We were all standing around the doors of the train waiting for them to open. Overhead an automated voice kept intoning, "This is the last stop for this train. All passengers please exit."\n\nIt didn't take long for it get fixed -- it never does. But there was enough time for me to glance over at some other office nobody waiting with me and mutter, "Baltimore." The rest went without saying.\n\n<<back>>
//[[Oh well]]//\n//I guess I'm something of a ne'er-do-well//\n//(Even though that's something I could never do well)//\n\n("Oceanside," The Decemberists)
!!Not Yet Named\n!!!by Chris Klimas\nMost days I rise around 7:15. It doesn't take me long to get ready for work and [[I love nighttime]] more than I ever will [[the dawn]]. [[I don't really eat breakfast]] -- if I feel hungry, I'll throw a packet of Pop-Tarts in my backpack and munch on them while I read the morning's email. I never really run into my neighbors in the morning, though there's always a car or two cruising past as I get into mine.\n\nI drive to the subway station about ten minutes away and board the 7:50 train if I'm lucky; the 8:00 if I'm not. The subway car dings twice and I leave suburbia, where I grew up, for the city. There's enough time to read fifty pages of a book -- I've always been a fast reader -- or just snooze a little, and then there's another ten minutes' walk from the metro to work.\n\nSo all told, I spend almost an hour and fifteen minutes each day before I see a single person whose name I know. [[And yet I'm not alone]].
//Is this tap water?// she asked.\n\n//Yeah,// I said and she made a face. //I don't want to live anywhere where I don't feel comfortable drinking the water.//\n\n<<back>>
Sunday morning after Joel's tequila party two years later. Rob slept on my couch; if life had turned out a little better I might have hoped to take a girl home with me, but I was alone again. Anyway we went to IHOP and gazed out the window at the parking lot. We didn't have much to say and I didn't really know why. I tried to remember which kind of syrup I liked -- they give you four, you know -- but I couldn't. I went with the one that appeared purple from the side instead of just brown and it tasted like cough syrup. Boysenberry.\n\nEventually we found a topic worth talking about: movies. I think maybe you can talk about movies with anyone anywhere, because in essence you're just repeating stories someone else made up.\n\n<<back>>
"This is Jo Ella," Nicole said. It was really loud in the bar so I thought she was introducing me to someone named //Noella//. I'd never known a single person named that.\n\n"That's a really pretty name," I said.\n\n"And this is Klimas," Nicole said to Jo Ella.\n\n"What?" she said. She'd never met a single person named that, either.\n\n"I'm Chris," I said and shook her hand. She looked quizzically at me -- //that wasn't what Nicole said// -- but I nodded to Nicole and said, "She'll explain," and excused myself.\n\n<<back>>
I went to college in a small small town in the middle of a countryside, and pretty soon I learned to say hello to pretty much everyone I met walking around. It was just how things were done.\n\nThis hello-to-strangers is a weird sort of greeting, one you can only really understand as an adult, because you don't say //Hi// because you're happy to see people, nor do you ask //How are you?// because you want to know the answer. It's just a way to acknowledge somebody's presence, to reassure them that they haven't turned into a ghost yet. Only adults really possess that fear.\n\nBut eventually those how-are-yous take on meaning after you've seen someone enough times, after they've turned into stranger-acquaintances. You don't ask for a name even then -- you'd only forget it -- but [[you're friends, in a way]].
These places have names but it's useless trying to remember them; they don't have identities, just menus. I think a lot of them are owned by the same company -- they just click in and out of place depending on whim and economics.
