Worcester

This was nearly two years ago

I spent the day with a chronic bad girl who attracted choir boys. I don't know what it is about that. Why it is that we're often attracted to the worst sorts of people for us. I could analyze it forever and still not come up with anything more than more questions, but it does make for pleasant conversation with certain people.

But I am getting ahead of myself...

I had bounced to Worcester on fumes. The night before, I'd spent the night on someone's hardwood floor and gotten probably five hours worth of sleep. On his way to work, he dropped me off on the way to the train station. Being new, I had purchased everything except for the pass to take me out to the middle of the state. I had a T pass, I had a bus pass, but I didn't have a train pass.

When asked by the female conductor for my pass, I had a brief bout of fear when I produced not one wrong pass, but a second. She shook her head and then asked me if I had $6 in cash. Fortunately, I did. So then I settled in for an hour and a half on a train.

I remember the boyfriend and boyfriend who lay across each other, one asleep on the other's shoulders. No one batted an eyelid. I found that rather comforting.

So I sat in silence and watched the scenery. It looked for all the world like Robert Frost poetry. The last snowfall of the season still lay upon the rocky soil and the stubby trees. No pines. The south is full of pines and the northeast has a totally different set of foliage. It was foreign to me and thus interesting. So I sped past, thinking my own thoughts.

I arrived at the train station sometime mid morning.

The closest mall was in the process of being torn down to make way for another toll road. Another foreign entity to me. Since I moved to Atlanta, I've learned about GA 400, the one and only toll road in the state but they're all over the north.

So I opened my guitar case and started to play, but I checked with the overseer before I started.

Just so long as you don't open the case for money, he said.

I said, No, that isn't my scene.

So I played my guitar and found that I attracted a bit of an audience, mostly bored people on their way to somewhere else.

I had borrowed the cell phone of the man in charge, and he handed the phone off to me, obviously impressed.

It's for you, he said.

Some twenty minutes later, my friend arrived in a beat up car and we headed out to her place. It was a drab, grey, New England late winter day. Threatening snow, but likely to produce nothing other than rain or dreariness.

She lived in an aging house in the middle of a dirty, industrial city. She shared the house with two roommates, a boyfriend and girlfriend. The place was grimy, and full of mess. Typical bohemian dwellings, and I was immediately met by a ferret who rifled through my belongings.

My friend said, He's just getting to know you.

Had the creature been a human being, I would have equated it to a child with no supervision who acts out to get attention. And behind her back, her roommates mentioned that the ferret had no sense of discipline.