Journal April 5, 2007 I just lost my hat.
It’s not the end of the world, it’s a hat. A very important hat. If I had known I was going to leave it behind tonight, I would have taken one last long look at it as I sat down on the left side of the traincar and threw it over the lump of my backpack. Torrey called me almost as soon as the sliding doors closed me in. As all the eyes in the car turned toward me, I flipped open my phone. “Would you like to watch a movie?” I only knew how tired I was, and apologetically declined. “I have to work in the morning.” I wondered at how tired she must have been, as well, which made it strange that she would want to stay up and stare at the television. She had been sick the night before, puked in the bathtub and didn’t sleep a wink. I had to question it, it seemed unusual. “What movie is it?” “It’s a French movie,” she said, “it’s called those who love me can take the train.” On Monday we had admitted to pushing eachother away, and the fracture still rumbled. It became apparent to me that it was time to feel eachother out again. I abandoned the thought of being cognizant at work, and agreed to the movie. “Awesome, I’ll see you soon.” “Bye.” I pulled out my journal and my writing pen and started sketching a little picture of a thin girl with poor posture that had been watching me from the other side of the train platform. She had been wearing a dark miniskirt, her legs wrapped in black stockings against the sudden turn of the weather, and had a puffball of orange hair with Chelsea bangs. She reminded me of my first girlfriend, a punk kid named Ashley, who was among the many women that I regret having let slip away. My phone rang again. I flipped it open to read a text message from Lauren, someone who shouldn’t be thinking about me so late at night. “Just wanted to say hi,” she wrote. I often wonder at the subtleties of friends with impure intentions, but texted back an appropriate response on the number 4 key. “Hi.” I drew a man asleep with his baseball cap over his eyes, and stuck wings and a tail on him. The train trudged down the Ashland corridor, down toward Pilsen. I doodled a fishing boat moored in a desert, and christened it “Boredoms,” then went on to copy Elvis Costello lyrics beneath it, as he sang obtrusively into my eardrums. Some people got off the train. The electronic bell tolled out, “doors closing.” My eyeballs, sensing something amiss, snapped up from my journal and out the traincar window, taking in the letter C, in blue, on a column. With the flood of sudden comprehension I jumped from my seat: C – C for California. This is my stop. I barely made it onto the platform, my hands full of belongings grabbed up in my exit. I shuffled toward the center of the walkway to put myself in order. A black backpack. A red skateboard. A Japanese rolling ball pen and a green journal with the inscription “return me to the forest,” both of which I began to stuff into my sidebag. The ineffectual pneumatic doors had long since snapped shut by the time I realized that my famous handmade orange hat wasn’t in my jacket pocket where it was supposed to be. The train pulled the plug in my stomach as it sped away down the line. There is nothing more unattainable than the red rear lights of a train as it pushes you away. My lips smacked together in disbelief. That was my hat. That was my favorite hat. That was the hat that Torrey had made for me. That was my hat.
“I just left my hat on the train!” was the shameful text message to Torrey. The reply came back quick, and unsympathetic. “NO!” The security guard opened her window as I numbly approached. “If I had left something on that train that just went by,” I said, pointing at the tracks above, “what would be the best way to get it back?” She seemed to understand that it wasn’t just any article I had left behind. There was a lost and found, she explained, but the most immediate thing to do would be to take the next train to the end of the line. “I’m really going to be able to catch up to that train?” I pleaded. She shrugged her response, “They clean off the cars before turning them around. Go to the information booth at 54/Cermak, and I’m sure they’ll have your hat.” The platform above seemed to be getting colder by the minute. I didn’t even have a hat. The heaters had been turned off four days earlier as a welcome to Spring. I checked the time on my phone. I’d be pushing it, taking a train away from home this late, but the hope of retrieving that hat was hot in my chest. I just hoped that the Cermak bus had night service. The message I texted to Torrey read, “I have to chase it down at 54/Cermak. I will be home late.” So much for the movie… and for smoothing things over. As the next train pulled up, fifteen minutes later, “Hi” came the message back from Lauren. “I am on a mission,” I typed to her as I rolled westward after my errant hat. I had been watching some girls cross the street on a sunny day earlier that winter, as Torrey and I sat inside our favorite Pilsen café. I pointed them out. “I want a hat like that,” I said. Torrey turned up her nose slightly, “that’s crochet. So easy to make.” “Oh yeah?” I challenged. “Yeah,” she insisted, “I can make something like that, no problem.” So I whipped out a scrap of watercolor paper and sketched myself wearing a crochet cap. I drew it with fluffy eyeballs, a puffy nose, and a row of lumpy teeth along the brim. It looked like a monster was devouring my brain. “Make me that,” I demanded. That afternoon we stopped by the yarn store, and two days later I was wearing a new hat.