Not Yet Named
[img[Joseph J. Klimas|grandpa.jpeg]]\n\n<<back>>
When I was little I called my father Andy, because that was what my mom called him. And neither of them corrected me about it. But Mom was always Mom.\n\nI switched to Dad one night at the dinner table when I was still little. Maybe first grade. I asked him for more milk, called him Dad specifically. There was a pause -- who knows what passed through my parents' heads -- and then he said: //Of course.//\n\n<<back>>
Most workdays I get to the subway station around quarter past five. I get on a car towards the back when I'm early; long-term commuters tend to ride towards the front of the train and that means long waits to get a seat. If I work late, it isn't as much of an issue, so I just pick a door at random.\n\nThe doors open and I walk through. The day's done. And all around me are strangers who I make up names for. The walrus, who works for the state and looks just like his namesake, though not as fat as you'd hope. Once he lost his balance when the subway [[accelerated unexpectedly]] and almost fell into me. He was so polite and embarrassed when it happened. He must be someone's wonderful uncle.\n\nThe gypsy -- who looks vaguely Eastern European and reads a lot with a faint smile on her face, like she's just been informed of a particularly delicate secret of yours. The best friends -- one Jewish, one black -- who talk about their children in chattery voices like middle-school girls on a sleepover. The student -- many students, in fact, -- tapping on a laptop. The office-men playing Solitaire on a gigahertz machine. The nurses asleep in their seats in their work-pajamas.\n\nI'm sure I have a name, too. One everyone I ride with gives me. The tall boy, maybe. The big one. The one always smiling to himself for no-reason-I-can-see.\n\nThey know me everywhere I go. I'm not alone. I promise.\n\n<html><b>∴</b></html>
"So did you make out with her?" my sister asked.\n\n"No," I said. "It wasn't really that kind of thing."\n\n<<back>>
They would give you a 6" pizza sub in exchange for a pennant from your college. They had lots of [[Rutgers|http://www.rutgers.edu/]] ones, of course, but there were also some obscure ones too, like the [[New York Fashion Institute of Technology|http://www.fitnyc.edu/]]. Who's ever heard of such a thing?\n\nWhen I went to college, I got my own 6" pizza sub but I didn't feel any pride in seeing my own pennant on the wall. I thought I would have, but I didn't. It was strange.
If I were a journalist, I'd take a spiral notebook with me some morning and write down his speech word-for-word. But I turned my back on that a long time ago. I don't want to remember everything anymore. I don't want to have it all correct. I just want to have the parts that matter, the ones [[I don't notice]] until it's too late.
//If you a get a feeling next time you see me//\n//Do me a favor and let me know//\n//'Cause it's hard to tell//\n//It's hard to say//\n//oh well, okay//\n\n("Oh Well, Okay," Elliott Smith)\n\n<<back>>
It's this thing I do, or try to do, anyway, on vacation -- get up early and go down to the beach just before the sun rises. There are always fishermen there, and they're always alone, casting their lines into the surf. I don't think I've ever seen anyone catch anything from the ocean. I never try to talk to them. I just watch the sun rise, and sneak back into the house before anyone notices I'm gone. It's a secret. Once I took pictures of the dawn with a disposable camera but none of them came out.\n\n<<back>>
When lunchtime comes at work, we walk up to Lexington Market together. It's good exercise -- the building we work in is too small to really get a good walk going on a five-minute break -- and even in a city [[whose water you don't entirely trust]], it feels good to be outside.\n\nWe do it so often that I've learned to recognize people. There's the girl working the register at the hibachi place who has a T-shirt she likes to wear that says //Cancel my subscription -- I'm tired of your issues//. There's a studious-looking guy who makes sushi and never says a word to the customers. And a woman in her late thirties who scoops up the meat and presses into sandwiches at [[the cheese steak place]], who seems to barely know a word of English but is always so happy to see you. I know these people a little. I couldn't begin to guess at what their life is like, though.\n\nEvery day, we go to the potato-chip-and-soda place. Everything's a little cheaper there because it's their bread and butter: everywhere else, soda's an excuse to make a quick seventy-five cents profit. Over the course of a couple months I deciphered that it's a family-run place, or at least I puzzled out some of the connections. The kids don't really look like each other -- just their parents.\n\nThe patriarch is a Greek man who loves Harleys; the mother has blonde hair and seems like the kind of woman you could put your trust into, who could survive almost anything. The kids are both teenagers -- maybe young adults now. They obviously don't go to school anymore but they still look young. Much younger than myself, anyway, and I turned 27 a few days ago.\n\nThere was a point at which I thought of introducing myself to them. The son, who tries to memorize our orders but always gets them slightly wrong, asked where we worked. We explained about the university and there it seemed a logical place to trade names. But I didn't, mostly because I am still shy at my core.\n\nBut afterwards, I decided it was the right thing to do. I like imagining a life for them. They live on the edge of city limits, commute in each morning at 6 am. Their names are Sharon, Liz, Scott. (The father's is something strange and Greek that I couldn't guess myself.) They've only owned the stand for seven years now but already it's become part of the family. There is no doubting that Scott will someday take it over. Liz, I think, may run off somewhere.\n\nEvery day I go to buy my chips -- well, now I've transitioned to white cheddar popcorn because it's better for me and it tastes good too -- I learn one more clue. I can make up one more detail to their story. We become [[closer fake-friends]].
