Your Inner Sourdough
When it comes to the only good seat on the commuter train, tensions will rise.
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That MAN is sitting in her seat again, the one by the window in the third car where the heater actually works and you can lean your head against the glass without getting that weird vibration from the engine. Marina is standing there doing the thing from Reclaiming Your Inner Landscape where you’re supposed to imagine your anger as a small red bird that you can hold gently in your cupped hands before releasing it into the sky, except the bird keeps turning into a middle finger in her mind. Which Dr. Morgan Hartwright, the therapist turned podcaster, definitely didn’t mention as a possibility in Chapter Seven.
Marina breathes in for four counts, holding for four counts, releasing for four counts, just like the diagram with the little lungs illustrated in soothing pastels, while simultaneously thinking about how this tech bro or consultant or whatever just assumes the seat is his. Probably doesn’t even notice it’s the only good seat in the whole damn car, probably just autopilots there every morning at 7:23 from Downtown Berkeley with his stupid little coffee and his stupid little LinkedIn scrolling.
The breathing isn’t working so she moves to Step Two which is naming five things she can see without judgment: train pole, someone’s Allbirds, tangled earbuds, safety poster, his messenger bag taking up the adjacent seat like an asshole…whoa, wait, that last one definitely contained judgment, so she starts over.
Actually, Marina thinks, watching him shift his bag slightly to make room for an elderly woman who isn’t even trying to sit down, maybe he just likes routines the same way she does. Maybe this seat is his version of Reclaiming Your Inner Landscape or whatever men do instead of reading self-help books, probably watching YouTube videos about cold plunges and how lonely they feel. The thought arrives fully formed and irritating in its reasonability. He’s probably not even trying to ruin her morning, probably has no idea she exists, which is somehow worse than if he were doing it on purpose.
She finds herself moving toward him through the swaying car, past the morning commuters, and up close she can see he’s doing this thing with his thumb, rubbing it repeatedly along the seam of his jeans pocket in a perfect little arc, an unconscious repetitive motion her anxiety-prone cousin does during family dinners. His face has that particular exhaustion she recognizes from her own bathroom mirror, the under-eye situation that concealer can’t quite fix, and there’s a coffee stain on his sleeve that he’s clearly tried to rub out with water, bless his heart, but only succeeded in making larger and more diffuse, like a brown watercolor accident spreading across the white cotton.
“You’re in my seat!” Marina says before she can run the words through the de-escalation framework from Chapter Nine. This isn’t what she meant to say at all, she meant to say excuse me or perhaps nothing, perhaps just walk past and do the visualization where you imagine yourself as a river flowing around obstacles, but instead she’s standing there having said it, the word “my” floating around in the recycled BART air like she’s a kindergartener claiming dibs on the good swing.
He looks up from his phone where he’s been reading what appears to be an extremely long Wikipedia article, his thumb still working that nervous line against his pocket seam, and she realizes with horrible clarity that she’s become the type of person who says things like this to strangers on public transportation, exactly the kind of person Dr. Morgan Hartwright would probably use as a cautionary example in Chapter Twelve: “When Boundaries Become Walls.”
“Oh shoot, really?” he says, blinking up at her with genuine surprise, already half-standing and grabbing his messenger bag in this fumbling rush that makes everything worse somehow. “I had no idea anyone else even noticed this seat, I mean it’s the only one where the heater works right and you don’t get that weird neck thing from the window vibration. You know, actually, I’ve been sitting here off and on for like three years thinking I was the only weirdo who noticed.”
He’s fully standing now, doing this awkward shuffling dance to get out of her way while the train lurches forward, and he almost drops his phone but catches it against his coffee-stained sleeve, laughing at himself in a way that makes Marina feel like the world’s biggest jerkface. “It’s all yours, seriously, I’ll just relocate to, uh, literally anywhere else where the heat doesn’t work and my neck gets messed up,” he says, but he’s smiling while he says it, not in a passive-aggressive way but in a way that suggests he actually finds this whole situation kind of a little amusing.
Marina instinctually moves to let him pass, even though she now doesn’t want him to move, yet she somehow moves in the same direction he does, initiating that terrible dance of two people trying to get out of each other’s way, and then the train jerks and she’s suddenly pressed against him for a full second, maybe two, long enough to smell his completely unremarkable combination of drugstore deodorant and Target laundry detergent and underneath that something like sourdough starter, which makes sense given the Wikipedia article but also doesn’t, and she’s thinking about how smell is processed in the limbic system, the emotional center of the brain, according to Chapter Four, while simultaneously trying to sit down in the seat that is now technically hers but feels like literal highway robbery.
