Since we got laid off en masse in March, my buddies and I get together every couple of weeks for drinks and gossip. Our bar of choice is a pseudo-French bistro on 4th Street in Berkeley, 4th Street being as upscale as Berkeley gets, a strip of pricey one-off boutiques and cute cafes, a haven for those who wear Birkenstocks but have trust funds.

 

Choosing Café Rouge as our watering hole splits the distance between San Francisco and the East Bay. And it reminds us of those times, not long ago, when we didn’t have to clutch our credit cards quite so tightly or make our drinks last quite so long.

 

Thursday afternoon was an anomaly, bright, windless, almost hot. We sat outside and swapped news. One friend just lost his father to cancer. Another is losing her condo to foreclosure. A third recently landed a two-month contract at Cisco, a fourth, with a small freelance sinecure, has taken up dragon boat paddling in her spare time. Me, I got vertigo and had to blow off a real interview.

 

“That totally sucks,” S said.

“Did you hear they had to move to smaller offices?” E said, speaking of our former employer.

“Only one sale for the quarter,” Z said. “A small one.”

“Everybody took a pay cut,” said Y.

I said, “What about—“

 

And then a locomotive wailed, not the distant melancholy whistle of movie soundtracks and childhood memory, but an ear-splitting, thought-stopping blast that lasted until the whole train cleared the crossing.

 

“What the hell,” Z said, cupping her ears.

 

Almost before we’d figured out which hell pertained, another commuter train came up the track, screaming just as loudly as the first, warning the hapless and the thrill seekers, the sad and suicidal to clear the way.

 

In these grim times, the Caltrain tracks have become the cheapest and least painful way to end it all. So far this year, there have been ten fatal hits and thirteen near misses along the north-south commuter line. On one day, one train passing through Oakland ended the lives of three homeless men. Perhaps even more disturbingly, between May and August, three Palo Alto teenagers threw themselves in front of trains.

 

There’s a weird cluster phenomenon associated with suicide, not just among humans. Lemmings are famous for self destructive behaviors, but consider the whales, who beach themselves in pods, or the mass stranding of dolphins after they swallow mud and rocks and other inedible things.

 

Caltrain spends a lot to keep the tracks safe and clear. They say the suicides are attributable not to negligence to but to poor mental health. In the momentary silence, I wonder if it isn’t poor social health. Even on 4th Street, the streets and storefronts are emptying. The lights are going out.

 

Another half empty commuter train shrieks past the crossing. Glad to have them, I raise my half full glass to my comrades.

 

We drink to life.