"Can I pay on the train or do I have to pay before I get on?" Said the blond haired blue eyed innocent face.
The officer looked away in disgust and turned to me just giving me an "and you??" nod.
"I didn't pay."
"Why didn't you pay?"
"I was trying to save money."
The muscular, uniformed, chubby-cheeked man looked straight down the aisle with both of us looking at him sitting on either side as he wiped his face and sighed in disgust as we pulled up to the next stop.
"Do you want me to get off he..." I started to ask hoping to avoid a ticket.
"Both of you just get off here and..." the rest was mumbled but he might've said something about buying a ticket.
I quickly got off and felt the blond guy get off after me. I ran up to the next boxcar in hopes to get on before the train took off, but it was too late. The door didn't open.
I turned and the blond guy with a blue V-neck sweater and a smirk said, "I never pay for the tram."
"What?," the word tram throwing me off.
"I never pay for the tram. I like how you tried to get on to the next box car." Bigger and definitely drunk smirk.
"I was hoping to not have to wait another 30 min for the next one," I said liking his validation of my deceptive acts. "Might as well buy a ticket now," I said as I put my credit card in the machine.
"Hey, I know what we can do!" as if we had been pondering our options for hours, "We can go to the bar right here and get a beer!"
"Nah, I'm ok." I said as I straight, narrow, and boringly bought my ticket and started pulling out my book to read on the bench.
"Ok." and he took off behind the building.
As I started to sit down to read my book on the declassification of CIA documents in the Chilean coup in the 70s and saw there was 27 min til the next train, I thought, "How boring, that wasn't very spontaneous of me. Would've been fun to accept." I was just about to sit my regretful self down when only a minute later he came running back.
"I don't know about that bar it was kind of..." I couldn't make out what else he said in part because his words were slightly jumbled and, in part because I interrupted him.
"I was kind of regretting not taking you up on going."
"Ok! Let's go."
We started walking side by side and he steps slightly in front of me and sticks his hand out at me chest level with the other fist on top. "Let's Ro Sham Bo to see who buys."
"Ok."
"You know how to play?"
"Yeah, I know." Acting like no big deal but knowing I had 100s of hrs of experience.
Three unison fist pounds into two paper hands. 3 more, him scissors me rock. "You win!" a little surprised but not really caring, "I'm buying!"
We walked into the sort of yuppy hippy bar.
"Do you think they'll let me take my bicycle in?"
"Just bring it in and see what happens."
I parked it inside by the front door and the tattooed waitress/bartender with the low cut tank top comes up to us at the bar. A long list of beers written in high lighter white on glass caught my eye on the wall behind her.
"I like straight up ale." said Eric, my new Navy friend.
"I like light beer."
We both ended up getting the same beer. "Pretty good."
"Yeah, not bad." I said thinking except for the bitter taste.
"God damn! Now that's American. Loosing a Ro Sham Bo game and buying a beer."
"Yeah, I guess so." I said thinking that it's true, Americans don't typically haggle much. "No negotiation."
"So where do you live?"
"Tijuana"
"What?"
"Tijuana?" as a question thinking he may not have heard of it.
"What?"
"Tia Juana."
"Oh. Tia Juana. I've heard of it." In an of course voice. "How do you like it?"
"I like it a lot. Interesting place."
"That's great man! So what brings you up to SD today?"
Hesitating a bit, "I actually came to San Ysidro for a protest against Border Patrol abuses."
"That's terrible man. What did they do?"
"There have been around 20 or so people killed by Border Patrol over the last couple years so some of the families were there because there hasn't been any investigation into what actually happened."
"That's terrible man. They shouldn't be doing that. They need to be shooting bad guys. Stopping criminals from getting into this country."
"I don't know. I feel a little like the border enforcement in general is doing more harm than good. Like there are criminal rings that don't have borders and the idea of having a wall and enforcement in the middle of them really seems sort of silly when I'm sure they don't even need to cross to commit a crime on either side."
