Two Fingers of Romance

Somehow to me the best way to arrive into Los Angeles is by rail. Back in the old days everybody did. Los Angeles Union Station was the gateway to the city, to Hollywood, and to the sun-soaked delights of southern California beyond the city.

Back in those days it was still an exotic location to the folks back east. Your importance in the social pecking order of California's brave new world, if you made the way west, depended on the train you rode in on. In those days they had Pullman Porters and Harvey girls to help move you along the way toward the city of angels. The wealthy and famous rode the all-bedroom Super Chief, the middle-income sort came aboard the El Capitan. The poor came in on all-coach trains designated with numbers, not names.

LA's Union Station is still a grand location for an entrance. It's a curious mix of Spanish revival and Art Deco, built around an eclectic mix of tunnels, grand corridors and archways. The massive angular wood chairs still fill the waiting room with comfortable gold padded seats. In the old days the station was abuzz with cameras and writing pads of breathless society reporters who gathered daily for the featured press-covered arrivals of Myrna Loy and William Powell, Cary Grant and Irene Dunne, Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart.

When Union Station opened in 1939 it was the front door to the City. In some ways it still is. Today the station has become the regions' ground transportation hub. Across the street, beyond a long colonnade of palm trees is El Pueblo de la Reina de Los Angeles, the original town plaza and it's Mexican Market, Olvera Street, and beyond that the imposing edifice of Los Angeles City Hall, an Art Deco masterpiece in its own right. To the south is "Little Tokyo" and to the north "Chinatown," and beyond that Chavez Ravine and Dodger Stadium.

I arrived, or should I say came, in truly proper fashion aboard Amtrak's Chief this week with a rusty Chicano seat mate, named Javier, sneaking himself a last minute finger fuck in our shared pair of lounge-car chair seats, gliding past Fullerton, California doing the nasty under glass, probably visible for any California commuter with the wherewithal to look up at the train windows.

Such a good nasty finger fuck too, all stick and twist, two of his fingers up and in, three knuckles deep. I managed to sneak Javier into my sleeper accommodation the night before, but you can never have enough early morning sex, after all, and the sleeper attendant had already tucked away the bed. Besides, it made for a bit of compensation for the fact that the train was running out of breakfast items in the dining car. 5:30 am is too early for breakfast, anyway.

Javier and I met at the long station stop at Albuquerque. They refuel the trains there, midway between Chicago and L.A. The walk down the platform toward the still grand mission-style Alverado Hotel is a long-standing tradition on that line. On the platform, the Native American peddlers still set out tables full of crafts and junk jewelry for the tourists to buy during the long wait at the station.

They have photos of Valentino with his dog outside the train at the Alverado from back in 1924. The Alvarado Hotel burned down in 1993, but the city rebuilt the place to the same exterior appearance, more or less, as the hub of an intermodal transportation center. It may not have the glamour of the old days, but it will do.

Once underway again out of Albuquerque, it didn't take long to get with it with Javier for the overnight run to LA. The on-board entertainment for that trip sure beat the standard iPod mp3 mix, at least for me! Our parting moments at Los Angeles Union Station was a little abbreviated, though, since Javier had the world's biggest extended family meeting him at the station he left me without even a misty moment of goodbye. Old Aunt Maria, clutching her rosary, would never have understood.