The Hearts We Break May Be Our Own

Part 2 Public Transportation

ALL STOPS MARKET FRANKFORD LINE, PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION buzzed into my ears as I took my seat. A familiar song by Rita Ora seemed to fill my thoughts as I departed from the train station, “ I wanna feel your body on me”… Now it is consider indecent to be horny on public transit, but hey I’ve got my secrets and you’ve got yours. It kinda became a ritual that these late night runs would start with seeming playful texts and lead to… well right here on some run down Philly train that smelled of cigarettes, poor people, and regret taking me who knows where. All I really knew is that my hormones were at a high and I enjoyed being in a mind numbly perpetual state of horniness. Some people had alcohol some people had drugs, quite honestly I had sex… well or at least the thought of it.

The song ended and the train reminded me we were now passing central Philadelphia. Naturally my hormones faded as the familiarity of Philadelphia turned into a blur of ghetto hand made barber shops and uneven alley ways that had more purpose than I imagined the under paid construction workers intended them to. Anxiety sat still in my chest. Now of course your thinking he’s probably afraid of the new area he’s going into…. well your wrong. In every gay man’s life the thought of new encounters lead to one question… Is it gonna hurt?.. It is a very true fact that pain and pleasure coincide, but does that make me a masochist?… Well my friends that is a tangent entirely for another story.

My phone screen lite up with a message from the writer. Directions to an unfamiliar address and an all to clear egg plant emoji. Seeing as though I still had a few stops left, I didnt respond, I herd they like when you ignored them or some cheesy shit like that. Honestly my mind wandered rampant and my thoughts became the center of my attention as the texts became blurring … why’d his messages become so primal; misspelled and short. I was beginning to think that the person I was talking to wasn’t going to be the person that I would inevitably meet when this train came to pause. Almost like it was saying “ yeah you… get off… and go get fucked we don’t got all day”, we all know trains can’t talk shit but passengers sure can…