cNutgroist

What I did on my Holidays: Part 6

At 9:30 that Saturday, no, Sunday evening the train pulled out of Union at last, bound for New York via Michigan since Indiana had been closed due to snow. Not the just the main station there – the State itself. Or was it because two freight trains colliding earlier that day throwing the entire rail network of the United States into the proverbial chaos? All the track is owned by the freight companies and all the passenger trains are run by separate providers, creating a situation where the freight gets priority and the passenger trains (and by extension the passengers themselves) are treated like freight. Take a look at a map and see the fun route.

Bound for Buffalo where I’m due to ‘hang out’ for half a day before boarding another train to Toronto. The latest estimate is that I’ll reach it some time before the coming Apocalypse. Bearing in mind I haven’t been following the news for a week and last time I looked this fine country and Iran were headed for a big slapping match, that could easily mean I’ll get there in time for my connection.

I’d been advised to check out a famous diner where they do the World’s Best Buffalo Wings. Not a coincidence, it turns out, since the sweet sticky chicky wings originated there. Visions of herds of gigantic wild buffalo swooping over Lake Ontario, frantically flapping tiny feathered wings sticking out of their midsections were created and destroyed in an instant. Apparently they go from Mild to Hot to Dangerous to 911 – so called because on more than one occasion they have had to call the emergency services after someone seriously damaged themselves after trying to actually eat one. I resisted the temptation to make a 9/11 joke, and still do

And so at 7am when I should have been in the ‘Flo, instead I’m in Toledo, Ohio. It's not much like Toledo, Spain. The buildings are gray, the sky is gray, the people who’ve been waiting on the platform all night because their previous train got cancelled 48 hours earlier have a touch of grise to them. I feel sorry for them becau…hang on…they’re coming into my carriage and…

“excuse me, no, it’s that carriage down there with all the empty seats you want. Yup”

Right, sorry, let me just lie down again on my stretched out double seat and get comfortable. Man, there are some weird people coming into my carriage. I have to make them feel uncomfortable and since I haven't washed in three days and now own a terrifyingly adult beard, this won't be difficult.

8am. I enter the Dining Car to grab some breakfast and I get wedged into a booth with a man the size of Bono’s ego. Not fat, not overweight and not a thin man struggling to get out. This guy was born mountainous and then grew. I’ve always had a fear of the morbidly obese – perhaps the clue is in the job description; their unnatural frame hints at a higher probability of imminent death than the smaller, average look; I’m scared of them because I think they’ll be morbid in their outlook on life because they’re all so sad which is why they eat so much of course. If this is true – and I’ve absolutely no idea if it is – then I’m scared of them because they wear their tragedy on their frames for all to see. We’ve all got problems but you can’t see a broken home or a broken heart bulging out of someone’s clothes. It’s like eating with someone who’s got some noticeable degree of physical disfigurement – you want to be able to treat them no differently than anyone else and you want them to act that way. They too want the same things from you but it doesn’t happen so much. Even if we say and do all the right things, it’s still an act and our barely perceived micro-movements give this performance away. These things act as social tells that betray our real intentions – we can’t see them in the normal sense but they are sensed, if not clearly perceived. Tics and twitches are by comparisons huge klaxons denoting personal unease. I try to relax.

I’m also scared because I think they’ll eat me.

But here I am, sat opposite this vast industrial poo factory and im thinking that my primal fear of being eaten by an amoral a-merican greedy guts is only natural but nevertheless he’s a human being, well, two human beings, like everyone else and so maybe with all that bulk in him maybe he’s a thoroughly fascinating guy. And if my vicious descriptions of the overweight are wrong, then so is my assessment of these guy (sic).

But

He’s not only boring, he’s mind-crushingly kill-me-now boring. Whatever happened to the jolly fatman who hung out in the sweetshop with us as kids? He giggled and dribbled at everything and never shared his big bag of booty with us but we loved him for it anyway. And he almost never tried to touch us and we almost always ran away when he almost never did. I must have had 50 conversations in the last few days with all walks and waddles of life but I hadn’t once had to endure half an hour of short monotone statements ranging from “I went to London once” to “Have you seen the Queen?” to “Have you seen The Queen (the film)” to “Are you gonna eat the rest of that egg?”. I sat there and watched him eat a normal sized plate of food faster than I would eat a pea. He was very efficient, his arms presumably having got the measure of his mouth long ago. He knew exactly where to put his fork (I’m not the only one who has trouble always getting his food straight to his mouth, right?) and displayed an impressively skilful method of switching between eating, talking and breathing. Nevertheless, he managed to dribble from his bottom lip a dangling dollop of pure saliva that I saw slither forth, trace it’s way down his chin and into fat air a full ten seconds before he did. He also dropped some food onto his boobs, at which point I looked away but my peripheral awareness and outright prejudice tells me he returned it to his mouth and felt all the better for it.

Now some who have shared a dining experience with me in the past may well say ‘it sounds as if he eats like you’. Yup. That's why I can criticise.

There’s also a man on this train wearing a full length black latex catsuit with yellow stripes down the legs and a built in, massively protruding codpiece. It’s the precise opposite of Uma Thurman’s in Kill Bill but much shinier. He’s way over 6 foot, mid-40's, sensible glasses, short back and sides, wearing black boots and carrying a few regular luggage bags. I think I massively admire the man – he doesn’t blush, he doesn’t give any outward sign that the rest of the world is staring, laughing and making jokes about him. He either doesn’t care or doesn’t know and I hope it’s the former. It’s probably the most comfortable thing for him and I’m sure Chicago and New York treat him well but god help him if he gets stranded at any point in between.

There’s another man, at least 80 years old, who I first saw back at the Court, sitting at a table drinking coffee and slowly jotting down telephone numbers from the cut-out and circled back pages of a local newspaper. As I walk past, I take a quick glance at the pictures of buff young studs ready for some heavy manly action and I can’t help but wonder if he knows exactly what he’s doing. Perhaps he’ll meet Uma on the train and they’ll fall in love? It's Strangers on a Train all over again, with the emphasis on 'strange'.

But for all their nuttiness and willingness to stand up for individual rights whilst denying others' their own, there is a remarkable level of tolerance here. At first I found it very difficult to adjust to so many conversations about politics and religion. People very quickly lay their cards out on the table and I'm not used to that, coming from a country where you never bring those things up if you want to stay friends. But here they just fucking go for it and i really like that. I still kept most of my opinions to myself, since virtually all of them are misanthropic, offensive, pessimistic, atheistic and worst of all highly logical. Im not about to defend that kind of seditious talk to anyone who grew up in a patriotic environment. But it's nice to know that aside from a few words, I can basically say what I like still. It's a freedom we have pockets of the West at rare times but still I forget that sometimes, some places, this can't be done. I hope I continue to honour this fought-for right which has been a long time coming.

So what did I say to the barman in the snack car, stood next to an Amish elder as I fumbled through my wallet for the right notes, dropping coins all over the counter?

“Jesus fucking Christ, you bloody fucking bastard. Oh….. Sorry”

He pretended not to have heard. For a man living a 17^th century English Puritanical lifestyle that sounds about right.

Final encore from the Jarrett-chives. Over The Rainbow. You'll notice that it's absolutely fucking beautiful and you should be buying some of his music.

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