The Midnight Train Cowboy

Via Angels Poker Blog.

This is an oldie, but goodie. I have this obsession with listening to other people’s bizarre stories and writing them down. This one is 100-percent true; I grilled her for every detail. It’s a shocking reminder that the universe works in mysterious ways. Particularly, when it wants to prevent you from chowing down on fast food. Happy weekend and enjoy the tale of the Midnight Train Cowboy:

It was a dark, freezing winter night. The wind brought forth the kind of cold that settles in your bones. The heroine of our story was walking with her boyfriend from Center City, Philadelphia to a subway station at around 11:30 p.m. The pair took a shortcut leading them through a homeless encampment. As they stepped over sleeping bags and bottles of cheap beer, the squatters stared with empty eyes, occasionally yelling or flailing around in a drunken stupor. She was on edge when they finally reached the platform.

As they got onto the subway car she noticed a tall man staring at her. He had a huge, fake, plastic smile, blond hair done up cowboy style and was wearing dark, extremely tight jeans, dark brown scuffed leather cowboy boots, a button up collared shirt (which she believes was also denim) and a dark brown, bordering on black, worn leather jacket, which was wrinkled as if it had weathered more than a few storms. He continued to stare her down with his pale, pale blue eyes, shaded slightly by a fairly nondescript white cowboy hat.

During the subway ride she averted her gaze whenever their eyes met and tried to silence her thoughts concerning his creepiness. She made up stories in her head about his possibly dubious background. The subway stopped, bringing her thoughts back to the present. The girl and her boyfriend got off of the subway and sure enough the “Midnight Train Cowboy” exited as well. The three of them were the only souls in the empty, dark subway stop.

The glass revolving doors were feet in front of her and she saw her opening to escape. However, as a cruel joke her boyfriend jumped ahead, cut her off and swung through the doors. She mentally gave her boyfriend the middle finger and stepped in, when suddenly the cowboy slipped in behind her into the same partition, defying all sorts of unspoken social rules. She was trapped between two glass walls with the man. He began to hysterically giggle and grind up behind her in a crazy dance.
His moves were like the trotting of a mad, giggling pony.

Her boyfriend turned around as if to say, “Hahaha. I cut you off,” only to see the cowboy doing his insane dance behind her in the narrow section of the revolving door.
Her boyfriend’s jaw dropped and he was in utter disbelief at the scene that was going down mere inches away from him. As soon as she had the space, our heroine bolted up the steps, her heart pounding rapidly in her chest. Her boyfriend followed, apologizing profusely.

But the pair didn’t have long to dwell on their mishap. They were on a mission. Earlier in the evening they had synchronized their watches for 11:50 p.m. in order to get to Wendy’s before it closed at midnight. She saw the Wendy’s lights in the distance like a beacon of hope in the frigid air. As they moved closer to their ultimate goal, they looked at their watches and then looked at each other and said, “Damn, man,” simultaneously. It was 12:15 p.m.