leftovers or heating up macaroni and cheese. Before bed, Philip would straighten up the kitchen and bedroom.
Despite the opportunity for social interaction, he was more isolated during the school year, because he and his mother only saw each other on Sundays. At least in the summer there was the potential for conversation when she came home from work, or before she left in the early afternoon. Now, Philip saw her on Sundays when they would walk together to the grocery store, and to pick up essentials from the local department store. His mother would read the paper in the early afternoon, clip the coupons, and they would walk together, in a comfortable silence occasionally punctuated with conversation about the week’s necessities. Philip enjoyed Sundays.
The school year ticked away, measured in Sundays at the grocery store. Sometimes, the bus would pass and Philip would peer into the windshield looking for a familiar driver. In March, he saw the skinny one who ate the Little Debbie snack cakes and chatted on his phone. Philip smiled at him, but the driver was too busy chatting.
Summer dropped down onto the South Florida peninsula in Early May. The humidity and still air hunkered down early permeating everything and everyone. Breathing became labored as moisture would settle into South Floridian lungs slowing the pace of work and bringing tempers to a low simmer. Philip camped out on the couch, occasionally sleeping on the linoleum floor clutching a sheet that flapped in the artificial breeze of the hundred or so fans positioned around the apartment.
Philip’s mother encouraged him to find a real job that summer. Maybe at the local grocery store, or movie theater; someplace that would keep the boy from having to work for that damn landlord. Philip opened his footlocker to retrieve his slacks and dress shirt; the ones he wore to his cousin’s christening last year. As he pulled out the shirt, neatly folded near the bottom of the footlocker, he saw the transit uniform, still wrapped in plastic. He thought about his time on the bus last summer, the cool of the air-conditioning, and the steady pace of the bus along its route. It was hot out tonight, it would be difficult to sleep, and the stiff linoleum wouldn’t make it easier.
Philip ironed his dress clothes, pressing a tight crease into his black trousers and the sleeves of his too white shirt. He had a list in his head of places he could apply for jobs – the local grocer, where the manager in the flat top ogled the young men, the movie theater, that smelled like moisture and perfume, and the pharmacy, where a job stocking shelves at night didn’t sound too bad. The next morning, he walked the seven or eight blocks to the pharmacy, his handsand forehead chilly with nervous sweat. Philip kept checking his pockets for his wallet and pen as he approached the plaza the pharmacy anchored.
He entered the store, greeted by a blast of cool air from a fan at the door. The place was freezing and the windows were covered with condensation. Philip worked his way to the front of the line of customers, tightening his nerve to ask the manager for an application. Philip started shivering, only partly from the chill, when the manager, who was manning the register, called Philip to the front. Philip shuffled his feet and looked down at the array of candy bars lined up like old time soldiers under the counter. By the time Philip noticed that the man was speaking to him, he could tell the manager was annoyed at having to repeat himself. Philip covered his awkwardness by shakily placing a pack of gum on the counter then dashing out the door forgetting the change.
Back at the house Philip showered, trying to wash the shame off his body. He then took his dress clothes folding them neatly and returning them to their home in his footlocker. Picking up the small tray, Philip saw the transit uniform again. He pulled it out of the footlocker and unwrapped it from the dry cleaners plastic. His shame was passing as smelled the chemical clean of the polyester and cotton fabric.
Philip tried on the uniform admiring the fit, a little long in the inseam, in the mirror behind the bathroom door. He rolled the pants legs up and pinned them then removed the sewing kit from his footlocker and hemmed up the trousers. The shirt was a bit blousy, but that was easily remedied with some creative tucking into his briefs. Philip sat on the floor and began to shine his dress shoes – dipping cotton balls in water and waxing the tips until they looked better than patent leather. He then slipped on his shoes and rode his bike the fifteen or so blocks to the bus depot.
His undershirt was soaked with sweat when he arrived. Philip wandered through the buses lined up like soldiers until he arrived at a dirt coated beauty with an ad for a local lawyer shrink-wrapped to its frame. Philip boarded the bus and sat in the driver’s seat for the first time. The driver’s seat was like a cockpit, dials and switches, some of which were unlabeled, all in an array in front of Philip’s fifteen year old gaze. He adjusted the captain’s seat forward and up bit, to better see what was ahead of him. His heart began to beat with adrenaline as he fumbled with sweaty fingers for the starter. The bus burst to life and Philip waited inside looking over the clipboard of papers that had been stashed next to the driver’s seat. He stood up and walked toward the rear of the bus noting the fast food soda cup that lay crushed under one of the seats. Philip bent down and fished out the cup, tossing it in the waste basket behind the driver’s seat. He sat back down and scrolled through the route information. He decided to take a route down to Miami Beach, the one that passed Haulover point and the shops at Bal Harbour. He scrolled the sign through the routes until he found the correct one, put the bus in gear and headed out for the street; nodding at the gate attendant on his way out.
When he reached his first stop a short woman with a basket full of laundry boarded, flashing a senior pass. Philip watched her pass to the middle rear of the bus, near the second door, he pushed the diesel down the illuminated Miami streets. At his second stop was a younger couple, he couldn’t discern whether or not they knew each other from work or if maybe they were lovers. They both dropped their fares into the till and made their way to the very rear of the bus. Soon, his nerves were settled and he barely noticed as people entered and exited. Two hours passed and Philip kept the bus on schedule. A bearded man tried to board with a lit cigar, Philip stared the man directly in his cloudy eyes and shook his head indicating toward the cigar. The man apologized, flicking the half-smoked cigar out of the bus door and boarded quietly. A few Publix employees boarded in Surfside, one of the beach communities where they have to bus the employees in. They were gossiping in Kreyol about how the produce manger has asked all of them to see his new van.
Philip smiled as patrons entered and exited the bus. He watched the fares as they were sucked into the till, took and handed out bus transfers, speaking only to give directions to wayward tourists or the generally lost. There was quiet in the waxing and waning of the diesel pusher’s engine. Within the mechanical noise was a mantra of calm, but most of all, there was air-conditioning.
Philip pulled the bus into the depot at about four in the morning. He again nodded at the gate guard as he maneuvered the bus into one of the giant spaces reserved for returning vehicles. He grabbed the small broom from behind his seat and swept out his bus, tossing the candy wrappers and transfers that collected in crannies throughout the night. He then emptied the garbage cans and wiped down the cockpit area and giant steering wheel with a red rag before shutting the door and walking to his bike.
When Philip returned home to the couch he slept.

Test

Ha Ha! Made you look!