SLOW TRAIN TO NOWHERE

.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
"Snidely Whiplash strikes again."

Episode IV: slow train to nowhere.

My train of thought’s gone off the tracks; I’ve made the Conductor mad. Car 13 is derailed again. The caboose is loaded with sin. Yet, the passengers won’t turn back: for that caboose has been their home, from the moment I let them in. There is a damsel in distress, bound and gagged upon the tracks. I cannot cool the engine, for the sight of her smoothe skin. Those ropes go so well with her dress. I cannot save her, or us, so I retreat within.

I am derailed. But let’s move on.

There are some who will say this next bit is a bit of fabrication; but it is only so much in that the metaphors involved are crudely stitched. Otherwise, it was grotesquely difficult to write about insomuch that it is true. I couldn’t make a stranger story up; although, I’m certain that this will be argued as well.

So here I am on a train…and you know what? I still wouldn’t eat green eggs and ham. I feel as if I’m running on empty, far past running low and running scared, and running out of luck. Luck was not having my bags searched for contraband when they yanked that Arab guy off the train. Did I mention the Arab guy yet? One of Mohammed's Finest was trying to smuggle something into Washington DC. He sat three seats in front of me, but only for awhile. I shall explain.

I shall call him Ahab, out of convenience, and contrivance; and because racism = laughs on blogs like this. This fellow was Middle Eastern, insomuch as he was Left of Center. He was jittery and butter-limbed. His speech was stilted like a circus act, and indeed, he did do tricks.
For instance, he played musical chairs with greatest skill and ease; I felt compelled that somehow, a sitar ought to have played “Pop Goes The Weasel” while he did his little dance from seat to seat. You see, when seated on a train, you glue your heaving manbag or curvaceous ladyrump in the place where you have settled once the conductor marks your seat. You don’t go hopping madly like a starstruck harlot from lap to sweaty lap. Even Paris Hilton would find one lap to grind upon, and stick with such, for the remainder of the ride, in all the meanings “ride” might come to note. This Fellow of the Sands, however, did not obey this Great Rule of the Tracks. He was a naughty Tuscan Raider who knew not a single Bantha as his own, but rather hopped from hide to hide, with much to hide, most wise men would suspect.
He kept accusing other passengers of “trying to read his mind.” Myself? I had no interest: I’ve already seen Aladdin; anything else I might encounter there would undoubtedly involve a camel, and two humps—one hump upon the beast, and one within. Regardless, the little bearded weirdo refused to let anyone sit beside him, in front of him, or behind him. I appreciated his courtesy—but then, I hadn’t showered in awhile, either.

He refused to sit next to his bag. Suspicious? Nah… For all I knew, his deformed twin was hitching a ride, and he didn’t want to pay for two fares. But when the conductor placed his bag beside him, the fellow got up, and moved to a different seat—a seat uncontaminated by his mysterious lumpy sack. One wiley Texan, with balls of truest steel, kept following dear Ahab ‘round the train, placing his shunned bag next to him whereever he would sit. Invariably, of course, he’d have to move. The guy probably chased him with his own bag up half the car. It was an unsettling predicament, but not without its humor value, for sure.

At some point, someone asked the Man of the Sands where he was headed. Ahab replied, “Washington, DC. I have a message for the President.” I’m not making that up. Sweet Pickled Jesus...why can't he just flip him the bird like the rest of us? Anyway, this is why we’re going to win the War On Terror—Allah is hiring idiots. All he needs is a few elderly greeters at Mecca, and the process is complete.
Later, the aforementioned wiley Texan mistook me for Steven Seagal, and asked if I was willing to help him pin the bastard to the ground—peace be upon him—while they threw his fucking bag out of the window. "I have a better idea,” I replied, “How about you keep irritating the guy, and I go tell the conductor that we’re all about to die?”

Fortunately for all but Ahab, the conductor was well aware of the situation. The train quietly stopped in some desolate, musky North Texas armpit on the way. “The Man” was waiting. Thus, poor Ahab was discarded like a used squishy tampon in some shithole desert rapehouse, bag-cursed-bag in tow. A couple of local-looking troopers did a disturbingly brief and cavalier bomb search, and sent us on our way. For the first time in my life, I was happy as a harlot to be out of dope. We carried on our merry madcap way.

