Memoir - Train Boy

My girlfriend dropped me off outside the King Street Station, and after checking my two large suitcases I climbed onto the sparsely populated train destined for Los Angeles. My trip to join Youth With A Mission (YWAM) and study to become a missionary was finally here. I carried the oversized, homemade hobo bag, whose inside I had painstakingly embroidered sunflowers on. It was brimming over with books, both my Living Bible—Paraphrased—and my American standard version, a rather large assortment of candy, root beer and my allergy shots. I had no clue who I was going to get to administer those shots. I didn’t have insurance or money to pay a nurse, and I didn’t have the fortitude to self-administer.

 

I glanced around to see what other people would be on the train. A guy close to my age, maybe mid-twenties, red hair gelled into short, insouciant spikes, was staring intently at me with what I took to be the same expression I had when I found a designer dress on sale at a ridiculously low price even before my sales clerk discount. He actually stood up and his conspicuous smile honed in on me like a missile. I returned his grin with a meager smile. It was intended to acknowledge his maleness yet indicate I was fine alone. He read something different, because he grabbed his two bags down from the overhead carrier and quickly moved into the seat next to mine. So here he was, my train boyfriend. I hoped he was going to give me time to read.
 

This was the second long train ride I’d ever undertaken. The first was at sixteen with my Aunt Loretta, traveling East through the brief forests, the fields, rolling hills and endless skies of Idaho and Montana, clear to North Dakota. I’d traveled with the same hobo bag, that time with poetry books—no interest at all in reading the Bible.

This time there were salted ocean breezes, dairy farms, and a very distracting talkative young man. He was a bass guitar player in an as-yet-famous band in Los Angeles, and like every musician I’d met, after finding out I wrote poetry wondered if I wrote lyrics.

 “No, my stuff doesn’t rhyme,” I’d said. “I write confessional poetry, I guess that’s what I’d call it. I write like Anne Sexton. Only maybe not that good,” I demurred.
 

“Can I read some?” he asked.
 

“Of course!” I started rummaging through my hobo. I always carried a stack of poems and a journal for capturing loose thoughts I was sure could be transformed into poetry.

My writing was one of the things worrying me about becoming a witness for Christ. I had been writing mostly about my sex life with Michael, the boy I was leaving behind—first about how much love completed me as a person, a half finding its whole, that sort of thing, and then later about how it was a black cloud on my otherwise adequate Christ-like behavior. Since becoming born again, I wasn’t at all sure how to write anymore. I wanted to write poems that praised God, and found the beauty in His creation—poems that inspired people to leave their sinning life behind and embrace Jesus. I was absolutely unable to produce any poems like that, much less was I able to find any writers who wrote poems along those lines and did it well. My cousin had given me a collection of religious poems, and although the book jacket was attractive, the poems were atrocious.
 

It was a two day trip, and by nighttime the cars were all full. I hadn’t been able to get in any reading, and I had had all the attention I could stomach and now it was impossible to escape from Train-boy. Train-boy convinced me we would be more comfortable if we spooned across our seats instead of sleeping sitting up. By now we were planting sloppy kisses onto each other’s mouths and faces anyway, so it seemed to me he was probably right in his assessment.
 

I was wearing Big Mac overalls, which as everyone knows, do not have a waist band, and it was remarkable easy for him to slip his hand down the front of my Big Macs. If his goal was to actually go any further than that, he had wasted about two hours of his sleep time.
 

At this point in my life I knew a couple of things. One, it was against God’s will for people to have sex outside of marriage, and we weren’t married, so he should not be doing this. Two, whatever it is that guys got so excited about when they were touching me, well, it felt nice, but unless I loved them I certainly wasn’t going to sin in return by reciprocating that behavior. Eventually I pulled his hand out, pushed it away a few times and had fitful sleep. Being spooned by Train-boy was not as comfortable as I’d hoped.
 

By sunrise I was angry and sick. I went to the bathroom and threw up the chocolate bars I’d eaten for dinner. When I got back to my seat I squelched that bad taste in my mouth with more root beer and another candy bar.
 

“We’re south of San Francisco now,” he pointed out, along with other sights and milestones.
 

I glared at him.
 

