Austonian

Or whatever word describes a person from Austin.

I missed school on both Friday and Monday because of the train betwixt Austin and Fort Worth.

The ride to the happy town was decidedly eventfullish. Firstly, the train was delayed. It was supposed to board at 2:40 PM(which, to my dad, constituted having me stay home from school, because picking me up early enough to pack and get ready was too much of a hassle). Instead, we did not board until 3:00 PM. Not much of a shock, though it was still annoying. When everyone had finally gotten on the cars, we all thought that was that. The train did it's usual rocking into motion. And then it stopped. And then it started again. What?

We didn't end up leaving Fort Worth until nearly 5:00 PM because freighters get priority over passenger trains. These stops happened regularly throughout the start of the trip, but tapered off the closer we got to Austin.

The real meat of the ride came with the improvised Jerry Springer show.

A couple of girls were very drunk, and from the sound of it, quite stoned as well. One of the girls was complaining of having her iPod stolen by the "white girl" (although the other person in question, was at least half-white, and obviously so). And 80 bucks. And her phone. Personally, the way the two of them carried on as best friends for most of the trip leads me to believe they were both just very stoned and as such, misplaced the items. After all, she found her phone a little while later.

But nevertheless, not-white girl and white girl decided it would be great fun to get into a fight downstairs in the coach car. "Oh hell no mutha fucka, aw hell no!" and "Bitch, you don't know me! You don't know me!" rang from the lower area. To my dismay, this spectacle blocked the bathroom for a good ten minutes. I did not bother to leave my seat, though the stir did make me laugh quite a bit.

But things eventually settled down and the girls parted ways. Apparently, they both found each other and apologized. I assume they forgot about the entire event by the end of the ride and that they both joined a couple of other rowdy younguns that were equally irritating in order to find parties (I know at least three different girls randomly walked up to the guy sitting in front of me to find out if he knew where the hot parties were wherever he was going).

Anyway, the train finally pulled into Austin at damn near 10:00 PM. Samia, Travis, and Rite picked me up, and we hung out at Samia's for an hour or so before Rite left, and we all went to sleep.

I spent the next day with my mom. Got my eyes checked and bought a new pair of glasses. I then had to spend the night at Jim's place, which is now also Mom's place.

I have nothing against Jim or his family. They're all incredibly affable, well-adjusted people. That's great, and I'm happy for them. And Mom desperately wants to be so well-adjusted. But she somehow expects me to be as. . . normal as they are? She made me feel incredibly awkward. "Don't do this, don't say that, I don't know how exposed they are to that sort of thing." I was an embarrassment.

But I was raised that way. My family is confrontational, dysfunctional, generally underprivileged. That's how we worked out. We get in a lot of fights, usually over stupid things. But we love each other. If anyone ever tried to hurt someone in our family, there's nothing we wouldn't risk to help each other. Yeah, we crack a lot of jokes. When I came out to my siblings, their primary pleasure was probably making lesbian jokes to my parents while I was still in the room. Usually jokes about me. But we all do that to each other. Samia's a drama queen, Joey's a whore, Jimmy's a woman. So what? We know better. If I told my brother I was gay and he didn't make some wise crack, then I would know he didn't accept it. It may be strange, but it works.

But it doesn't work the same way in this family, and I have to watch what I say all the time. I made a lesbian joke, and my mother pulled me aside and told me absolutely not to say things like that. She recanted her statement a moment later when I pointed out that Jim's family was obviously not that closed minded. "You're right. His cousin's gay. He wouldn't have a problem with it." I still poked at her later, on the drive to pick up my new glasses, when we were talking about a particularly annoying time at which I had to hide in a closet with my sister. "Why do people always try to stuff me into closets?" I'm fairly certain she caught on that I was not talking about hiding from someone else's mother. At least not in that literal way.

The rest of the trip was fairly straightforward. I stayed at Samia's, said thank yous and goodbyes, and hopped the train back to Fort Worth, which took much less time than the train to Austin took. In fact, I think I got home early.