Page 19 of Leaving the Station
“I know a lot of things.”
She’s changed her clothes since lunch and is now wearing pajamas—a pink silk set with matching slippers.
“Did you get dressed in one of the bathrooms?”
I need to get out of my overalls and into sweatpants, but I don’t want to do it in the cramped bathroom stalls. If my overalls fell into the Amtrak toilet, I would have to abandon them there.
She shakes her head. “I’m in a sleeper car.”
“By yourself?” I ask, then I realize how that sounds so I add, “I thought they were usually for families.”
“They’re for anyone who wants to sleep in an actual bed.”
Or anyone with $1,000 to spare.
A coach seat on this train cost me around $150 for both parts of the trip. A lot of money, but not horrible. The cheapest room in a sleeper car costs over $350, and that’s only for the Lakeshore Limited route, which is the New York to Chicago leg.
I have so many questions about Oakley: How could she afford a sleeper car? How does she know so much about hyperspecific Tetris plays?
But I start with the most pressing one: “Why are you here?” I ask. “In the café car, I mean.”
She gets up and moves back to the other side of the booth so that we’re facing each other.
“Couldn’t sleep.”
“Me neither.”
I stare at her reflection in the train window. She stares back at mine.
“Virginia and Clint were kind of wild,” I say after a minute, trying to make small talk. I look away from Oakley’s reflection and over to the corporeal version of her that’s sitting across from me.
“Yeah, kind of,” she says. “But I know tons of men who are exactly like Clint, down to the ‘college will brainwash you’ part.” She sighs then. “And they’re all oppressively heterosexual.”
There’s an obvious next question: Issheheterosexual? I wouldn’t usually be brave enough to ask, but it’s the middle of the night on a cross-country train and I’m talking to a hot girl who I may never see again. All bets are off.
“Does that mean you’re not?” I ask. “Heterosexual?”
She tilts her head. “What do you think?”
“That you’re not,” I say. Then quickly clarify: “As in, I don’t think you’re straight.”
“That would be correct,” she says. “And I don’t think you are either.”
“No shit,” I say, gesturing to my whole deal—the DIY haircut, the ripped overalls.
“You’re the one who used ‘being from Seattle’ as an excuse for your outfit.”
“Both can be true,” I say. “I can be queerandfrom Seattle. Plus, I didn’t want to say anything in front of Clint and Virginia.”
“Fair,” she says. “I don’t think they’d quite understand the nuances of a soft butch aesthetic.”
My face heats as I pull on a strap of my overalls. “Is that what you think this outfit is?”
“Well, yeah,” she says. “And I would say I lean more toward the femme side of things, though I don’t think those terms have much use beyond their historical definitions.”
Once again Oakley’s speaking like she’s teaching a college-level course on gender and sexuality. The Tees would have discussions like this sometimes, but when they did, I felt like an outside observer. Here, though, with all of Oakley’s attention focused on me, I have an answer, or at least an opinion, even if it isn’t as eloquent as hers.
“I don’t think that’s true at all,” I say. “Having a label you can identify with, it helps a lot of people, and it’s rude to say that they don’t have use.” My leg is bouncing. “Maybe rude’s the wrong word, but it’s narrow-minded. Not thatyou’renarrow-minded.”
