Jesus' Son

At one of the stops down the line there was a problem with the doors. We were delayed, those of us who had destinations, anyway. The train waited and waited in a troubling sleep. Then it hummed softly. You can tell it's going to move before it moves.
A guy stepped in just as the doors closed. The train had waited for him all this time, not a second longer than his arrival, not even half a second, and then it broke the mysterious crystal of its inertia. We'd picked him up and now we were moving. He sat down near the front of the car, completely unaware of his importance. With what kind of miserable or happy fate did he have an appointment across the river?
I decided to follow him.
Several stops later he left the train and went down into a section of squat, repetitive brownstone buildings.
He walked with a bounce, his shoulders looped and his chin scooping forward rhythmically. He didn't look right or left. I suppose he'd walked this route twelve thousand times. He didn't sense or feel me following half a block behind him.
It was a Polish neighborhood somewhere or other. The Polish neighborhoods have that snow. They have that fruit with the light on it, they have that music you can't find. We ended up in a laundromat, where the guy took off his shirt and put it in a washer. He bought some coffee in a paper cup out of a coin machine.
He read the notices on the wall and watched his machine tremble, walking around the place with only his sharkskin sports jacket on. His chest was narrow and white and hair sprouted from around the small nipples.
There were a couple other men in the laundromat. He chatted with them a little. I could hear one of them say, "The cops wanted to talk to Benny."
"How come? What'd he do?"
"He had a hood up. They were looking for a guy with a hood up."
"What he'd do?"
"Nut'n. Nut'n. Some guy got murdered last night."
And now the man I was following walked right up to me. "You were on the El," he said. He hefted his cup, tossing a sip of coffee between his lips.
I turned away because my throat was closing up. Suddenly I had an erection. I knew men got that way about men, but I didn't know I did. His chest was like Christ's. That's probably who he was.
I could have followed anybody off that train.
It would have been the same.

~ Denis Johnson