The train rolled down onto the surface streets as it entered Cicero. I watched out the window at the little cars waiting behind blinking railroad crossing gate arms. Enormous graffiti loomed under amber streetlights on the brick walls of buildings that were entirely unfamiliar to me. I had never taken the train out this far. This was a neighborhood of ugly uncertainty. We passed a graveyard of traincars as we pulled up to the end of the line. The doors opened. I crept out. It was a beanie made from bright orange yarn, the eyes were ivory with navy blue irises. The sculpted nose stuck out above a row of six knubby teeth of white. The face was wall-eyed, with misaligned features, and over time the nose had become permanently squished. When the snow blew in my face, I pushed the hat down so far that I had to peer out from between the teeth. Over the ensuing months I collected regular complements from fascinated strangers. It was the object of many a curious, trepidly envious gaze. It made people laugh just by passing by on the street. It was a sore thumb in the crowd. I was a proud boy, and I puffed out my chest every time I had a chance to say that my very own girlfriend had made it. It was a snippet of childhood, and fit my attitude so perfectly that I was hardly myself when I had to take it off. I wore it every day. No joke. Every day. I pushed my way through cold glass doors, past a crew of workers celebrating their release from duty, and then stood before a glass fortress, under the scrutiny of two distracted security officers. No hat. “If anyone found anything,” the older officer explained through a carefully held door, “it would be in that building down there, but… that building’s closed to the public until tomorrow morning.” A two-car train squatted on the tracks a hundred feet away. “Was that the last train?” I asked. “Well, yeah,” he said, “but they’ve already detached two cars… the ones that had the folding doors. Were you in a car with folding doors, or…” “Nope,” I said, as I ran back out to the platform. The first car was closed up tight. I peered in. The seats were upholstered with bright new fabric, and I knew my hat was not in that car. The second car’s doors were uncomfortably held partially open, and only half the interior lights were lit. I shuffled inside and frantically searched the empty seats. There were scraps of debris, folded newspapers, cups, and in one dark corner a brown-bagged bottle of vodka. No trace of my hat. I searched the first car retroactively, which was even more empty. I remembered the feeling of the soft wool over my hair. The simple safety of a familiar article, a bright orange security blanket. I remembered having put it on that evening on my way from class, and how the loose wool in front had tickled my eyelashes on my right eye as the wind hit me. I remembered the way I had just tossed it onto my other belongings on the seat next to me, and imagined how it must have slid off onto the cold fecal floor as I left it behind forever. The man at the communications office looked out through his high window at me. I approached the office and attempted to talk through the glass. I got him to peek out from his office door. “I’m looking for a hat that I left on that train,” I said. “Would anyone have brought it here?” The answer was no. “We have cleaning crews,” he said, “they throw anything out if they find anything.” I wandered aimlessly along the platform. I dug hopelessly through an empty black garbage bag, looking for anything that resembled orange yarn. The electronic bell of the two-car train called me back, and I boarded. I’d made it to the end of the line, I thought, and it wasn’t here. It wasn’t anywhere. Gone. The train took me home, a ragged empty duffel bag of a boy. Walking along the sidewalk I saw the single amber light, still lit, on the third floor of my building. I trudged up the steps. The rest of the apartment was dark. I dropped my backpack on the floor, propped my skateboard up against a wall, and stumbled toward the amber bedroom light. Torrey crawled out of bed and put her movie on pause. Without looking over, she demanded if I had found the hat. I sat down on the bed, tired and cold. no. Torrey’s face scrunched up. She pushed me in the shoulder, muttering, “you left it – on the train – because you don’t love me anymore.” She pounded her palms against my arm, and as I fell back against the bed with my eyes shut against the prying eyes of the plastered ceiling, my throat choked me with the rope of the things that I had lost.
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