[The studio audience sighs.]

Hours crawled like a quadraplegic junkie, inching along on calloused nubs for smack. Train rides—once the domain of wealthy jetsetters, international jewel thieves, dashing spies with eyepatches, and murder suspects—are a special sort of ghetto all their own. It’s just not like it used to be, if it ever was before. The traincars smell like Goodwill stores—that curious combination of sour milk and old people, lost hope and broken dreams. It’s far from a smooth ride, and rickets like soft bones. The car rocks and swishes from side to side like the Listerine in your mouth after the evening’s paid companionship is gone.

There were long hours ahead; the excitement was largely over, but waiting is the hardest part of anything at all. In a terrific fling of spittle from the dripping lips of irony, I had an entire spindle of 100+ CD’s—thousands of mp3’s—and yet no disc player in which to play them. Only the cruel hum of fortune’s infinite jest, amid the chortles of Heaven’s angelic host, would serenade my weary, wary ears this dreary night.

I began to wonder how my girlfriend and our furry little children might be doing. No sooner than I thought it, fate seemed to grimly answer on its own, via an old man with a cellphone, two rows back: “Wow…it’s a Category 5—wait, no…it’s down to a Category 4 now. Jesus…The Gulf Coast’s getting totally throttled! That whole coastline will be gone by morning… Holy shit, they’re evacuating Houston!”

Oh…lovely. My loved ones may be dead, or so displaced in the shuffle that I might never see or hear from them again. My home was likely gone, a lifetime of possessions out to sea. And I might not even be alive, were I not an utter bastard and a scoundrel. My life was in upheavil. I had twenty-three cents or less left in my pocket, and still no ride or place to go when I arrived. I should have been beside myself with grief and catastrophic loss. Instead, all I could feel was…nothing; I was utterly and completely numb. It was like I’d just escaped some killer’s basement, after months of rape and torment. I was entirely and totally beyond the veil. I was simply…numb.

At some point, it dawned on me that I hadn’t slept or eaten in nearly three long days. At least one of these was fixable…this was really what I brought the tequila for. Fortunately, no one seemed to care about the bottle of Mexican tequila that I had smuggled in my bag. I finished it off by the time we hit Missouri. I needed it by that point. My finest moment came when I semi-drunkenly hit on one of the Amish girls whom we'd picked up in Patosi. I annoyed her unto the hour of the Lord, all the while with images of her Plain Jane frame churning butter, or whatever else, until her simple God of Olde turned on the lights for a new day. For today was the day the Lord had made, and made me miserable in; and truly, no amount of loss could fully tame my inner rogue; in a strange way, it was all that I had left.

As I sobered with the morning light, it dawned on me that I needed to find someone to greet me at the station. Borrowing a cell phone from a fellow passenger, I left a message with an old friend’s mother—the only number I remembered—and hoped for the best of the worst to come. As we neared Missouri’s boot, the train slowed to a crawl. It was explained over the intercom that the tracks in this rural banjo-land were bad, and we had to gently push across the bridge like a lubed-up pinkie trembling at the unexpectant, wrinkled no-spot of the damned.

Fate, like a feisty cat, was momentarily through batting me around life’s kitchen floor; my friend Kris received the message, and arrived on time to pick me up, “Where to now?” he asked. “Shit," I said, defeated, “I hadn’t really thought of that.”

I paged through the run-soaked rolodex of my mind, and settled on whatever friend I figured would be home. We approached the home of my old friend, Rick; he still lived with his mother, who—by reputation—was notoriously accomodating to strays. It was the best shot at the moment that did not involve my head and a revolver.

I knocked weakly on the door; his mother answered, and stared queerly at the dissheveled heap I had become. I smelled like booze and days of sweat and squalor. I was dressed like a Columbian on the run. Grizzled and miserable, frizzled out, fried, and sticking to the pan…within, my innards pickled bit by bit…I appeared as the consummate crazy homeless guy, irresistable to organ thieves and flies, indeterminate by census, and invisible to Republicans far and wide.
I looked her pitifully in the eyes, and asked, “Are you taking in refugees?” I smiled while I could stand. Her face contorted oddly; she stepped back, and shook her head...

“Uh…No.”


TO BE CONTINUED...

)+(