I think about how I strongly dislike all the kids at my school, but at least they’d seem alive if they were on the train. They’d be cracking jokes and laughing and feeling each other up and planning parties and talking about the stupid shit they watched on TV last night and texting each other and singing pop songs and doodling maybe and a million other things.
But these adults in suits just sit there or stand and sometimes grimly read the paper, angrily poke smartphone screens, sip tongue-scorching coffee from disposable cups, and barely even blink.
Observing them gets me so down; it makes me feel like I never want to be an adult. That my decision to use the P-38 is for the best. That I’m escaping some horrible fate and I’m like the Jews who killed their sons and daughters before the Nazi soldiers could take them away to the experimentation torture camps.
Herr Silverman once had us write an essay in first person from the point of view of a Jewish person during the Holocaust. I wrote about a Jewish father who killed his wife and kids and then himself to avoid being taken to the concentration camps, which was a pretty bleak exercise, but an easy essay for me to write actually. The Jewish father I wrote about was a good man who loved his family—he loved them so much he wouldn’t allow them to experience the Nazi horrors. My essay was mostly an apology letter. My anonymous narrator wrote it as a prayer, asking his god’s forgiveness for what he had to do. That essay turned out exceptionally authentic. Herr Silverman even read parts aloud to the class and said I was “empathetic” beyond my years.
I heard other kids in my class whisper all sorts of things about me afterward, saying that I had justified killing children and suicide, but my classmates just didn’t get it, because they are spoiled teenagers living here in America at the beginning of the twenty-first century. They’ve never had to make any real decisions at all. Their lives are easy and unremarkable. They’re not awake.
Herr Silverman is always asking us if we realize how much of our lives are dictated by the fact that we were born in America eighteen years ago, and what would we really have done if we were German kids during World War II when Hitler Youth was all the rage?
Me—I’m honest enough to admit I don’t know.
My idiot classmates all say they would have defied the Nazis, assassinated Hitler with their bare hands even, when they don’t even have the balls or brains to defy our lame-ass flunky teachers and robotic parents.
Sheep.
Example: Herr Silverman does this mind-fuck thing where he says to the class, “You are all more or less wearing the same types of clothes—look around the room and you will see it’s true. Now imagine you’re the only one not wearing a cool symbol. How would that make you feel? The Nike swoop, the three Adidas stripes, the little Polo player on a horse, the Hollister seagull, the symbols of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams, even our high school mascot that you athletes wear to battle other schools—some of you wear our Mustang to class even when there is no sporting event scheduled. These are your symbols, what you wear to prove that your identity matches the identity of others. Much like the Nazis had their swastika. We have a very loose dress code here and yet most of you pretty much dress the same. Why? Perhaps you feel it’s important not to stray too far from the norm. Would you not also wear a government symbol if it became important and normal to do so? If it were marketed the right way? If it was stitched on the most expensive brand at the mall? Worn by movie stars? The president of the United States?”
It’s this type of revolutionary shit Herr Silverman says that always gets the stupid kids in my class angry, red-faced, even ready to fistfight him sometimes, because they don’t realize that our teacher is just trying to get them to think. He’s not really saying that wearing name-brand clothing is evil. Or that buying Polo clothes makes you a Nazi. Or that wearing a Phillies cap is one step away from fascism.
But it makes me laugh every time because I don’t wear any of that name-brand crap, don’t play or follow popular sports at all, and wouldn’t be found dead wearing our shitty school mascot. I’m not a follower. Not a joiner. I’m not even on Facebook.
So whenever Herr Silverman brings up symbols, I can watch the others squirm and defend without feeling like a damn hypocrite.
Maybe I’ve transcended my age, so to speak.
My classmates are all repressed monkeys.
In my funeral suit, on the train, pretending to be a workaday Tom, I always pick out a target—the saddest-looking person I can find—and then I’ll get off at whatever stop the target does and follow.
