During my brief period enrolled in graduate school in Chicago, I lived off the Racine Blue line stop. Every day I would troll the 6 blocks to the station in order to go about my daily business, as I had not yet reached a credit line stable enough for a car. The uniqueness of the Racine Blue line stop is that it's primary demographic of patrons are students of Whitney Young High School (two blocks away) and the University of Illinois at Chicago (five blocks away). Every morning and afternoon dozens of wide eyed,pimply faced high schoolers lined the platforms west end coming and going to school. Then, on the east end of the station,dozens of slightly smug(and I mean smug in a way that only a 18 year old college freshman who just left the parents suburban townhouse for the big city kind of smug) would line up waiting for the train aswell. Then, right in the middle of these two clusterfucks was me, a skinny 24 year old fuck with holes in his shoes and a ski vest underneath his jacket.
During most of my waits I brought along a book,something a professor(or in more cases a girl) had mentioned, but most of the time I didn't read much. I found myself sitting amongst undergrads who's ranks I had just left barely two years ago, and high schoolers who I was proud to say I had surpassed intellectually, but I had my own doubts about emotionally. Watching them all participate in the same ungodly act as me, waiting, I felt like a spectator. A studio audience member or maybe even a background actor in some network show. Someone that had a general idea of what was going on but knew little of the inner workings of the big picture that was before me.
I was blind. I was newly embittered with the bruises that the Rachel breakup had left me, and was just generally bitter about the failure that had been my female encounters during my undergraduate experience. Daily I sat there, this bitter, depressed, mold of frozen dinner nourished flesh that I could only hope would one day be considered "a man",watching these kids interact with one another. In the beginning I enjoyed these "episodes",because I watched from an inner pedestal of being older, and being a grad student (which ironically is a pedestal I have found to be universal amongst grad students), thinking to myself that I knew so much more than them about relationships. That I had already had the brash and uncivilized rejections that high school would bestow on me, and the nervous failures and complete demise of undergrad. That I had seen the firing squad and somehow come back alive, and these guppies just had no idea!
To tell them of cheating girlfriends and heart-break would be like speaking in a foreign language. To tell them of being led on by your dream girl for months on end and then eventually dumped would be teaching rocket science. More than anything though, I think I sat on that pedastol because I envied them. Hindsight is always 20/20, and even as I remember all of the shitty things that have happened there were a few moments of triumph (and those moments are the ones that you tend to remember, because well, most peoples brains are inertly programmed to do so) So I can remember making out with Elly MacEntyre in the closet at Drew Parson's 16th birthday party. I can remember Mike Regina telling me that Nicole Adams thought I was cute, and I can remember the six weeks that followed where while I was not allowed by her to touch her breasts (even over the shirt!), I spent nearly every moment tongue tied with her dreaming of the infinite glory and majestic splendor that was underneath that white button up school shirt.
Like watching a mystery, I wanted to know every single success and failure of each and every male on the platform. I wanted to ask them if they had a girlfriend, how many girlfriends they have had,if they had lost their virginity yet, if they had how long they lasted, i wanted detailed and precise information aligned in Xcel documents with headers and footers! I wanted to know how I faired amongst these uninformed guppies. If I, the little shit that I was, could hold my head high and feel the sweetness of what to me was a win win situation. It was win win because either
A) These pre mature boys had drama-sized their issues into something so huge that I seemed in comparison completely normal!
or that
B) These pre mature boys had the benefits of natural selection, that a natural confidence and a little luck had given them any girl they desired, and because of this I was the one with the biggest problem. I was the Duke of Depression and the Lord of Lonely!
Either of these outcomes would've been fine with me. Which is why as a 24 year old spectator, I could never understand the fine points of these kids relationships with their respective Elly MacEntyre's, their Nicole Adams, hell even their Rachels, and I certainly had no chance of understanding my own. So for nearly two years I waited even though I hated it, got on the train and then went to school, completely unaffected by the show these high school and college students gave me daily. I was blind.