My sister and I, we were walking to Nino Taco some summer long ago when we were both in school. We picked up dinner there a lot. It was greasy but only just; it was also really delicious.\n\nAnyway, there were two old people sitting at a table on the sidewalk outside the Indian restaurant next door, just watching the world go by. I'm not sure there was even food on their plates anymore. And as we passed them, I said hello, and maybe even asked how they were doing. They said hello, and said they were doing well.\n\nI would've forgotten that this happened long ago, but my sister thought this was weirdest thing I'd ever done. //[[Did you know them?]]// she asked.\n\n//No,// I said -- //I was just trying to be friendly...//\n\nAnd no matter how I tried to explain it to her, she thought I was strange. [[It was just something I learned]].
The driver's speech is a reminder that if we're lucky, today will be just like all the days that preceded it, and if we're even luckier, tomorrow will be the same, too. In twenty years, if all goes well, I'll be able to climb onto the subway and hear that same voice and those same words. And as long as you can hear that, nothing, not even you, can die.\n\nThe words don't mean anything normally, but there's always one day when they do. For me, it was a Monday morning; the weekend before it was just one of those nothing kinds of weekends where you can't sleep because you haven't done a single interesting thing all day. And I was still in a lonelyheart sort of state. Days like those, you don't want to go to work, not because you hate it, but because you don't want to do anything at all. You'd like a do-over but you'll never get it.\n\n"Good morning!" the driver said. I wasn't paying attention -- it startled me, the sound of it. And that's all it took to change the entire day.\n\n<<back>>
It happens so often you've got to hold tight to the rail, even after the train's pulled up to the stop. They don't get it quite right the first time, and it's so sad to see people trust the driver, to let go just after it's too late.\n\n<<back>>
The MTA doesn't have distinctions like that. They're just trains. And there's only one line that stretches from Owings Mills, where I get on, to Johns Hopkins down in the city. I don't think they'll ever build other lines, or express trains, or all the other things you find in [[real cities]].\n\nWe have traffic jams every morning on the main highways that people take to work, 695 and 83. But I don't see it ever changing. It's just the way Baltimore is. The metro breaks down a lot; sometimes the doors won't open or close at a stop, or the train loses its connection with the third rail that supplies it power, or it's just summer and the tracks have expanded and nothing fits right anymore. But subway time is yours to spend the way you want.
It's gone now, closed for business. And Sam's maybe changed ownership, repainted the place in awful green and purple, and took down all the pennants. I don't feel sad about this. If I did I'd feel sad about so many other things, too.\n\n<<back>>
[[Gmail|http://gmail.com/]] has this thing now where as long as you're signed into your email, people you know can talk to you. You can turn this off if you're determined enough, but it feels antisocial to do so. So I left it on without really expecting anyone to talk to me. What's there to talk about, anyway?\n\n<<back>>
"You don't?" I asked.\n\n"No," [[she]] said. It was 10:30 in the morning and I still couldn't shake that feeling of confusion I get when I wake up somewhere beyond home for the first time in a long while. She was in the kitchen; I was sitting on the couch. Blankets safely folded away now but I still felt warm. This was perhaps the happiest I'd felt all year. Maybe even longer -- but I don't keep records that far back.\n\n"I love breakfast," I said. "You're missing out."\n\nWhy did I lie?
