[This short, eloquent story reminds me of some rock ‘n roll songs from the 1950s that distilled teenage emotions down to a universal essence. “I was all right, for a while. I could smile for a while …” There’s genuine anguish behind those pimples. No one captures fat as deftly as Silverback Bill (Hinesburg SBs). This is writing that speaks for itself. SB SM]
Train Riders
And now for something different…
| Bill Schubart March 22, 2026 |
I flop down into my seat – there’s no nice way to say it. To make matters worse my left thigh overflows into my annoyed seatmate’s space on one of the two facing bench seats as the train speeds away from the platform in Greenwich. It’s at the end of the car where the two blue Naugahyde seats face one another. The coach is redolent of coffee and a disorienting mix of fragrances emanating from the city’s cubicle-dwellers. I’m sitting across from a fat girl who is not a businessperson. She nibbles around the edge of a blueberry muffin and clutches a brown paper bag, translucent with grease. She has no purse. Crumbs speckle her neon-blue blouse with its deep décolletage and the pale white breasts trussed into it. Thin veins spider across her white flesh like the map of a river drainage basin. She is looking out the window, avoiding my gaze, although she senses it.
I wear loose-fitting clothes to conceal my fat, an expanse of oxford shirt over chino slacks. There is no subtlety to her fat, exaggerated by tight-fitting jeans and polyester blouse. How can she walk, bulging in those tight jeans? She looks up and catches me staring, perhaps wondering if I’m interested in her. I smile and look away.
I’m not a commuter, but this is familiar terrain. I’m making my way to the city to help empty the contents of grandmother’s apartment. I wonder why the fat girl is going into the city. She looks out the window again and appears to be listening to one of the many airborne cellphone conversations. A man is assuring his wife that he loves her even though he will be late again tonight. From his defensive tone it’s easy to guess that the wife is not happy.
I brace my bulk as the train rounds a curve at speed. My seatmate shifts his weight defensively. The girl, alone in her seat, also adjusts her position to compensate for the centrifugal force exerted by the fast-moving train. She clings to the bag as if it were her lifeline. Cell phone conversations compete with track noise. From my many childhood trips along these tracks I recall the hypnotic da-duh, da-duh, da-duh of wheels clicking over bolted joints in the now-welded rails. Today the noise is steady, arrhythmic, a shrill hum except for the occasional screech of steel as the train rounds a curve or the engineer brakes for bad track.
When the coach door opens and the punch-wielding conductor walks in, grabbing seat backs for balance, the train noises intensify, as if someone brushed a volume knob in error. Inside the car I make out snippets of conversation as, outside, the tenement windows flying by afford an occasional glimpse of the lives within. I have no phone or paper so I look out the window, careful to avoid the gaze of the girl, who continues to nibble around the edge of her diminishing muffin. Station platforms scroll by the window as the express train speeds toward Manhattan.
I’m thinking ahead to the physical and emotional exertions of helping my grandmother sort through and haul away the accumulation of her generation. But my attention keeps returning to the fat girl. We’ve somehow managed to park our bulks so that our knees don’t touch. I imagine the round contours of pale flesh overflowing her tight clothes and underwear. The fat around her middle bulges out to meet and support her substantial breasts. She pulls down her blouse when she sees me looking at her again. I’ve made her uncomfortable. She hikes herself sideways on the seat as if to look away, but instead she is trying to reach something squeezed into her jeans pocket. Now she must extend her right leg. It touches mine. She excuses herself with a faint smile. She gets her hand into the tight pocket and with some difficulty extracts a cell phone that she brings to her ear, greeting the caller. Above the din of the coach, I had not heard it ring but it might have been on vibrate.
It’s the same conversation I’ve heard a hundred times between lovers, assurances of love and longing, discreet recountings of intimate moments, promises of fidelity and reunion. I wonder if she is on her way to meet her lover in New York, and if her lover is also is fat. For a moment I’m consumed with the complex ergonomics of their love making with all its lipid impediments. There were enough embarrassments of ineptitude when I first made love, when I was younger and thinner. I’ve avoided it—or perhaps love has avoided me, as a fat person. I wonder if her lover is kind to her. I recall my stepfather once asking me, “So now you know how to use a woman to come, but have you learned to make love to her?”
The tenements give way to massive warehouses, empty streets, and an occasional diner. The girl ends with an expression of love and she again struggles to replace the phone into her tight pocket.
For the first time, she speaks to me. “I’m sorry, it was my boyfriend. We are engaged. He is stationed upstate and we only get to see each other when he visits his mother in New York City. I hope I didn’t bother you.”
“Not at all.”
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asks.
“Not right now. I did but it didn’t work out.”
“I’m sorry. You seem so nice.”
“Thank you.” I fix my gaze out the window as the train rolls through the industrial sidings of Queens, occasionally tossing us against one another as we pass a switch and change tracks at speed.
As the train moves on into Harlem and miles of tenements, the girl extends the bag she is clutching and offers me a doughnut. But I am no longer comfortable eating in public. I fear the reproach of those around me, watching a fat man eating fattening food. It’s safer to eat alone.
I watch the drape of fat swinging from her extended arm. I unconsciously straighten my shoulders as if to remind myself of the muscles I once earned from years of farm work, although my arms, too, are now encased in fat. I’ve not lifted a bale since going away to school.
She withdraws the bag and her smile fades with our loss of connection. The lights flicker as the train enters the tunnel beneath Park Avenue and begins screeching through the outer arteries of Grand Central.
I recognize the dusty lights, jolting turns, even the graffiti in the tunnels. I wonder if she has been here before. The cubicle-dwellers are stowing papers into briefcases and setting coffee cups on the floor for others to remove. The smell of spilt coffee overwhelms even the ambient after-shave.
Over the screaming of steel, I hear a squeaking sound. I look over to see the fat girl quietly sobbing. I do not want to engage; I am less than a minute from sprinting out of her life—as much as a fat man can sprint. Yet I can no longer pretend to be distracted by the world outside the train windows.
“Are you okay?”
She sniffles, gathering herself for a response.
“You knew, didn’t you?”
“Knew what?” I ask.
“There was no one there,” she answers with a convulsive sob that lifts her chin off her breast.
“What do you mean?”
“On the phone,” she says. Her eyes are red and swollen.
The train stops in a blaze of platform light and jostling commuters fill the aisles.
“There was no one on the other end.”
— Bill Schubart
Mixed feelings on this. It’s a good story, but much too heavy-handed on his fat comments about her, verging on being mean, seemingly justified by his own admission of fat on his part, which pale by comparison, and don’t seem credible given his photo. The ending with the woman’s admission of no one on the line would have evoked a lot more compassion in me if his fat comments were more tempered and balanced with those directed at himself.
Thanks for the comments, Jon. I’m sure SB Bill will appreciate. Thoughtful criticism, even if negative, is hard for a writer to come by.