In perfect monday morning fashion, the rain began to fall the moment Charlie stepped out of his car at the train station. With a heavy sigh, he pulled out his umbrella, but then decided it wasn't raining quite hard enough to open it... and instead walked quickly towards the station. He passed familiar faces, standing along the tracks, peering into the distance for signs of the soon-to-be-coming train that would take them all downtown, ushering in the beginning of their day.
Today, in particular, Charlie found himself wondering what each of their lives held. He saw many of them each and every day, standing in the same spots, waiting for the same train to rush them to the same job, the same standard day which would end with a walk back to the train. The very act of commuting via train contributed to falling into a daily rut and today Charlie was feeling particularly like he was in a rut.
It wasn't that anything was necessarily wrong, quite the opposite, things were pretty good. While Charlie was indeed one of those people routinely commuting downtown to a less-than-spectacular job, it was a job that paid somewhat more spectacularly than it probably should. That salary allowed him to live in the proverbial suburban home with picked fence with the loving wife and talented, over-achieving kids, even the faithful dog who he took running with him to help stay in shape. Weekends were full of baseball games and piano concerts during the day which gave way to barbecues with friends at night, complete with fine bottles of wine or perfectly quaint microbrews. One or two too many of those microbrews last night was almost certainly the cause of the pulsating headache plaguing him as he stepped into the train station to escape the rain.
In fact, life was so perfectly, well, nice, that it actually depressed Charlie more as he stood waiting for the train. In a few short weeks, Charlie would turn 38 and as much as fought the idea of a midlife crisis, it certainly seemed as if his psyche was intent on going through it. Rather than finding all of the good in his life (and there was so much good) he found himself increasingly longing for something, although he'd be damned if he could figure out what that something was. Sometimes he felt he wasn't doing anything of significance in his silly, high-paying job. Sometimes he found himself wishing he had been better about keeping in touch with his family. And sometimes he lamented the lack of sizzle in the bedroom.
As if on cue, one his co-commuters, a cute long-haired blonde stepped into station, her hair shone with the morning rain, her face seemingly glowed thanks to the flecks of water across it. He reminded her of the college girls who came bouncing through the office, wide-eyed and excited, experiencing the perfect mix of 'being an adult' with their important internship and 'being a kid' with their mindless fraternity keggers and giggling sorority socials.
"Ugh more cliche..." Charlie shook his head as he thought about how his sex life had gone from often and varied in his 20s to occasional and perfunctory as he approached 40. As it happened with most couples, the addition of children led to less one-on-one time with his wife Donna. And of course when that one-on-one time did occur she was often too tired or stressed to be 'in the mood.' So it was often left to Charlie to push the issue, like he was trying to convince a local congressman to support a bill the legislator didn't really feel any passion for one way or another. In fact, even the responses were typically the same, a shrug of the shoulders, a "sure okay" and then a post-event feeling of "why did I even bother?"
He checked his phone to see it was just a minute or two before the scheduled arrival of his train and pushed his way back into the rain, which still seemed to be deciding whether to sprinkle or come down steadily.
Some of his friends even confided the same loss of intimacy in their marriages. But while many of them seemed somewhat comforted, in a male-bonding kind of way, that others had the same problem, it just made Charlie all the more frustrated. In his mind, if they were talking about it, then their wives were talking about it too... which probably just reinforced in their minds that it was 'okay' not to be as interested in sex as they were when they were younger, that it was okay if they didn't initiate and just waited to be asked when their husbands felt it had been long enough. Women lost their sex drives as they got older, right? That was okay, right? Mars and Venus and all that crap.
Charlie looked around as he stood in his normal spot waiting. To his right, the usual group of four middle-aged men, talking and smiling. He always stood just to the right of this group, finding it was usually the spot where one of the train's doors stopped and opened, giving him the first shot at the remaining seats.