We were on the beach and drunk on Corona. Joel had split the limes on the hotel room dresser with his car keys; we'd forgotten to get a knife and walking back to the liquor store would have lost the momentum of the night. When I reached to pick mine up, I saw that the keys had left tiny gouges in the dresser but I didn't care, and I wondered how many people before us had done the same, or even worse. The rooms came cheap and we were sleeping two to a bed, like brothers stuck on a family road trip.\n\nIt was somewhere near two o'clock though the number had no meaning anymore. All I really knew about time then was that the moon was full and there were no clouds in the sky. The light floated on the surface of the ocean in a thin pure white strip. The waves seemed almost silent. I could make out silhouettes in the distance that were so vague that I could imagine them as otherselves, people playing out the same roles we were but slightly different. Everything was right.\n\nWe had wandered off, each by ourselves, but not too far. I was drawn to the water. I wanted to swim but I knew it was dangerous -- though I could not remember why. I turned back and saw Rob sitting in the sand, just past where the water could reach. I sat down beside him.\n\n"I really like the way sand feels," he said. Now it just sounds like drunk bullshit and probably it was. But when he said it then -- [[of all the things]] we'd ever said to each other, this felt like one of the truest. Like we were talking while dreaming. Speaking thoughts as soon as they entered our heads. We didn't tell each other any long lost secrets or anything that night, but that's only because we didn't have any left to our names.
If I'm lucky I'll ride the subway train whose operator likes to talk over the PA. Maybe it's just that Baltimore's a small city but there's only one guy like this. He switches shifts a lot -- I guess that's just how they run things -- but he always starts off each trip by telling us we're riding [[the A-train]]. On your left, he'll tell us, is a stress test, on the right is a headache, and right up the middle, the MTA's running on time. He says this even when the traffic on either side of the train doesn't look that bad -- and if it is horrific, he'll joke, "You don't have to worry about being late anymore. We just passed your supervisor."\n\nSomewhere around Rogers Avenue, right before the train goes underground, he'll usually say how he understands that people might be sleeping or reading or just don't want to be disturbed, so he'll say good morning for all of us. And then we hear him take a deep breath and say: "Good morning!"\n\nOnce we get around State Center, where all the black matronly ladies and the white boring men tend to get off, he'll start to recite a whole list of things we shouldn't leave on the train: our bookbags, backpacks, "that dreaded umbrella," our husbands, our wives, our kids -- "Bring 'em with you. Don't leave 'em here."\n\nWe smile, mostly. Some of us make fun of him -- //he says the same thing every day//. He's been doing this for 13 years.\n\nI found this out one morning when he came on the PA and his voice was different. Someone lodged a complaint, he explained. Some people thought he was annoying. //Some people don't want to be talked to at all//, was what I thought to myself. He told us he was going to tone it down out of respect for us, but he woudln't stop. He didn't use the word //couldn't// but it's what he meant.\n\nWhen I got off at Lexington, I wanted to go up to his window and tell him that [[whoever made that complaint is an idiot]], that he should pay him no mind at all, that he should say everything he wants and more. But I couldn't. By the time I made it to the front of the platform, the train was long gone. That's how it works. He speaks and you listen.\n\nI guess there's nothing new about [[being nice to people you don't know]].
