I remember laying in bed at night and hearing the trains singing down the tracks a mile or so from my home. When I was little, they meant home to me, and when I slept away from home where I couldn't hear them, I'd wake up in the night from not hearing them.
Then when I was getting older and knew I was "odd" the train whistle meant freedom. Odd was our particular small townism for gay. I couldn't just be "One of them" which meant "not Methodist or Episcopalian. I had to be "One of them" and "odd". Later I realized I was queer, which was different from "odd". I wasn't even good at not being right! Even my "wrong" was wrong! So I read a lot, losing myself in books because I so didn't fit as an odd, biracial, religious minority. Books about trains meant a lot to me, especially people who went on one-way trips. Some day I would get on a train and go somewhere else. Somewhere safer than home, which is crazy because your home is supposed to be safe. In the Last Battle, the reason the remaining Friends of Narnia get sent over is because they were on a train and it wrecked and they died, which is why they got to stay. When we realized they were dead, my sister cried sadly because they were all dead and I cried happily because they never had to go back and they got there on a train.
I didn't leave on a train, I left in a car and when I got to my new town, I looked for an apartment. I ended up in a dodgy trailer park even though I could have afforded a better spot because it was close to the train. It was literally on "the other side of the tracks". It was crazy for a single, 18 year old, small town girl to live alone in a place like that. I made one or two close friends during that time, including an older Butch with issues who was my first lover. I still love her. But she wasn't my GF, she was a friends with benefits kind of woman, because she couldn't trust enough to have a girlfriend at that time. But she was a friend, of sorts, and she rocked my world. I look back now and realize that in a more open world, an easier world, she would have been Leather to the core, doing the D/s thing. We had an unhealthy friendship, but it was good, for what it was. We managed not to hurt each other. Her loneliness overcame her and she drank too much in the end. She died in an old churchyard, a stone's throw from the tracks. Every time I hear Arlo Guthrie's Last Train to Glory I think of her and smile. And sometimes I cry.
Now we live in yet another city, smaller than the last one, but close enough to the big city to run in for the day when we need to. We take the commuter train. I love it. We can drive in, and sometimes we do, but usually, I take the train. I live about a quarter mile from the station so it's an easy walk. The last train runs by at 930, and then I can go to bed. Even if I'm super tired and go to bed early, I can't sleep 'til I hear that last train... As soon as it's gone, so am I.
Comfort and freedom, and death and safety.
That's what I remember about trains.
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