hobo dreamland

I dream about freight trains all the time…

At least once a week, my nighttime adventures have me traveling to hobo dreamland….or the dreamland freights are taking me to the friends scattered throughout the continent.

unexpected friendships

I hear those trains calling….

Back in Chattanooga, TN,

I was headed out by myself to get away from the growing crowd of punks staying in the house whose yard I was camped out in…Just me, my book, and my clarinet.  Train tracks were everywhere in this town, but I knew a train-yard was nearby, so I set out to find a quiet spot on the tracks where I could play and hopefully see some trains go by.

I heard someone yell something from behind me, and I turned around to see G walking along side the road, headed to the gas station to buy beer.

My experience of G up until now had been pretty minimal.  He was pretty quiet, nice enough, but often kind of had his gaze fixed down or someplace far away – not the type of person who seemed easy to warm up to.

But we ended up walking together, and talking about the trains.  I asked him some questions about the yard, and he offered to help me find it.  First, of course, we stopped for beer, and cans in paper bags, we climbed off the side of this major road and headed for the tracks.

We were walking for much longer than I had expected, and I only had chucks on, which were practically like wearing nothing, especially in that hard gravel that lined the tracks.  We could not see the yard but g said, “I heard its around that bend,” so we kept going until sure enough, some time after following a curve in the tracks, the narrow path opened up into a huge yard.

Since being in Chattanooga, I had taken to identifying solely as gay, in order to ward off all the straight punk boys with a clear, not going to happen. I did not get any unwanted energy from g – he was perfectly polite, and after unsuccessfully searching for a hole in the train yard fence, we sat down in some grass to share tobacco, and drink our beers.

g had been hopping for years, though never out of this town, and opened up about his past -its adventures and tragedies- which involved drugs he was trying to stay away from now, and even a short stint doing some harm reduction work in the northwest.

This brought up my harm reduction work, which led to the topic of sex work, as I explained the definition of sex work to include anyone who had done a trade or given a single blow-job while hitchhiking.

And he told me about his own brief history with sex work, and even let me talk about my broken heart as the beer and the sunset and the trains also opened me up.

Then we heard the sound of a train whistle, and we stood up to watch a huge freight come through. He explained the names of the different types of car, and we both got excited when we saw open boxcars roll by.

“I hope I get a boxcar!” I said.

“You will,” he reassured me.

And then we headed back before it was totally dark, and rejoined the punk party.  I remember the next morning, sitting with a group of hungover punks, and one of them making a faggot joke.  I said, “hey that’s not funny.  I’m queer and I don’t know you and you know, I don’t know what you mean by those kinds of jokes.”

The other punks explained they didn’t mean it – that they like queer people, and they were not homophobic, but it was g, who actually spoke up and said, “Let me apologize on behalf of this house,” and I think he promised to make sure it did not happen again.

I didn’t see him much again after that, even heard that he had hopped out a couple of nights later.

*

This evening, just before sunset, I was riding the loaner bike around a town (somewhat far away from Chattanooga), and noticed that the road went under the train tracks, so I decided to follow the tracks for a little bit.  Sure enough I came upon a train being built, and much to my excitement soon found the yard.

I thought of g as I wandered along the tracks, this time identifying the cars myself.  I sat beside the tracks and smoked a cigarette for g, hoping that wherever he is that he is finding ways to make his dreams happen, despite the unfair obstacles set in his way at such a young age.  And as with many of the momentary friendships I have discovered, I wonder if we will ever cross paths again…maybe next to some other train yard in some town where neither of us have yet traveled.

Summertime, and the livin’ is…

Backing up for a moment:

A month ago I arrived in Austin, TX, to connect with an old friend.  I stayed at their house, and the queer community opened their arms to me.  How refreshing it was to meet a crew of folks who were so down to earth.  There is something about Southern Hospitality that I am really appreciating right now.

Then I found myself in a van full of queers headed up to Idapalooza.  I gave a Know-Yer-Rights training, and a bondage workshop along the way, and made some wonderful new friendships with people who made me soooo happy to be around.

Idapalooza was wonderful.  There being no shortage of whiskey, I have never seen so many cheerfully hungover people in my life!

Then there was Chattanooga for Punk-fest, where I ran into so many folks from San Francisco, and Ida. Chattanooga was the first town I tried to busk in, and did pretty well with my beloved clarinet.

When I hopped off the train in Asheville, NC, I found myself once again running into all these people that I met at Ida, did a work-trade in exchange for a place to stay at a hostel, before finding a wonderful place to say at a queer collective.  The collective house was a welcome safe space, and there, I gave another bondage workshop in return for some friendly floor space. The busking was also pretty good in Asheville, and I ended up playing with several other street musicians.

Then I was headed to Greensboro, NC, to meet up with some friends in a radical marching band.  On the way, I stopped in Winston Salem.  While waiting for my friend to pick me up, I found a lively spot in the downtown area to busk.  I hadn’t been in town for an hour, before my picture was being taken for the local newspaper.