Her body makes the decision without consulting her brain, dropping into the seat even as she’s saying “No, wait, you don’t have to—” but he’s already moving away down the aisle, giving her this little backwards wave that makes her feel like she’s swallowed something down the wrong pipe. The seat is still warm from him sitting in it, which is horrible, and she can still smell that sourdough smell, which is worse, and she realizes she’s completely forgotten to release her anger-bird or whatever the hell she was supposed to do with it, and now it’s just sitting there in her chest, except it’s not even anger anymore, it’s some other bird entirely, one that Dr. Morgan Hartwright probably doesn’t have a chapter for.
Marina sits there for exactly ten seconds, she counts them, waiting for someone, anyone, to make eye contact or raise an eyebrow or give her that little commuter nod of acknowledgment that says “yeah I saw that whole weird thing, call it a Tuesday.” But everyone is deep in their phones or their sleep or their morning dissociation, and the elderly woman is doing Wordle, completely unbothered by the entire social catastrophe that just unfolded. Sourdough Man is standing by the doors now, holding the overhead rail with one hand while scrolling with the other, and she can see from here that he’s not on Wikipedia anymore but she can’t tell what he’s looking at, could be Instagram or news or Hinge for all she knows, and the not knowing is suddenly intolerable, like when someone starts telling you about a dream and you don’t want to listen at first because honestly who cares, but then they do a surprisingly standout job explaining it, so you get momentarily invested before they get to the end and surprise, there’s no satisfying conclusion.
She’s standing up before she realizes it, leaving the precious seat empty behind her like some kind of statement about the futility of desire, and moving toward him through the car again, Dr. Morgan Hartwright’s voice in her head asking “What is your intention?” which is a really good question actually, one she probably should have considered before she got up, but here she is anyway, approaching this stranger for the second time in three minutes like some kind of public transit mall cop.
“Hey!” she says, and he looks up with this expression like maybe he’s been caught cheating on a test, his thumb doing that pocket-seam thing at double speed now, and he starts saying “Sorry, did I—I’m sorry if I—” but he clearly has no idea what he might be apologizing for, just knows that when someone approaches you twice on BART it’s probably not going great.
Marina meant to say something normal like “what are you reading” or even just “you can have that seat back” but what comes out instead is “Do you actually make sourdough?” which sounds insane even to her, sounds like the kind of non sequitur someone says right before they pull out religious pamphlets or ask for money. His face does this thing where confusion shifts into something else, maybe relief that she’s just goofy and not actively hostile, and he’s still gripping the rail as the train rounds the curve near Treasure Island, everyone swaying in unison like underground kelp, and she’s standing too close probably, close enough to see that his phone screen has gone dark from inactivity, which means she’ll never know what he was looking at after the sourdough Wikipedia article, a mystery that will probably bother her for the rest of eternity, if not her life.
“Oh, no, I’ve never made sourdough in my life,” he says, laughing a little like this is a reasonable question to be asked by a stranger at 7:40 AM, “I just fell into this Wikipedia hole about starter cultures and now I know wayyy too much about lactobacilli for someone who can barely make toast.”
Marina feels this completely irrational spike of betrayal, like he’s been false advertising himself with his sourdough research, like reading about fermentation without doing it is some kind of moral failing. The anger-bird is back, pecking at her ribcage, because of course he’s just another dilettante consuming information he’ll never use, probably tells people at parties about wild yeast cultivation while buying his bread from Whole Foods like everyone else, and she realizes she’s doing the thing from Chapter Eleven where you project your own disappointments onto strangers, except knowing she’s doing it doesn’t make her stop.
“So you just read about it,” she says, and it comes out accusatory, like she’s caught him in a lie, even though he literally just told her the truth, and the train is pulling into San Francisco now and she needs to get off at the next stop but she’s standing here interrogating this man about his bread-making habits or lack thereof.