It was the summer we returned to the beach. I'd seen pictures of myself as a little kid there -- there was one in particular I remembered, of myself with a white cat I clearly adored, though I could not remember anything about it anymore. This was the first time we'd been back since I learned to remember things. Everything felt faintly familiar, like I had dreamed it before and was dreaming it again.\n\nWe were getting dinner at a place called Sam's Subs, right across from the [[Rossi mini-golf course]]. It was a tiny shack of a place, with [[college pennants]] strung over the walls and tables crammed in as tight as could be. After [[my dad]] finished placing his order, the guy working the counter asked: //How's the ocean today?// And they talked for a while about waves and weather.\n\n//Did you know him?// I asked my dad as we walked home.\n\n//No,// he said.\n\nI thought this over and then asked again: //How'd he know we were at the beach?//\n\n//Probably because our hair's still wet,// my dad explained.\n\nThere was a silence -- I wanted to ask another question but couldn't think of any -- and then it sank in that you were allowed to [[talk to strangers]] sometimes when you're a grown-up.
//Lawyers,// the man said. //You look like lawyers.// He played the part of the drunk homeless man perfectly: his clothes looked like third-generation Salvation Army fare and he had a forty wrapped in a paper bag in one hand.\n\nWe came to a stop -- we had to wait for someone to catch up -- and the guy took it as a sign that we'd like to talk to him. We didn't look like lawyers really. We weren't wearing ties; we weren't carrying briefcases. But alcohol makes life a cartoon.\n\n//Y'all can represent me,// he said. And what made this different from all the other weird city encounters I've had is that we shook hands. He looked at me and put out his hand almost meekly, and I took it. We didn't introduce ourselves -- the person we were waiting for had come. So we parted company and I imagine we'll never see each other again. Or maybe the more realistic way to look at it is that if we do, neither of us will recognize the other.\n\n<<back>>
-- Not a hero.\n\n<<back>>
Journalists change [[names]] in stories to protect other people. It's necessary. I leave out names in stories to protect myself. To only have to tell the parts I want to, to leave out the ones that hurt. The parts that make the story real.
It was raining Saturday. It felt random. I was walking through the city gazing up at street numbers as best as I could, feeling a little like [[a protagonist]] stuck in a story whose plot never really goes anywhere. Counting the numbers. Trying hard not to forget the right one. I have trouble remembering numbers.\n\n//There.//\n\nI ran into her a couple times in the past but I never really talked to her or anything. We talked for real maybe once, before we went to the premiere of //Revenge of the Sith// with a bunch of friends at the [[Senator|http://www.senator.com/]], but I don't really remember what we talked about. I think [[she]] told me she studied linguistics in college, something I find fascinating even now but never have taken any classes in. But that was all. It wasn't one of those passing-ship kind of things. I don't know if those really exist, anyway. We were just passing acquaintances.\n\nAnd then out of nowhere she started [[talking to me on the Internet]]. It was funny and silly at first, a workday distraction, and then it turned sort of serious and friendly. I still didn't feel like I knew her but I liked her.\n\n//Want to go hiking?// she asked maybe after a week or two.\n\n//Sure.//\n\nAnd then it rained and so it was the city instead. She kept proposing places to eat and changing her mind as soon as I agreed to one. Finally I just told her we'd decide once I got there. She was worried that I would get lost finding where she lived. I'm not good at city driving yet.\n\nI reached into the pocket of my raincoat and called her on my cell phone. The buzzer in her building was broken. //This is going to be weird,// I thought.\n\nI'm trying hard [[not to romanticize]] this because somehow words do without you really meaning them to.\n\nYou see -- when you talk free of the context of your own bodies, it's easy to say things without the sense of intimacy that follows. You can trust people without ever really trusting them. It's the same thing that makes writing stories like these easier than it should be. Somebody's [[just a name]] to you, a [[list item|http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/struct/lists.html#h-10.2]] hovering in the corner of a Web page. You can pretend you're talking to yourself. You can write secret diary entries to people you've only seen once or twice. And by itself a name is meaningless. It's the memories you place in a name, the feelings you collect around its syllables, that make it a living thing. The feeling of rain tapping against the hood of your raincoat. The stream formed by the street gutter you have to leap over.\n\nShe appeared in the doorway of her apartment building across the street and [[beckoned me in]].