Greensboro the next day:  got recognized in the street from my appearance in the Winston-Salem newspaper, and then enjoyed some experimental banjo music.  After the show, I come outside to find some street performers jamming, and I once again got out my clarinet.  Some journalist took our picture, and I am wondering if I made it into the newspaper again…

Life is good.  Traveling is a powerful antidote to a rough year, as I find community and music everywhere I go.  Even though I am working through the grief of the past year, I don’t remember a time when I have found myself smiling so much.  Life is good.

Living the Faery Tale

I feel I need to explain.

I am kind of deviating from the faerytale project that was the catalyst for this blog, but I am kind of living an anarchist faerytale.

See, I had one of those really hard years.  Not hard in the way that some years have been – where a bunch of my friends die.  But hard in an interpersonal sort of way. There has been lots of old stuff coming to the surface, and I am being forced to deal with stuff I had no idea needed to be dealt with. My perception of reality was shattered on more than one occasion…There has been massive heart-break, loss of important friendships, and betrayals so big that they were traumatizing.

So I am traveling it off: I sublet my room for three months, and left town with only some stuff for work, some stuff for a wedding, some camping gear, my clarinet, and a vague plan.

Mostly my clarinet is my source of income…and otherwise, I am traveling as far off the grid as possible.  Now, I realize that I have privilege in that this is somewhat of a choice for me (though geting fired from my job for being too radical, was not exactly a choice).  And I am humbled by all the folks who have helped me, taught me what I need to know, and gently laughed at my big backpack.

And it has been intensely magical.

Ironically, after feeling a lack of community in my home, I have found community in all the places I have visited, maybe because now I have the time to connect with them…After a year of betrayal, I am being forced to trust complete strangers, and I am finding that my broken heart is actually being cracked wide open in a good way, and I know it sounds cheesey, but I am kind of finding myself in love with the world.

And yeah, the fiction-ish stuff that I write here is based on reality in some way, but now, I feel like all I need to do is write down my daily adventures.  Because I am on a journey right now that is manifesting that anarchist faery tale into my reality.

There has been at least one faery tale every day, but I have sporadic computer access which is partially why only a fraction of the stories make it in some form here.

I am too busy living the faery tale to write it all down, but I want y’all to know that perhaps the most exciting thing about this strange adventure is that the grand story is definitely working its magic.

Summer Storm

“Time to go sailing away, boys!  Time to go sailing out into the sea.  Time to go sailing away, boys!  Revel your young life while you are still free.”

That song has wandered in and out of my daydreams, ever since I heard S play it at the Downtown News and Books, in Asheville, NC.  I am definitely feeling ready to wander on…I have been in the Asheville area for almost a week.   The past couple days, I retreated to the woods, where I washed away my troubles in the river, burned pieces of my past in a campfire, breathed in mountain air that cleansed my spirit, and grounded myself amongst the trees as I hiked over the mountain.

Solo showed me a secret path to a hidden camping spot.  It was not much of path, as it deviated from the main trail – mostly overgrown with vines which tangled around my ankles.  I hiked up the path, trying to beat the sunset, at times getting nervous, as the path seemed to disappear under the weeds.  But I climbed on, quickly, sometimes getting scratched by the thorns in the path,  and sure enough, before I knew it, I was on top of the little mountain, and the trees opened to a tiny camping spot- complete with a fire pit surrounded by pink mica and quartz, with just enough space for my tarp.

Last night, I awoke to the sound of branches dropping the ground.  Its a sound I often heard in my magical hidden spot.  But they were dropping with a higher frequency, and the wind had clearly picked up.  I had gone to sleep under a clear sky with lots of stars, but as i looked through the branches, I could only make out a deep, dark grey.  Just as I was wondering if it was going to rain, lightning flashed across the sky.

And just like that, I was on my feet, not even bothering to put on my shoes, because the raindrops were already starting.  I threw my stuff under the tarp, pulled my food down from out of the tree.  I made quick decisions about what could stay out and get wet, and then surrounded myself with my tarp, using the rope from my food to loop through one of the holes in the top, around a nearby branch, and pulling the top out and over me, so that the bottom half would not catch the rain, and soak me in my little sleeping bag.

My heart was pounding.  Counting the seconds between lightning and thunder, I guessed that the lightning could not be more than a mile away.  I silently prayed not to get struck by lightning.  And yes, in that moment I longed for you, wishing for your arms around me…that we could hold each other until the storm had passed.

But with time, the gap between lightning and thunder increased, and soon I was back asleep.

I awoke to a glistening world, invigorated as I lit my camp stove to make tea and oatmeal.  And as I sat, drinking my tea, I found that my days of retreat in nature had done their magic.  Staring into the trees, I silently bid you farewell.

the Initiation

Crouched in a narrow thicket of weeds, and half-dead trees, two experienced Hobo Train fairies, one aspiring hobo train fairy, and one wolf-dog crouch, waiting. Their destination is less than 20 yards away, but it is still daylight, and the bull is grazing nearby. They do not want to see his red eyes flash at them, for, if discovered, it would take one swish of his tail to send them tumbling out of the yard.

