Next stop--memory lane.

I wonder about the people on the train sometimes. I usually end up taking the same train, at the same time, into work almost every morning, and if I'm not running late, I step aboard through the same set of doors. I know that there will always be a place to sit in this particular car, and it will drop me off right by the turnstiles when we reach my stop.

It didn't take long to recognize that there are quite a few people out there who are as obsessive about their morning commute as I am. I see the same faces every day, sitting in the same places every day. Most of them, I'd guess, are between 10 and 20 years older than me. When I step aboard, I know who will be sitting just inside the doors to my right, and who will be sitting across the aisle from him. I know where these people get off the train, and where at least a few of them work.

Even though I've never spoken with any of them, simply by overhearing their conversations (which are pretty loud), I've come to know how they'll likely react to any given news story. I know what movies and television shows they like, and which screen actresses they lust after. I know when one of their friends is feuding with another one of their friends.

None of this is intentional on my part. I didn't go looking for this information. I've learned these things simply because these people are always there, always in the same place and always talking to each other.

Myself, I don't talk to anybody. I know where a seat will be open and I aim for it. If the seat is not open, I grab a pole and wait, because I know the guy sitting in that seat there is getting off at the next stop, and I'll just grab a seat then. I generally keep my eyes trained on the floor.

Sometimes I wonder about them. What were they like as kids? What was their first job? How'd they do in school? How did their parents handle The Talk? What were their friends like? What was their favorite tv show, and what actresses did they lust after back then?

Sometimes I make up answers to amuse myself. Sometimes I leave the questions hanging figuring that one of these days they'll answer them for me. Sometimes I turn the questions back on myself.

I've been living more and more in memory of late. That's not necessarily a good thing so much as it's a sign that I feel like the world around me is closing in and slowing down. But whatever?this happens every once in awhile. More often than not, these memories stretch back to Wisconsin?the most likely reason for that being that most of the years between 1983 (when I first left) and 1996 or '97 are kind of sketchy. Prior to '83, though, things remain relatively clear.

Like most people, my earliest understanding of what sex was all about was pretty skewed?the product of lingerie ads, photography books, Josie and the Pussycats, National Geographic, novels that contained scenes I couldn't make heads or tails out of and some seriously misguided neighborhood kids.

There was this one?Eric. Big blond kid with a round face, narrow, cruel eyes and a wide red mouth. Depending on the week, he was either my best friend or worst enemy. When we were friends, we would ramble the neighborhood for hours or just sit in the back yard, talking. Only after I went back home afterward would it strike me that everything he'd just told me was a complete fabrication. He was in fights with the meanest bullies and won, he'd tell me. He saw Bigfoot and a UFO. He had lots of money and had traveled the world. He pulled off incredible, impossible stunts on his bike when no one was around to see. While he was telling me these things, it all came out sounding so real, so assured, that I had no choice but to believe him. This may or may not have had something to do with the fact that his father was the chaplain at the local prison. I was also a very gullible child.

One day back when we were 10 or 11?these were much more naive times?Eric and I were sitting on the swings in my backyard, when he told me that he'd been out really late the night before.

This was Green Bay, you must remember. It was the early 70s, and we were 10. Nobody was out late, ever. Nevertheless, I asked him where he'd been.

"The Bunny Hop," he said, acting all cool and nonchalant about it.

The Bunny Hop was the most notorious strip club in town in those days. Or at least the best known. The sign outside (I always kept my eyes peeled for it whenever we drove downtown) featured a voluptuous rabbit in a pink powderpuff bikini.

"Oh, you were not."

"I was too."

"Okay fine," I gave in. "You were at the Bunny Hop?so what were you doing there?" I asked, not believing him for a minute, knowing his mom would never have allowed it.

"Oh," he said, still playing it cool, "they ask me to do a show every once in awhile."

"Uh-huh."

"I'm not lying," he said, giving me that look that implied he would sock me a good one if I didn't believe him. Given that he was much larger than I was, I decided it would be better to give my doubts a rest and hear him out.

"What kind of show?"

"Ohh, I put on a cowboy outfit and a holster with some guns, and I go out and tell jokes in between the naked lady dancers."

"Uh-huh? And this is what you were doing last night?"

"Yeah?like, I'll tell a joke, and if they don't laugh, I'll whip out a gun and say, 'If you don't like it, you can blow it out your ass!'" He held up an index finger and blew across the tip as if he were blowing smoke away from a gun barrel.

Eric was one of the first kids in the neighborhood who learned to swear early and often.

"Last night was a special night," he went on. "They only do it once a year. That's why I was there."

"What happens?"

"Well, they bring out this naked lady, and they make her lie down on a table on the stage. And then they hold this contest, and whoever wins gets to come up on the stage and cut off whatever parts of her body he wants."

"For what?"

Eric had to think about this one for a second.

"To take home with him, I guess."

I should explain at this point that I was still a reasonably uninformed child when it came to certain matters. I'd figured out how a few things worked, and was coming to understand with a bit more clarity what was going on in "those parts" of the sleazier novels I was reading. Still, when it came to the basic mechanics and design of the female body, I was mostly in the dark.

Perhaps a year later, in lieu of giving me The Talk, my mom gave me a pamphlet entitled "A Doctor Talks to 8-12 Year Olds," and I was immediately perturbed that she hadn't passed it along earlier. It was very clinical, very straightforward, and full of line drawings. It only confused me further.

"You mean they cut parts right off their bodies?" I asked, both astonished and strangely excited by this, trying to make sure this is what he was really telling me. "With what?"

"Oh," Eric said, fully confident with the story now, knowing he had me hooked, "he had his choice?knives, scissors, whatever."

"But wouldn't these ladies scream?"

"Sure," he smiled.

"Oh, c'mon, Eric?They'd die if you did that."

"No they wouldn't." That was his answer, and I accepted it. There seemed to be an understanding among the young boys in my neighborhood that certain parts of the female anatomy were simply detachable, as if they were snap-together creatures, or robots. Maybe this comes from living a little too close to Plainfield.

"So what'd the guy take last night?"

Eric smiled a dirty, wicked smile. "He cut off one of her boobies and?you know?something else."

It was also the case that none of the boys in my neighborhood were all that clear on exactly what that "something else" was or looked like. According to that pamphlet my mom gave me, it looked something like a ram.

When Eric headed home for dinner that afternoon, I'm sorry to say, he had me utterly convinced that the previous night at the Bunny Hop, a woman had been willingly cut apart on stage, that an audience member had gone home with a severed breast and "something else" in his pocket for some reason and that fat dumb lying Eric from across the street had been there to tell dirty jokes while wearing a cowboy outfit.

I know better about these sorts of things now. So why was I convinced so easily then? Because to a ten-year-old in Green Bay who didn't know any better, it was a story with everything. Plus he would've hit me if I didn't believe him.

As Morgan pointed out when I told her that story the other night, you sort of have to wonder what a kid who tells a story like that would turn into once he got older. Maybe he's a serial killer now?or maybe he's just like one of those sad folks I see on the train every morning.