Ninety-nine percent of the time the target’s so comatose the target doesn’t even notice me.
I’ll trail the target, hanging five or so feet behind, and the target will always walk really quickly because the target is forever late and in a rush to get to a job the target inevitably hates, which I just don’t get.[19]
The whole time I pretend I have mental telepathy. And with my mind only, I’ll say—or think?—to the target, “Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a roller coaster. Swim in the ocean naked. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never even heard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make pictures with colorful chalk. Close your eyes and try to see the world with your nose—allow smells to be your vision. Catch up on your sleep. Call an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Roll up your pant legs and walk into the sea. See a foreign film. Feed squirrels. Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take. Just don’t go back to that miserable place you go every day. Show me it’s possible to be an adult and also be happy. Please. This is a free country. You don’t have to keep doing this if you don’t want to. You can do anything you want. Be anyone you want. That’s what they tell us at school, but if you keep getting on that train and going to the place you hate I’m going to start thinking the people at school are liars like the Nazis who told the Jews they were just being relocated to work factories. Don’t do that to us. Tell us the truth. If adulthood is working some death-camp job you hate for the rest of your life, divorcing your secretly criminal husband, being disappointed in your son, being stressed and miserable, and dating a poser[20] and pretending he’s a hero when he’s really a lousy person and anyone can tell that just by shaking his slimy hand[21]—if it doesn’t get any better, I need to know right now. Just tell me. Spare me from some awful fucking fate. Please.”
I’ll do the mental telepathy bit for about ten minutes or so as the target climbs out of the subway stop and navigates skyscraper shadows and finally disappears inside a building that usually has a security guard to keep crazy people like me out.[22]
So then I just go to the nearest park, sit with the pigeons, and stare at clouds until my workday is over and it’s time to ride home with all the other weary workaday Toms and Jennys, who look even more miserable on the PM return trip.
The rides home always deepen my depression, because these people are free—off work, headed back to families they chose and made themselves—and yet they still don’t look happy.
I always wonder if that’s what Linda looks like riding home from New York City in a car—so utterly miserable, zombie-faced, cheated.
Does she look like the mother of a monster?
I’ve taken dozens of practice-adulthood days, followed so many suits, but only once did anyone notice me.
It was this beautiful woman wearing huge 1970s sunglasses on the train, even though most of the ride is underground. I could see her mascara running down her cheek, but she was really beautiful otherwise. Like, I was sort of attracted to her.
Long, bright blond hair.
Red lipstick.
Black stockings.
Gray pinstriped skirt suit.
You could tell that she was an authority figure just by the way she sat and dared anyone to say anything about the runny mascara. The vibe she sent out was menacing and it definitely said, “Don’t fuck with me.”
Regardless, on that day, this woman was by far the most miserable person on the train. You could tell she was upset, but it also looked like she’d rip your face off if you said anything to her.
All the other adults pretended not to notice, which seemed cowardly.
As she was the obvious target for the day, I got off at her stop and followed.
I remember the sound of her high heels clicking on the concrete like cap guns firing.
She walked up the escalator; I did too, trying hard to keep up.
When we cleared the turnstile I started the mental telepathy, saying (or thinking?), “Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Go skydiving. Buy a star on the Internet. Adopt a cat.” And I continued with my routine for a city block or so. She turned into a back alley, and when we were halfway down it, she spun around tornadolike and pointed a can of Mace at my nose.
“Who are you and why are you following me?” she said. “I will destroy your day. This is top-grade stuff too. Illegal in the United States. I squeeze this trigger and you won’t be able to see for months. You might go blind.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I put my hands up in the air, like I’ve seen criminals do in the movies whenever they want to surrender, when some tough Bogart-type guy points a gun and says, “Reach for the sky.”
It surprised her, and she took a step back, but she didn’t spray me.
“How old are you?” she said.
I said, “I’m seventeen.”
“What’s your name?”