“Are you okay?” he asked.
 

I glared some more. I was definitely not okay. Here I was on my way to missionary school and Train-boy made me sin. Now all I wanted was for him to get away from me, but all the seats were full with squirming children, grandmothers, and other travelers. On top of that, somebody’s baby was screaming. I went and stood in the gangway where there was an open window letting in the salt breeze. Train-boy came up behind up and put his arms around my waist.
 

“Damn!” I thought, “Can’t he tell I want to be left alone?”
 

He started to kiss my neck and pull my face back toward his, and all I could think about was that I might need to vomit again, and how was I to let him know he was now an irritant? I pushed his hands down from my waist, glared at him and started to walk off.
 

“What’s wrong?” he asked, trying to pull me back.
 

“Nothing,” I said, “my stomach is bothering me, and I think I’m going to be sick.”

 When I came back from the bathroom he was still waiting for me by the open window, clueless to the rage brewing inside my head. I went back to the seat, followed by Train-boy.
 

As we neared our destination point he asked, “When are you due at your school?”
 

I said, “In two days.”
 

“Well,” he said, doing some funny dance with his eyebrows, “why don’t you come with me to my apartment and we can make love for those two days.” He held up my hand and kissed the top of it, his eyes still looking into mine.
 

“Oh, no, I can’t” I said. “I’m a Christian. I won’t have sex with anyone other than my future husband.”

         And then I lied in order to spare his feelings. “The school is expecting me to call.” I don’t think it was a real lie; they were, after all, expecting me call. It’s just that the time of that call had never been determined. Since Train-boy had his hands down my Big Macs for a couple of hours, and since he’d read a few of my poems from my old life, it was possible that he didn’t believe me. I had to revert to more glares, more walking away from the seat to the window, from the window to the bathroom, from the bathroom to the seat. He was persistent, and persistence usually wore me down. My trip had not started off well. I felt dirty. I blamed him.
 

When we pulled into the train station, I really didn’t know what to do. It was after five p.m. and I assumed that if I called the school, no one would answer the phone. I didn’t plan things out and frankly, hadn’t even checked my time schedule. Finding a cheap hotel I could stay at and call the school in the morning seemed like an adult solution. I didn’t need to look into my wallet, I knew I had less than three hundred dollars and that the money was meant to pay for my incidentals like shampoo and soap for the next year. I didn’t know anything about finding a hotel and didn’t want to waste precious time looking in the Yellow Pages.
 

Train-boy had finally gotten the hint and went on his dejected way. I scanned people climbing into cabs. When I saw a pleasant-looking, nicely dressed businesswoman climbing into a taxi I ran up to her.
 

“Excuse me,” I said. “Are you going to a hotel?”
 

She looked a bit puzzled, but said yes.
 

“Do you mind if I go with you and split the cab fare?”
 

She told me what hotel she was going to, but the name meant nothing to me. I didn’t even ask about how far away the hotel might me. I was just so excited to be saving money by splitting the cab and leaving Train-boy and his dirty hands behind me.

When we pulled up at the Langham-Huntington, I stood outside and looked up in amazement. I had never seen such a grand hotel. The lawn in front was immense, and had gazebos overlooking sprawling grounds. It was like a hotel from the movies. I was in awe. How was I going to afford this, but where else would I go? It took me over thirty minutes to haggle for the cheapest room they had available. The woman had been here for a conference and got a business rate I’d overheard, and that helped me fight for at least the rate she got. God only knows why I can stand up and fight for my money, but am so easily derailed protecting my physical integrity.
 

My room did not have a view, but it did have an enormous, deep jet tub and peach-fizzy bubble bath. I climbed in for a long, long soak.
 

“Wow,” I thought. “I prayed and asked God to get me to a hotel, and here I am, in the fanciest hotel I’ve ever seen. It’s like I’m on a honeymoon with Jesus.”

           My understanding was that I would be taking vows of celibacy and of poverty while I was in missionary school, so I felt doubly blessed that my last day in the secular world included a jet tub.
 

“Thank you, God!” I closed my eyes, bowed and prayed in the Jacuzzi. Apparently my train ride sinning hadn’t doomed me after all.