John wishes he could fly sometimes. John used to wish every time he went to sleep he could go to a place where he wouldn't wake up to a box of cocoa puffs in the pantry and his passively promiscuous mother, satisfied in her nurturing. John took a flight every time he closed his eyes in his bed and breathed in the heavy fairy dust of secondhand smoke and unfamiliar cologne. John used to look for oblivion in his sleep until he finally found it in loneliness.

John opens up his wallet to the clear plastic coated sections of pictures. Every one of them is empty except for the first. John lovingly admires the photo, a candid of his dog, roped to a plastic cow, wearing a pink bandana. John loves the rodeo. With his lazy eye focused on (and off and on and off) the nutritious snack he takes to work, John glances suspiciously with his good eye to the left of the bench. John doesn't see a woman straightening her hair in the mirror-like glass surface of the subway map.

Wendy Timmers checks her reflection in the space between the red dot for Pine and the green dot for Elm in the glare of the 8th street subway map. Wendy washed her hair with vinegar nine times today. Wendy has always had an irrational distaste for salad dressing but she's read in many journals that the astringent nature of the vinegar gives her hair the body and shine she so ardently strives for. Besides that, it gives her hair a savory seasoned smell that always seems to attract the right kind of men. Wendy's kind of man always buys her perfume from the Elizabeth Arden counter at Saks and knows enough not to bother her when she is washing her hair. Wendy showers like she is auditioning for an orgasmic Herbal Essences commercial.

When Wendy was a little girl she wouldn't play with anything but make up mirrors and Barbie dolls. Wendy only let her mother buy Barbies with the same long blonde hair as she had, and she always styled her dolls and herself in the exact same way. Wendy is Barbie doll perfect. Wendy looks to her left and doesn't see a tall man brushing lint off his sleeves as he waits for the train.

Michael October is a man's man. He doesn't tolerate femininity or uncleanness even in their most meager doses. Michael lives in a house with six girls and is constantly absorbed in the arduous battle for his manhood. Michael licks his upper lip and brushes off his clean-cut khaki pants as he purchases his ticket from the greasy teller in the bulletproof glass casing. As he'd left his house this morning he made sure there was no chance that he would fall prey to the estrogen charged posters plastered on the walls or the giggling girly conversation floating in colorful waves around his rock solid exterior. He'd walked steely past dirty laundry strewn over the floor in an attempt to hold his head above the chaos. His roommates were in awe of his dominant nature.

Today Michael swigs his beer with effervescent arrogance as he saunters through the underground tunnel. Waiting anxiously he drinks as if it was Gatorade and his pacing back and forth with a scowl on his face would qualify him as an athlete. He can hear what might as well be his theme song playing over and over in his head -- Rocky. Michael looks to his right and doesn't see two other souls, lost in unawareness, wandering aimlessly in their own suffocating unreality.

The whir of the approaching subway car sounded like the noise of clouds brushing past each other in the sky. Peter Pan Rail Company, the subterranean off shoot of the popular bus line, ran the cars that came through the 8th street station. The train cars float through the dark night of the tunnel like spirits always running away. Peter Pan Rail Car #7 settles into the station leaving a cloud of fairy dust or subway lint in its wake. Each lost traveler enters the train like they are being sucked out of a peaceful naïve sleep into the raw air, and all of a sudden there are three of them.

Three souls sit together on a train and it doesn't matter if they are moving or not because they are all stationary for each other. Three souls don't move but they travel. Three souls feel the imaginary rush of the wind as the stagnant air settles on their shoulders. The rocking of the train carries three souls back into the dark tunnels of insecurity and into a whirlpool of consciousness. The walls outside the car move so fast they freeze and the writing on the walls becomes ceaseless flashes of color in a supernatural universe of thick air.

And the tug of war between motion and of time rips open their collective consciousness and spills the contents all over the plastic wrapped seats and grimy yellow floor. Three souls make eye contact. Their world stops.

"You sure are pretty," John says to Wendy, not blinking his eyes.

"Thank you."

"And nice!" he paused, "And Irish?"

She smiles because she is nice but not Irish and the longing in John's eyes reminds her that one of her smiles is a valuable gift.

"German?" he continues, "What is it now? Gotta be something, those pretty green eyes of yours."

"No," She smiles graciously, and then turns away as if he's reached his quota of her social generosity. Wendy feels the strain of her vanity on her perfectly manicured image as she silently resents John for his simplicity.

"Well no one ever looks at me, " John replies.

"Doesn't anyone want to look at me?" comes Michael's voice, looking at John while he speaks. This is mostly because otherwise he would be distinctly vulnerable to Wendy's femininity, which is, at this time, creeping across the seats toward his well-ironed pants.

"I wonder if you'd like to smell my hair, " is all Wendy says to Michael.

"Why?" he replies.

"You'll like it."

Michael turns away and back to John. "Your shoes are scuffed."

"You're wearing two watches," Wendy interjects.

"If I'm late everything falls to pieces," says Michael to John

"Me too," says Wendy to Michael.

"Me too," says John to no one in particular. "But no one's ever noticed my shoes before."

"That's pathetic."

The dialogue floats while the three souls sit planted heavily in their seats, confounded by the limits their words put on their blistering new sensations. Like sores that have been ripped open, their insecurities flow painfully in the open air and out of their mouths into jumbled incoherent exchanges. Three souls drown in their frightening realities.

And they are rescued by the train. Just as Peter Pan Rail Car #7 rescued them from the lies of their cellophane covered lives, it rescues them right back into their comfortable traps. With a slow soothing hum the car gears up and jerks into motion once more, whisking the travelers back from the world of fairies and awkward introspection they are sure to forget once back on solid ground.

Once more the train and its passengers arrive at the 8th street station. John Skipper locks securely his empty briefcase and walks off to the job he doesn't really have, to have lunch with no one, and come home again in the evening to his faithful dog. The dog's big round eyes searching for acceptance from John, they'll drift to sleep alone together.

Wendy Timmers smells her own hair and breathes in heavily, satisfied, as she walks confidently out onto the street, knowing that everyone, as usual, is staring at her.

Michael October goes to the gym because every confident man knows that muscles are the foundation to a solid sense of being, and because the trainers would surely miss him if he didn't come.

More lost souls wander the train station behind them, Peter Pan Rail Car #7 flying them off to Neverland twice an hour, without interruption, Sunday through Thursday.