Sinister Train Thoughts

I take the commuter train three times a week.

I never see the same people in the morning, but when I'm waiting in Back Bay Station in the afternoons, I see a few recurring characters, including a well-to-do woman in a long fur coat I want to spray-paint on, and a short balding man in an ill-fitting blue blazer.

Right before my train comes, the Acela train comes. It goes to Washington DC. You can observe people inside, businessmen sitting in their comfy chairs, eating fruit cups and sipping alcohol from tiny bottles.

When they're waiting, people tend to line up at the edge of the platform, on the bumpy yellow strip that warns you not to fall down onto the tracks. The other day a man walked up to the yellow strip with such speed and determination that my throat clenched. I was positive he planned to go over the edge. He stopped at the last second -- if he were a cartoon character he would've spronged like a diving board.

I stand back and lean against a concrete pole and have sinister thoughts.

The train brings out sinister thoughts in me. Not angry thoughts or unhappy thoughts -- sinister thoughts. I always think about pushing people over the edge. "One tap on the ass with my shoe and they'd fall in front of the train and be killed," I think. And when the ticket taker moves between cars, the outer doors of which are always open, I imagine the train pitching and spilling him right out. I imagine his body flying past the whole length of the windows, thumping against the glass.