Yes, Charlie mused, as he stood there in the rain, that is what seemed to bother him more than anything these days. Ultimately, his job paid the bills and his hours were perfect. And he was always a phone call or quick flight away from his parents and siblings and aunts and uncles. But there was no simple cure for the lack of passion in the bedroom. For her part, his wife insisted she loved him more than ever before, that she found him as sexy as she ever had, that in her mind there was no problem, so what was there to discuss? His attempts to bring it up, whether casually or pointedly, usually ended in the same "we'll just try and make more time for it!" solution that either fizzled out quickly or never started in the first place. In fact, it was just two weeks earlier Charlie's wife insisted "I'm going to make efforts to spice it up, I promise!" They had not had sex since that declaration.
To be fair to Donna, the two did still share some amazing sexual adventures occasionally. They just happened a lot less often. Like, once-every-few-months a lot less often. It seemed to Charlie it was a lot like an endless round of golf. Every time you wanted to scream in frustration, you'd hit that one magical shot that convinced you it was all good. That with a little more work you'd be hitting those shots more often and the bad ones less so. But it never really worked out that way did it? Yes, the good shots happened sporadically. But mostly it was just one unsatisfying duff after another.
Another look around him revealed a young brunette standing behind him. She chewed her lip tentatively as she hugged herself, battling the chill of the morning rain slowly soaking her poorly-chosen fleece. You could often tell by someone's face and mannerisms if they were a daily train commuter, comfortable in the routine, and everything about this girl said she wasn't. She subconsciously tugged at her long hair, tied into a loose ponytail, pulling it forward and letting it fall onto her chest, then seemingly deciding better of that look and sweeping it back behind her. Seconds later, she pulled it forward again. Charlie thought for a brief second about offering her his still unopened umbrella, but that potential gesture seemed unnecessary as he heard the clang-clang-clang of bells and looked down the tracks to see the train approaching.
In stark contrast to the rainy morning and the swirling madness in his head, the train slowed to a perfect stop, the door settling in right in front of Charlie. After jostling his way aboard, Charlie was thrilled to find the first pair of seats on his train car, the one facing backwards creating kind of a booth like effect with the next seat which faced forward, completely empty. He slid in towards the window, taking the seat facing everyone else and then smiled politely at the ponytailed-brunette who took the double seat facing him.
She seemed not to notice his intended greeting as she set her backpack down next to her and slid out her laptop. For his part, Charlie retrieved a book from his backpack and settled in for the 45-minute ride downtown. If he had continued on his maudlin life evaluation, Charlie probably would've found it somewhat depressing that the book-in-hand commute was his single favorite part of the day, so much so that he was almost always the last person off the train when it arrived downtown. But instead, he was perfectly content to climb inside his book and let it wash over him.
Only he seemed to be having difficulty doing that today. Normally, his train-ride reading was his morning escape, kind of a battery charging to help get through the day, but now he was having a hard-time concentrating. Instead, he found himself peeking up to the brunette's fingers as they danced across her keyboard, his ears hearing the rhythmic rattling of her typing. Charlie thought her fingers were perfectly-sized, not too long, not too short, and then seconds later wondered what he could possibly mean by perfectly-sized. His eyes wandered upwards, noticing the cleavage framed by the V-neck top she wore underneath her now-unzipped fleece. The ponytail was once again hanging down over the left-side of her chest. When he moved his gaze up to her face, he saw her beautiful brown eyes concentrating intently on the screen, giving no indication that she noticed his evaluation.
As he looked back down to his book, he thought he saw her eyes shift towards him and he glanced back up only to find them once again focused on the laptop. So... maybe not.
Charlie did manage to lose himself in his reading for a few minutes before the three women in the seats next to him began to do a crossword puzzle together. One of the women would screech out the clue and then a long discussion would ensue as they tried to figure out the word. It seemed that no matter how simple the answer, the women were intent on debating the possibilities.
"South Dakota's capital!" the woman announced, with enough volume in Charlie's mind to bring the conductor into the conversation, and then the debate began.
"Oh that's Bismarck, right?"
"No no, silly that's NORTH Dakota!"
"Well, what's the capital of South Dakota?"
"I... I'm not sure. Betty?"
"You have to be kidding," Charlie muttered, glancing over from his book.