“I mean, yeah, I just read about it,” he says, looking genuinely confused now, “but I’m getting off at Embarcadero and there’s this baking class at the Ferry Building I’ve been meaning to—” and Marina interrupts with “I’m getting off at Embarcadero,” which sounds territorial even though it’s just a fact, and he says “Okay, cool, do you want to walk together or—” and she says “I was going to take that class,” which isn’t true, obviously, she’s never thought about taking a baking class in her life, particularly when she’s supposed to be getting into work by 8:00 AM sharp, but suddenly she needs to take this specific class that he wants to take.
“Today?” he asks, and she says “Yes, today,” and he pulls out his phone, thumb still doing the pocket thing with his free hand, and says “It’s been sold out for three weeks, I’ve been on the waitlist,” and she says “Well I pre-registered,” which is an insane lie that makes no sense, and he’s looking at her like he’s trying to solve a puzzle where the pieces keep changing shape.
“So we’re both going to show up to the same sold-out class,” he says slowly, “and argue about who gets the spot if someone doesn’t show?” and Marina says “I guess so,” and he says “That’s ridiculous, I’ve been refreshing this page every morning,” holding up his phone where she can see he does, actually, have the class registration page bookmarked, and she wants to say something about how reading Wikipedia articles doesn’t entitle you to sourdough-class priority but instead she says, “I’ve been planning this for months,” and the train is pulling into Embarcadero now, both of them still standing, the precious seat three rows back still empty and practically gaping at both of them in shock.
The doors open and they’re both trying to exit at the same time, that same terrible dance from before, and he says “This is stupid,” and she says “I know,” and he says “You didn’t know about the class, did you,” and she says “No, you were just obsessing over sourdough and I got mad,” and he says “Mad about sourdough?” and she’s trying to explain about the seat and the bird and Dr. Morgan Hartwright but it’s coming out all wrong, like “You sit in my spot every day and I do this breathing thing but then you were reading about bread you don’t even make.”
He’s laughing now, clearly not at her but at the whole situation, saying “I’ve been sitting there a couple times a week for three years thinking about you, actually, the woman who always stands by that exact pole looking pissed off. I thought you hated that seat because you never sat in it.”
Marina realizes they’ve been watching each other this whole time, both of them locked in some weird commuter ritual they didn’t know they were religiously following. “We could share it,” he says, “like alternate days or something, I’ll make a spreadsheet,” and she says “You would make a spreadsheet,” but she’s almost close to grinning now, and somehow in the shuffle of trying to get off the train his hand has caught hers, or maybe she caught his, it’s unclear who started it, but they’re stepping onto the platform at Embarcadero holding hands like they do this every morning, like this was always the plan, and Marina thinks maybe she should send Dr. Morgan Hartwright a thank-you note, or maybe an apology, or maybe just a photo of two strangers holding hands beside a transportation map, which probably deserves its own chapter.
Jon Negroni is a Puerto Rican author based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He’s published two books, as well as short stories for IHRAM Press, The Fairy Tale Magazine, and more.
Author’s Note
Like with most of my stories, the grudge in this one is wholly imagined while also wholly universal. It stems from something obviously small, like a seat on a train in this case. One of those everyday, nothing things that somehow holds everything if you prod it long enough. We all have one, probably. A precious corner booth. A preferred grocery lane. A very specific bench.
I wanted to explore that in the most absurd way I could without testing your patience, and specifically around the way we build little rituals around comfort, or control, or invisible grievances, while next investigating what happens when someone unknowingly disrupts them. And I was interested in how anger often isn’t anger at all, but a placeholder for awkwardness and embarrassment. You’ll notice the main character is not sad, necessarily. She doesn’t even seem lonely to me. She just has this weird out-of-place feeling, like why am I not being seen?
I’ve also been thinking a lot about boundaries, like when they serve us and when they cage us. I think sometimes we confuse the two. Or we erect entire mental scaffolds just to hold together one fragile emotion—often resentment, affection, or desire—and then someone brushes against it with their messenger bag, and suddenly we’re unraveling in public. And you’re thinking seriously? That’s all it took to set me off?
Marina is trying very hard to do everything by the book, literally. She tries to breathe like the podcast says, tries to let go gracefully, tries to regulate her wild, contrasting emotions. But healing yourself doesn’t always show up as serenity. Sometimes you have to accept the embarrassment, particularly when it floods your perfectly curated inner narrative.
And yes, I also just liked the idea of writing a dude who smells vaguely like starter culture. Which says something about me, probably, and how I view every person at their core. A little gooey and gross inside, but also full of potential.