Deviance

The sun was warm through the dirty glass window.  She turned her face to it and closed her eyes, letting the light tickle her face and tease behind her eyes with bright spots of color.  She could just imagine she was on some warm beach somewhere, no breeze to disturb her, only perfect glowing warmth from a sun unseen, just felt. 

The sunlight disappeared; the train had moved east and her window now looked out on a massive concrete parking structure where there seemed to be no building attached.  She smiled at the thought of lines of cars filled with occupants pulling in with nowhere to go to. 

At least she knew where to go when her train stopped.  That was something.  Another day of work to keep her busy, another ride home on the train that afternoon. In one sense, the routine was a comfort.  In another, it was like a noose.

The group of retards got on the train from their school stop.  They rode the train a lot.  Maybe they were learning life skills.  She knew she shouldn’t use the word retards.  It wasn’t malicious; it was just a word from a bygone era when words didn’t have to always mean something.  She didn’t even know the correct term these days.  She knew that a lot of people would be angry to know that word bounced around in her head.  Most people would be upset by a lot of things that lived inside her head.

She lived her life carefully, making sure not to offend or upset, taking care to make everyone feel okay about themselves.  The truth was, she wasn’t actually a good person at all for making this effort; the truth was, she sucked for even having all of her politically incorrect, blunt thoughts in the first place. 

Can a person retrain their brain to think different thoughts?  She could tell herself over and over again that the word retard was not considered acceptable anymore, but that was still what popped up into her brain each day that group got on the train.  So she sucked.

There was a group of three train police officers talking shop as the scenery whizzed by.  The stood, proud and manly with their black socks and neon jackets, ticket readers ready on their weighty belts.  Apparently there was a top six in the train police.  They were betting that one of them was in it.  They stood with their wide stances for balance as the train lurched into the station, chatting away and daring passengers to get on the train without a ticket.    One stretched his leg up onto a platform, holding onto a center pole and the back of a seat, looking like he had been hired to do a nasty bachelorette party.  Now he took his leg down, spread his legs wide, and held onto the pole with both hands, leaning way back with his hips thrust forward.  He was very good.  He was probably in the top six. 

This was the thing.  Her brain was always full of completely inappropriate thoughts.  She seemed to dwell constantly in the realm of deviance.  It was fun to think awful things, secure in her own private world, looking like a nice, normal commuter to all, while thoughts of retards and stripping police officers danced in her head.  The fact that she was conscious of the deviance somehow made it seem okay to her.  Crazy people don’t know they’re crazy, right?

As long as she recognized it, she was probably still okay.