"I don't know maybe to stop certain people?" he said not really wanting to argue but not being able to hold back that he didn't agree with me. "I see what you mean. We're kind of beyond walls."
"Yeah. I imagine if there are terrorists or drug cartels they have cells in the US already. I'm thinking you might know more about that than me, being in the Navy."
"Yeah there definitely are. You'd be surprised. There are definitely terrorist in the US. Religion is the motive to do all kinds of bad stuff, muslim, christian. I'm an atheist."
"So you're not really routing for any of those, huh?" I said, trying to lighten the heavy conversation I started.
"Yeah. Ha! That's right."
"Yeah, anyway, I crossed over also cause I'm going up to see my friend in Mission Valley."
"I live in Mission Valley!" He said much more excited about a topic we had in common.
We kind of slammed the beers and got back to the trolley about 10 min ahead of time. "That's American" he said again. "Playing Ro Sham Bo for beer and then talking through different viewpoints!" Looking back at me as we walked down the stairs to the station.
"Yeah, I was a little hesitant to bringing up my viewpoints right away but you seemed pretty open to it."
"Oh yeah. I'm open." Standing back at the station he looked at me, "So you must think that's weird a blond haired blue-eyed guy being from El Centro." He said as we waited for the trolley.
"Well, I didn't really think about it, but now that you mention it, I guess you would be kind of a minority there. You must've had a lot of Mexican friends growing up there, right?"
"Well, my parents are divorced. And I spent time in Alaska with my Dad. I joined the Navy in San Diego to be closer to my Mom."
"How do you like the Navy?"
"I don't really like it. We don't do much. The good thing is I've gotten to travel around and see different parts of the US for training. With so much training, you kind of would like to see more action."
"Aaa. Ok."
"I'm going to be deployed to the Pacific next month."
"The pacific? Where in the Pacific?"
"Well... the Philipines for sure and probably Guam. I'm not looking forward to it. I hear you just kind of sit around. I'm disappointed cause I feel like I wanted to do something for my country. I guess I'm there just in case. Kind of makes sense. Kind of. I told my friend who works at, ah... one of those places where teenagers are in jail... what do you call it?"
"Juvenile Hall?"
"Yeah, he's a correctional officer helping those kids and I tell him all the time, 'man you're actually doing more for this country than I am. You're helping on a small level every day and I'm supposedly helping on a big level but I'm not doing anything... like YOU." pointing at me, "You're doing more for this country showing your point of view about the border than me."
"Yeah. I'm pretty satisfied to be honest about where I've focused my energy to help society." subtly changing America to society.
Just then, two more drunk Navy guys come up. But they were more drunk. They pulled out 5ths of Rum and whisky and asked us if we wanted a shot.
"Eric turned to me. Hey, we should take a shot."
"Alright."
As Eric was drinking the shaved headed short guy said, "Careful there's cameras right there... I don't really know how things work around here. I'm from the South."
"Who are you guys?" said the other taller brown haired guy with acne scars kind of pointing back and forth between us with a puzzled look on his face. The three of them started bonding over Navy stuff, "What ship?" etc. And generally agreeing that it totally sucked. The short bald guy had been deployed in several places and said the Navy really screwed him over. The questioning taller guy looked at me with a face of disregard and even waived me off and went back to talking to Eric. Me and Eric both started laughing at his gesture.
"You don't know anything about the Navy!" I said guessing what he was thinking and we all started laughing as the trolley pulled up.
The two new friends stayed and me and Eric got on. "What a great way to spend 30 min waiting for a trolley." I said.
"Yeah. I hope the security doesn't get back on."
"I think you're alright. They hardly ever give tickets on this line. They do on the blue and orange lines though." We were kind of quiet, knowing that we were pretty satisfied with our short interlude. We shook hands a couple times. "I'll buy next time." I said.
"If we ever see each other again, you can buy." as the door opened and we fist bumped before he got off.
