Looks like I have to buy a suitcase. Now that there have been real, unimagined comments posted, Tony has decided we must move. (Can anyone say hangover?) Move far away from what he has determined is my computerized portal into sin and depravation. Apparently he doesn’t understand the internet as concept. (Do you?) I am allowing him to believe that if we move away I will no longer be able to access this blog. Believe that its entryway will reside in our vacated two bedroom. (Someday I might get a chance to tell you what we keep in the second room.) But before we go I have to find us a deluxe compartment on a train bound for nowhere.

Those compartments aren’t exactly enough room for two. Luckily mine only had to house one because Luke decided he wasn’t going to fly to the city just to ride back home with me. Decided that he would rather stay at home with his daddy the preacher and mommy the why-don’t-i-just-quit-my-job-for-no-reason-at-all-er. So during the night I moved from the top bunk to the bottom just because I could. Versatility, I’ve found, is extraordinarily satisfying.

But the tracks are really what interest me. Started from a picture on my grandfather’s wall of some tracks in a canyon. “The world’s steepest railroad grade”. I convinced Frank that we should walk down those tracks during our late night Halloween escapade in high school. At the party he was dressed as a secret agent in a suit (Is everybody really crazy for a sharp-dressed man?), but that night he’d taken off his shirt and wore only the suit coat. My secret agent lover man. We eventually got arrested. Three times by the end of the friendship.

There are two points where Frank actually let go of insecurity and allowed himself to be close to me. (For the record he’s now fat and married.) The first was at a middle school slumber party when he got inside my sleeping bag and we wrestled. I definitely felt him poking against my leg. The second, unfortunately, was not on a train but a bus, big and yellow and transporting us home after a band competition. It was late at night and he fell asleep, his head nestled on my shoulder. The process took hours but I managed to maneuver my arm around him and placed my own head on his. I never actually fell asleep.