If I don't breath in - I won't become one of them...

Four thirty in the morning is too early for nary a living soul to rise, let alone ride public transportation all the way to the airport with any modicum of decency.
Plus - I didn't want to go to Cincinnati in the first place.

I had new and creative ways of loafing at my job that I was anxious to try out for the week. Unfortunately, when my boss said 'go' on Monday, I was without a valid argument or questionable excuse - so I went.

It is a luxury born of having a boss a thousand miles away that allows me to wear whatever the hell I please to my work everyday. Since I rarely travel, I didn't know if I was to be walking into a conservative lion's den, so I purposely donned my only ill-fitting suit hoping to camouflage my true nature and debilitating lack of team spirit and company pride.
I got on at the train stop in my neighborhood, the dead end of the line and took the first seat in the first car. Safety was not my impetus but having a slight uneasiness about my impending plane trip, I felt that the ability to stare through the windshield into the rushing tunnel ahead at best, might serve to fortify me and at least, might turn me on.

Brakes went on and off and sleepy-eyed business men wandered on one by one. They would first look at the wide open expanse of the train and then choose deliberately to sit in my immediate area. At first I was bewildered, these are the people who generally take their rightful place as far away from me as possible.
These are the men whose wives sneer at me in shopping malls and through gold-trimmed Lexus tinted windows.
I was genuinely confused, then I caught my reflection. The suit, my new glasses, my non-threatening white girl manner, and the borrowed laptop bag in hand combined had doomed me to Dante's first level of corporate hell.
They had mistaken me for a business zombie and I had no taste for brains.
I slumped a little against the window.

Somewhere near the five points terminal, I saw the black man out the platform waiting impatiently for the doors to swoosh open. One limp wrist held high and the other arm akimbo led me to believe this man was not merely gay, but goddamn Zha-Zha Gabor. He wore a plain plaid oxford, but had left the bottom buttons unfastened and pulled each tail into a fat knot hanging on each side of his exposed belly button.
He had glitter on.
He breezed by us to the back of the car, with a style and eloquence of a beautiful black queer butterfly ready and willing to rule us all.
The chunky businessman in the golf shirt and tasseled loafers one seat away, met my gaze with a mocking glare for the queen. I felt a red rush of guilt at having to be associated with him and the others that surrounded me like dull-eyed greedy buffalo grazing on the wide expanse of American plain. So much room to move around yet unwilling to share the tiniest plot with anything that doesn't meet their obtuse buffalo standards.

Three stops passed before the gay man flitted back up to the front of the train waiting for his exit music. He sang quietly and swayed and subtly twirled on the poles with graceful long fingers like a ballerina.
He caught sight of me then and stopped dead.
He knew... he could smell me.
My foolish trappings might have blinded these other dogs but not him. He smiled brightly at me and the businessmen around me started to bristle in some benign territorial cave man display.
The doors shushed open and he said, "see ya!" and sealed his greeting with an invisible puckered kiss pursed in my very direction.
I said "you bet" and caught it. My corporate bretheren quietly spurned me for the rest of the ride.
I sat up a little straighter.