Whenever I confuse train rides with romanticism, I happen to sit behind the tobacco-chewing fraternity brothers--hand-over-crotch, looking for ass to tap, comparing spring break rendezvouses (which are "the shit")/tropical beaches ("the shit")/blunt binges (pot is "the shit")/Jamaican godfathers, spitting into empty Cherry Coke bottles. One says, I'd fuck Katie. The other says, I know tons of fucking girls way fucking hotter than fucking Katie. Wow, I struck a chord, the one says, when really he means, Wow, I struck a nerve, and I can see how the two could be confused, chords and nerves being as similar as trains and romanticism, and I can see how we are all, at some time or another, careless or lazy or, rather, overeager, but now he has me imagining all our little nerves--especially the ones connected to women named "Katie," maybe covering her, shroud-like, or maybe more like a web--are ill-tuned guitar strings and to strike them is something of a rustic serenade, something like Will Oldham, maybe, or the queen of discordance, Josephine Foster, veiled in a tangle of her own hair, singing "Crackerjack Fool": shrill, tremulous and intoxicating.
