Crackers

“I don’t really know why, maybe it was all the alcohol in my veins, or the sadness, or just the stupidity of youth, but I stepped in between the rails and lay down between them.”

When I was younger, in my late teens, I ran with a gang of dance hoodlums. Yes, I used to dance and I loved it. I’m not talking about line dancing, Salsa dancing, or even Waltzing. I’m referring to the all-paws-in craziness of the late 80’s industrial dance clubs where the big, “Everybody, get off your ass and dance!” songs were Headhunter by Front 242 or New York, New York,” by MCL. I’m talking about 1987-1989, San Diego. We had some options. The go-to was SOMA, of course, downtown at Fifth and Union streets. But we got around town to other places, equally dark and overflowing with egos. We went to The Piranha Room and sometimes even crawled around in the basement of the Sports Arena when Playskool took over. But one night, The hoodlums and I went to a place near the airport. It was a place called Crackers. 

All I knew about the club was that it was LGBT friendly and I heard the music was good. There were four or five of us if I can remember. That part of my memory is fuzzy because I spent the first part of my night verbally wrestling with my then-recent ex-girlfriend and numbing my brain with rum. 

Our small group went into the club. The music was loud and pulsing. It was so loud that it made my chest shake with every beat. I lagged behind while half the group went dancing and the others slipped off somewhere I didn’t see. I leaned against a wall. Being dressed all in black, looking the part of the tortured artist, I couldn’t say I looked like a wallflower. 

Faces passed in front of me, most of them made up in white powder and heavy eyeliner with ruby lips. The dance clubs I went to always had an air of theater. But that night, I was brooding, and drunk. I opted to step out. 

Once outside, the rush of cool air cleared some of the haze. I walked and crossed the parking lot. The area across the street was quiet, other than the droning beat from the club. I saw a rise ahead of me, climbed the short hill to sit on the slope, and faced west to watch the airliners take off, just beyond the club. 

I took out a cigarette and smoked it pretty fast. Camels were short, after all. I could feel the heaviness of my heart and the loneliness from the breakup. I stood up and looked behind me where the train tracks lay on the dirt. I don’t really know why, maybe it was all the alcohol in my veins, or the sadness, or just the stupidity of youth, but I stepped in between the rails and lay down between them. My eyes stared up at the stars and despite the distant sounds from the club, the still of the night overwhelmed me. That space between the rails buffered almost all of the sounds from the city. I closed my eyes. 

At first, I heard dirt falling down from somewhere inside the rails. I felt a tugging at my pants like someone trying to get my attention. It was the mere sensation of pressure pulling down on my ankles. Then I heard more bits of dirt and pebbles dropping around my head and I sat up. A nearly imperceptible voice brushed my ear and whispered, “Get up.”

I sat bolt upright and found myself standing in front of a small dust devil spinning before me like a dancing girl, wiggling left and right, throwing bits of debris at my face and moving to one side, rudely forcing me to go back up the rise and towards the club parking lot. I heard my buddy Pope calling my name. Matt did the same from down the street so I walked toward them. No sooner had I cleared the tracks did a train go barreling through, laying on its loud horn, pulverizing the dust devil in its path.

Pope ran up to me and asked if I was alright. I said I was. I couldn’t make sense of what had just happened. But I didn’t die. I think everyone there kept shaking their heads wondering what I was doing. I wish I could tell them, but I don’t think I knew. Something moved me to lie down on the train tracks. Something else moved me to get out. 

My life’s been like that. If I don’t have a direction picked out, the force of the wind and dirt will eventually push me one way or another.