They are so close! It has taken them a day to make their approach. The evening before, they safely examined the train yard from a bridge crossing above it. Over the past 12 hours, through a couple of scattered conversations with rail bees, and a treasure hunt for clues via scraps of maps, they were able to figure out which steel monster would take them to their desire destination.  They camped in a field nearby, though not without a battle with biting ants.  During the day, they braved menacing batches of poison ivy, in order to slowly approach the track they needed without being seen.

Now it would only be a couple of hours.  Sitting on moss-covered slabs of discarded wooden rails, they read, wrote, and snacked on crackers and sardines.  Ever-so-quietly, they played their musical instruments to the accompaniment of the working train yard….the poofs of breaks airing, up, the sing-screech of breaks, and the clattery percussion of cars being added to trains.  All the while, the wolf-dog napped unseen under a shady bush.

Spurt! Crash! whiiiiIIRRR! A nearby train started to move, and they anxiously spy out from the shrubbery to see if their train was making an early departure.   But no, the noise was coming from a train one track over.  Their steel monster still dozed calmly in its tracks.

They were waiting until sunset.  Once it got dark, it would be much harder for the bull to spot them, and they knew from spying on the rail oracles, that their train would not be leaving until way after sunset.  (They had a lovely car set-up scouted out for their ride…but some secrets are too sacred to share…)

But suddenly they heard that nearby rattling!  One of them sticks his head out to see.

“Quick! Our train is moving!”

And in a split second, their lazy wait transformed into a frantic scrambling to secure packs, musical instruments, and gallons of water, as they snuck through the bushes and out into the exposed tracks.

The car they had scouted to be their steel hiding spot had moved far away. They paused to what was now a gondola sitting before them, wondering if it was empty enough for the four of them.

But no! They did not have time to investigate to see if this car wouldn’t be broken off at some earlier train yard, so they took their chances, and ran through the open air, next to the tracks, to catch up with their scouted spot.

First, one climbs in, and is handed bags that another throws over the edge.  One of them whisper-yells to the initiate:  “Your  Tarp!” – during their run, it had fallen in the tracks some cars back, so the newbie ran to grab her tarp.

One fairy waited, hiding and watching for the initiate to return, to help her with her pack and watch as she clumsily mounted the ladder, predictably slipping, as she tried to figure out the different things to hold on to, but soon, throwing herself over the steel edge and into a pile of filth.

Finally they were all in, but this was a low wall, and their car had moved to just in front of the central work office, so they froze, curled up, and hardly breathing, as they waited for the sun to finish setting and the car to move.  They had some limited powers of invisibility protecting their embark, but this invisible dust was precious, and only to be used as sparingly as possible.

And just as quickly as the action had begun, it stopped, well all but their pounding hearts, which they feared were beating so loud it could be heard through those thin steel walls.

We were tormented by flies – testing our ability to remain silent and frozen, as they tickled our sweaty, smelly bodies.  As I gritted my teeth against the taunting flies, I knew I could not yet even celebrate my first hop as a victory…I could not jinx it with it the glory of success while I lay their listening to the rail workers prepare our train for departure.

Needing something to focus on in this still, heart-pounding meditation, I watched the reflection of colors from the sun and sky on the side of the train in front of us, indicating the status of the sunset.  Parts of the train shone gold, then red, and finally returned to an ever deepening grey-blue.  On a less glamorous note, I also memorized the image of the bottoms of one friend’s shoes which were curled up next to the side of my head.  The brand was safeTstep, and one shoe had a blackened piece of gum stuck to the bottom.

As the air grew darker, finally, came the poof of air, indicating departure.  There it was: the clack of breaks, and the squeaking crescendo as our train took off!

When it seemed that they were safely out of the yard, at least hidden now by trees on the side of the tracks, instead of brightly lit yard offices, they began to emerge from their spots. They  only had to duck down a couple of times to avoid work trucks, and angry engine heads of other steel monsters approaching from the other direction, threatening to reveal their whereabouts with their bright headlight eyes.

Once they were fully out though, they celebrated!  Pulling beers from packs, laughing and singing at the tops of their lungs, they hung of the ladder edge of the car.

“Welcome to thug life!” said the most experienced fairy to the initiate, “Don’t you wonder how you ever paid for gas?”

I  nodded and threw my arms and head out into the night, laughing, and heart soaring with happiness.

Hobo Train Fairies

At first, it may seem difficult to find them. But really you just have to know where to look. And maybe also you need to be friendly, open and ready to talk to anyone and everyone…And then before you know, it through an underground network you have found them, and they are ready to teach you, to initiate you into their ways.

Be ready to get dirty, to sweat, to hide, to have your heart pounding to the sound of crunch crunch crunch of workboots walking through the gravel just feet away from your hiding spot. Be prepared to ration your supply of water and canned food, a little longer than you had intended. And you may be holding in your piss and shit for longer than you knew was possible…

Its not easy.

But when you find yourself soaring through the trees, alongside a river, on the edge of a mountain, you just might not be able to stop smiling.