All of this has happened before. Right now, I am drinking a 16 oz. Watermelon Celsius because CharMar ran out of Blue Crush. I am writing another article about riding a train slightly less than a year after the first because my mind ran out of other ideas. This article will be less interesting because I did not venture outside Union Station this time in Chicago, and instead of reading books to spark cognitive shifts I watched Wicked. And Dear Evan Hansen. And Criminal Minds. Call this a sequel, the type that’s worse than the first. At least this time, no one called me Jack Harlow — only something worse. You be the judge.
For those who don’t care about me — that is, haven’t read and annotated my previous columns — spring break of my freshman year I took a 36-hour train ride from Baltimore to Kansas City. My mom banned me from performing such stunts in the spring because it stole two days from her of my only seven-day break. So, the winter of my sophomore year, I purchased the same ticket; she could cope with missing two days from a month-long break.
Already on the longer leg of the ride from Baltimore to Chicago, I resolved that the train lost its novelty. All that was new was the loud pain in my tailbone, which forced me to consider if I was something less evolved than everyone else, closer to having a real tail given how pronounced the bone of mine seemed to feel against the train’s masochistic cushions.
At Union Station, I sat on a hard wooden bench for four hours, skipping lunch to submit applications. It was cold outside, and I didn’t want to pay 10 dollars to store my carry-ons. Every time I looked up from my laptop, I saw people with tails and animal ears, or at least t-shirts with fitting phrases: GOOD MORNING GAY DOGS and TRANS FURRY HACKERS. Once I boarded the train, there would only be seven hours until I was home, where I could sleep in my own bed.
Aboard the train, I had an upper deck aisle seat closest to the stairs. Like a sink, mirror or roll of toilet paper, I knew everyone who was going to the bathroom. Only seven hours. As soon as the train caterpillared to a start, it screeched to a halt: sticky brakes, typical with this winter weather, announced the conductor — or someone with authority — over the intercom. Only seven hours, now plus two for the total time we were stuck aboard the train on the track still in Chicago.
I tried reading some cultural commentary essays because I’m making an effort to be someone I’m not. To be honest, I can’t tell you precisely who that is because I myself don’t know, but I think reading cultural commentary essays will solve this issue. The one lambasting The Sims as ruining our generation’s creativity I enjoyed, but the others made too-old references to television I had never heard of before, though I still read the essays as if the message would somehow stick. It didn’t. The collection was titled Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, the cover of which I hid because I’m paranoid about coming across as a pervert on the train.
No one knows northeast Missouri. It’s a great place to be lost, if that’s what you’re looking for. Not so great a place for what would turn out to be engine failure in the near dead of the night. We were caught on the tracks like deer in headlights, even if an onlooker would assume we’re the headlights in that simile, the mighty machine with the power to kill. Many things that look mighty aren’t, and vice versa. For example, children drowning adults in The Sims by removing the pool’s ladder — see, am I becoming that person who I’m not?
I’ll save you the trouble that I myself couldn’t escape: the seven hours from Chicago to Kansas City turned into roughly 24 hours. My 36-hour journey consumed more than two days. The engine failed, though they wouldn’t call it this for many, many hours — instead insisting it could be fixed — and at one point someone working on the train’s mechanics came on the intercom to apologize, stumbling and certainly about to cry. Hearing his wobbly voice, the car erupted in laughter. We were all kids taking out the ladder, watching our Sim drown.
We were in La Plata, Missouri. Around midnight, I heard murmurs that a fleet of Greyhound buses arrived to our rescue, only to be inexplicably sent away empty, us still caught on the train. People grew outraged by their personal inconvenience and masked this by feigning altruistic concern for others: Weren’t there elderly or disabled people perhaps somewhere on the train? The electricity was out, so we had no heat at midnight during a Missouri winter. Somehow, someone heard that somewhere on the train was stowed a cat with kittens — would the kittens be okay?
Some people, respect be to them, were quite upfront with their self-concern. They would miss work for this, and they told their bosses to not use their personal days and instead bill Amtrak. Some people had pets stowed in daycares — who would pay for their dog’s extra stay?
When morning came and we were on our way — the mechanics behind this I don’t understand — they offered a meager but complimentary breakfast. We would all receive vouchers for future rides, though mine will likely wither into expiration. During breakfast, I sat in the dining/observation car, giving my poor tailbone reprieve from the seat cushion with which it had grown too familiar. Two men joined me. Unprompted, one informed me we were approaching class-action lawsuit territory — and also, was I returning from the furry convention by chance? It seems I am never able to escape accusations of being someone I am not.
That was the only dialogue I experienced in my whole two-plus days on the train. I have read and formulated personal philosophies on how and why we must act in community with one another to be human, but I never learned the name of the man who was trapped beside me. I have only been misunderstood by everyone around me, though perhaps I don’t feel as sorry about that as I should. I wrote a bad poem about all this, with the words “train” and “loneliness” both in the title, and “voyeurism” in the first stanza. The word “blessed” comes near the end, if that’s any hope.
Maybe I should use that train voucher. But I kind of just want to play The Sims.
Riley Strait is a sophomore from Olathe, Kan. studying Writing Seminars and English. He is an Arts & Entertainment Editor for The News-Letter. His column, "In Medias Res," translates from Latin to "into the middle of things," shares narratives that bury occasional insights within fluff that often leave the reader wondering, "Did I ask?"
