Brown Line to Kimball

As the train car rocks gently side-to-side, I fight the gravity that weighs on my eyelids. The weather is unusually bearable for early April, and the warmth of the sun seeps through the windows like a sedative.

To my left, I see my husband’s head bobbing like a buoy, drifting away to a restful sea. To my right, the sun’s anodyne had taken hold of our out-of-town visitors, they are fast asleep. As I drift in and out of consciousness, I take note of a man who had entered the train singing along to his headphones with slurred lyrics.

“I wanna see you naked.”

My husband, our companions, and I snap awake as the only intelligible line of the man’s song rings throughout the train.

The man apologizes for singing too loud and tells us he is on his way to visit his family in Albany Park. “Only son with eleven sisters,” he says. “I drink whenever I have to see my family. Pretty drunk right now, actually.” As he shares his experience of growing up gay—“no, very gay”—in a Latino household, he looks me in the eye and says, “Which one of you is Latino?”

Nobody responds. He points at me and asks, “You?”

“Nope.”
“Italian?”
“Nope.”
“Oh, I know. Greek?”
“Keep guessing,” I say, sensing that the question was coming.
“What are you?”
“Middle Eastern.”

His eyes widen in shock as he sits back in his seat. “But you’re so free,” he says and he puts his hand in the air and wraps an imaginary turban around his head.

“I think plenty of women who wear the hijab are free.”

Before any more can be said, the voice of the CTA comes over the speakers, “This is Francisco. Doors open on the left at Francisco.”

“Well, this is us. Good luck with your sisters,” I say as we rise to leave the train.

As we walk down Mozart, the sun warming our skin, I wonder about the man’s family reunion and about my family who traveled across the ocean three generations ago.