Puttin' the "ho" in "sleeper berth"

"There's no 'ho' in 'sleeper berth,'" some of y'all undoubtedly said at that subject line. Well, ha ha ha, it's obvious *you* haven't been on a train in a while. Sleeper berths seem to bring out the ho in all kinds of people, from what I've seen and heard. It certainly worked that way for me and L'Ailee. We spent a good deal of the long NYC-to-Richmond trip enjoying our accommodations. I always think the sleeper's going to be way too freakin' small, and then decide I don't care once I'm there with her. "It's the swaying of the train that does it," a friend of mine said. I think that all the coupling may in fact *cause* some of that swaying. If the sleeper car's a-rockin', don't come a-knockin', unless it's our stop...

Anyway, the sleeper berth is, like, the only reason I wasn't completely pissed at L'Ailee for convincing me to travel by train rather than plane. I don't care for the seats--it's almost like a Greyhound that way, only slower, and there's just no way in hell I would've done that for anyone, even my beloved wife. But my wife is scared of airplanes. As she puts it, "I am not scared of flying. Scared of crashing, scared of terrorists, but *flying*, no problem here!" I make her sit at the window seat (I always want the aisle anyway, and skinny as she is, she can climb over top of me or shimmy past me easily if she has to) and "just enjoy the height," which is almost the only way to distract her. (Yes, I can think of another way, too, but I think the Mile High Club excludes two-woman couples on the grounds of logistics.) Since she lost people in 9/11, I try to be sympathetic to her concerns. I'd have preferred to fly, though, simply because it's faster. I also believe that less time spent doing anything means less possibility that something will go wrong.

But they don't have the Lounge Car on planes. That's where we went for overpriced and rather questionable nourishment late Wednesday night. We could have gone to the highfalutin' Dining Car, which tries to be a nice restaurant on wheels, but we, um, missed dinner. The Lounge Car was lively, full of people talking and playing cards and getting to know each other. Usually, L'Ailee isn't sociable and I am, but I read a paperback I got at the station (how come I always end up reading Dean Koontz on the train?!) while she got into a game of low-stakes poker.

Near us, a man and a woman who'd never met before got increasingly friendly with each other. They kept drifting further and further from everyone else--well, as far as they could physically, but emotionally, they were in their own world--and their voices got lower and lower. L'Ailee won the twenty-dollar pot and tried to interest people in bridge or preference. As she was trying to decide whether she wanted to play another round of poker instead, the woman stood up and said in a surprisingly loud voice, "I've got a sleeper!" The man stood up, too, and they walked off very briskly together! Yes, a Penthouse Forum letter in the making, right before our eyes!

Nobody was interested in cards or novels anymore. "OhmyGawd, did you *see* that? Did you *hear* that?" We discussed sex on the train for a while. One straight guy kept "jokingly" suggesting that one of us women help him see whether it's possible to have sex in the bathroom; he had no takers. He and a couple other guys were also extremely interested in my insights once they saw that L'Ailee and I were together. This moved on to a conversation about sex in other venues. We decided that most people who claim to be part of the Mile High Club and anyone who claims to have done it on Space Mountain at Disney World are liars.

Eventually, a mixed-sex married couple got up to their sleeper, and several people hooted, whistled, and cheered as they left. The woman looked like she was going to die of embarrassment.

L'Ailee and I had to stop playing footsie under the table and get back to our sleeper, too. We got even louder cheers and whistles. I turned back around and blew them a kiss while L'Ailee stayed very close to me and blushed to her scalp.

When Mom asked if anything interesting happened on the train, we could only laugh.

I'll share more later, but HAD TO share this!!!