In the fall of 2022, I visited the USA. I took the Starlight Express route on Amtrak from Seattle to Los Angeles. It's an overnight trip of 35 hours and you sleep on the train. Seated across the aisle from me are two magpies that are both talking non-stop at the same time and at full volume. The most frightful dialogue you can imagine; just random streams of consciousness pouring out of their pieholes simultaneously. I leave for the sightseeing car to escape it, but when I return over an hour later they are still going at it. I can't see any empty seats elsewhere, so I flag down a conductor and ask her if I can move. She doesn't even ask why. After awhile she returns with a card for Seat 6 and tells me I can move.
Seat 6 is, apparently, the only unoccupied seat left in coach. I plop down into it, and dig through my bag looking for my charger which I just had in my hand not five goddamn minutes ago. Along the way, I unearth my book "Shape" which is about geometry and the ways that it shapes (get it? *snicker snicker*) our lives in ways that we aren't aware of. My seatmate (there are two spacious seats on each side of the aisle) is a Latin guy, moreno, scraggly beard and mustache, maybe 30 years, just ghetto enough that I start thinking about hiding places for my wallet, with a blue bandanna around his neck and a jacket with a pattern that screams "Albuquerque." I detect this guy craning his neck to read the blurb on the back cover, and I'm searching a bit faster because I am much more interested in reading my book than talking to anyone, when he speaks up and asks me about it.
Felipe (for that is his name) is difficult for me to understand. He stutters and backtracks and speaks like he has severe ADD. But his questions are thoughtful enough, and almost innocent in his desire to understand. Just something about his manner that motivated me to talk. He picks up the basics fairly well; asks in particular when chess is mentioned; starts to hit the wall when I'm trying to explain about networks as an element of geometry. We grope forward, me trying to understand what he's saying; him trying to understand what I mean.
He shows me the book that he is reading: "The Communist Manifesto" by Marx and Engels. And now our roles are reversed: he is teaching me. His vocabulary is simple, but I am getting it. We take a deeper dive into philosophy. Talk about not knowing a book by its cover. I never expected this and I am absolutely loving every minute of it. Until...
I don't remember how it started, perhaps because it was so surprising, but he starts telling me about the devices that have been implanted in his brain and under his skin by shadowy "men of finance." He points to various areas on his head, arms and legs where devices are located. He talks about how "they" are trying to reprogram him with wireless signals. "They" are feeding instructions directly into his brain. He goes on to talk about drone footage and using this technology to control the poor. Along the way, he's mentioning that he grew up in gang life, shot people and got away with it, hard drug use, homelessness, being in prison, sexual depravity. None of the foregoing was the main point of the story. I mean, he doesn't tell a story about being in prison. He tells a story about his wife, then says something like, "And then after I went to prison..."
I'm listening to this and not believing any of it, but starting to think that I understand why the seat next to him was the only empty seat in coach. I also realize that I will be sleeping tonight with this guy right next to me. I'm holding my own by trying to prompt him to keep expressing himself and dropping a supportive comment every now and then, hoping that this buys me enough good will to not be murdered in my sleep. But here's the thing: for all the coarseness and lack of polish in his expression, he seems like a good guy. Very polite and well mannered. When we reboarded after a fresh air stop at Klamath, he wondered aloud why nobody was talking. I said that it was because quiet time started at 10pm. Not another word from him until the morning.
I woke up at daylight, having had a wonderful sleep, and went to the sightseeing car so I could charge my phones and text my bitches. The train stopped for a break, and as I got off I walked past an exasperated conductor who was cussing out the magpies for smoking amongst the passengers and not in the designated smoking area. I bumped into Felipe, and we took a selfie. Once back inside, I offered to buy him a coffee (he turned down an offer of breakfast). We went to the sightseeing car and sipped our coffees and talked. Had a freewheeling conversation. He claims to know how to crochet and described a table covering he made, which somehow seemed even more improbable than the mind control stuff. We discussed sociology and politics, public policy, culture.
He gets up and heads downstairs to pee. A white woman, 60's, sitting at table across the aisle from us talks to me, apologizes for eavesdropping and tells me how much she enjoyed listening to our conversation. Felipe returns, and I introduce him to the lady and they begin talking about sociology, his background, etc. His vocal tics reappeared when he started speaking to her, though not as bad as before. All of a sudden, without warning, she starts speaking in fluent Spanish. Felipe responds in kind. I can't understand what they are talking about, but when he begins pointing at places on his head, arms and legs I know what is being laid down. I'm just vibrating with excitement, because I can't wait to see how this smashes into the image she had formed of him being a great thinker (much like I experienced the night before). But if it affected her, she disguised it very well. They switched to other topics and continued their conversation in Spanish and English. He's quoting Machiavelli and Descartes extemporaneously for us. Explicating The Count of Monte Cristo.
I have met some people with a sensational ability to lie, but this was so complex and went on so long that I was suspecting mental illness. Surely none of those awful life experiences could have happened to a man of his qualities. He might look the part and sound the part, but then you listen to what he is saying, and you start looking around for the hidden cameras. I decided to chalk it up to an educated guy facing a long boring train ride and deciding to have a little fun.
As Felipe and the lady continued with their conversation, she worked on something that she was crocheting. Felipe pops up and leans down to inspect it, and points to a pattern and asks how she made that. I don't mean like I just expressed it; they were talking in crochet PhD terms that I couldn't even understand. Filipe DOES know how to crochet! Of course he does! After all, that's what you do to pass the time while in prison.