“Leonard Peacock.”
“That’s a fake name if I ever heard one.”
I said, “I can show you my school ID.”
She said, “Let’s see it, but real slow. If you try anything funny, I’ll shoot you in the cornea.”
I lowered my hands super slo-mo and said, “It’s in my pocket. May I reach into my jacket?”
She nodded, so I produced my school ID.
She took it, glanced at my name, and said, “Well, I’ll be damned. You really are Leonard Peacock. What a stupid name.”
I said, “Why are you crying?”
I saw her trigger finger twitch and I thought I was about to get maced, but instead she put my school ID into her purse and said, “Why are you following me, really? Did someone pay you? What do they want?”
“No. It’s nothing like that at all.”
She moved the Mace a few inches closer to my face, pointed at my left eye, and said, “Don’t fuck with me, Leonard Peacock. Did Brian put you up to this? Huh? Tell me!”
I put my hands up again and said, “I don’t know any Brian. I’m just a dumb kid. I dress up like an adult and skip school every once in a while to see what being an adult is like. Okay? I just want to know if growing up’s worth it. That’s all. And so I follow the most miserable-looking adult to work, because I just know that’s going to be me someday—the most miserable adult on the train. I need to know if I can take it.”
She said, “Take what?”
I said, “Being a miserable adult.”
She lowered her Mace. “Really?”
I nodded.
She said, “You’re absolutely crazy, aren’t you?”
I nodded again.
“But not dangerous, right? You’re a lamb.”
I shook my head no, because I wasn’t a threat back then. And then I nodded, because I wasn’t a wolf or a lion or anything predatory at the time.
She said, “Okay. Do you drink coffee?”
She took me to this coffee place close to the alley where she stole my school ID. It was mostly old people eating bagels and slurping joe.
She started talking about how stressed out she was and how there was this guy at her work named Brian whom she had screwed once and he was now using that against her because they were up for the same promotion. Her mother was dying in some hospice center in New Jersey, which was where she had spent the previous night. She had really wanted to stay with her mother because her mom was close to the end of her life, but this woman knew that—while no one would tell her she couldn’t be there for her mother’s passing—Brian would use her absence from work as a way to beat her out for the position.
Or at least that’s what I understood.
She was rambling and slurring words like she was drunk and she kept waving her hands and she wouldn’t take off her sunglasses even inside the coffee shop. She talked for an hour or so, and I was beginning to think she was a great big liar because if she left her dying mom to get ahead at work, why the hell would she waste her time with me at the coffee shop? Wouldn’t Brian use missing work—for any reason at all—against her?
I was thinking about all of this when she said, “So what have you learned following around adults? Spying on us?”
I said, “I don’t know.”
“Don’t lie to me. You owe me an explanation, Leonard Peacock.”
And so I swallowed and said, “I’m not finished researching, which is why I followed you today.”
“What have you learned today from me?”
“Truthfully?”
She nodded.
So I said, “You seem really unhappy. And most of the people I follow are the same. It seems like they don’t like their jobs and yet they also don’t like going home either. It’s like they hate every aspect of their lives.”
She laughed and said, “You need to follow people on the train to figure that out?”
And I said, “I was hoping that I had it wrong.”
And she said, “Don’t all the kids in your high school seem miserable too? I hated high school. HATED it!”
And I said, “Yeah, most of them do seem miserable. Although they try to fake it the best they can. Kids fake it better than adults, right? My theory is that we lose the ability to be happy as we age.”
She smiled. “So if you’ve got it all figured out, why follow adults like me?”
“Like I said before, I was hoping that I’m wrong, that life gets better for some people when they get older, and even the most miserable people—such as you and me—might be able to enjoy at least some aspect of adulthood. Like those ads where gay guys talk about being picked on in high school but then they grew up and discovered that adult life is like heaven. They say it gets better. I want to believe that happiness might at least be possible later on in life for people prone to sadness.”
