David Foster Wallace Rides the Amtrak 79 Carolinian

Following His Successful Cruise Ship Essay, David Foster Wallace Rides the Amtrak 79 Carolinian

I have now seen tetanus-laden rail yards in seven states and the District of Columbia. I have seen time suspended in a sunlit broadleaf forest while emergency services investigate reports of a vehicle on the tracks up ahead, and never known whether that vehicle actually existed. I have seen, and smelled, all 68 passengers inside car number 5. I have heard emphysema coughs, and endless renditions of “Baby Shark,” and a woman announce over the phone, “You better not let that raggedy bitch inside the house while I’m gone.” I have (very briefly) known the hope of arriving on time.

I have seen Confederate flags, and steel toilets with chemicals a very bright blue. I have discovered that nothing in the world, not even the pitch and yaw of the A-79 chugging along at 110 mph, can make the Y-chromosome-bearing passenger sit down to pee, and though I try to separate myself from the rest of the train’s bovine herd, I also end up pissing upon the restroom floor and walls a dreamy and vaporous sheen of urine, and leaving it for the next passenger to slick their unknowing feet.

I now know every conceivable rationale for somebody spending 14 hours of their life on a train slopping and heaving 704 miles down the Eastern Coast of the United States, and there is only one: it’s cheaper than flying. To be specific: I voluntarily, without pay, rode the Amtrak 79 Carolinian train departing from New York Penn Station with service to Newark, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Richmond, Raleigh, and finally Charlotte, with intermittent, and seemingly infinite, stops along the way. The vessel and facilities were, from what I understand of the industry’s standards, acceptable. The seats lacked lumbar support. [¹] The air conditioning was spotty; likewise the Wi-Fi.

I have acquired and nurtured a lifelong grudge against the train conductor who told me to take my feet off the seat across from me, and whom I have now named Mr. Rail Chode, and a searing crush on the cafe car employee, Petra, she of the dimples and brassy box dye highlights, who always wears a polyester navy uniform and smells of Hebrew National hot dog grease.

Our horn is not planet-shattering; it probably should be louder for safety. We depart New York at 8:09 am, one hour and seventeen minutes behind schedule, but things proceed at a nice clip until we reach Washington. The conductor pronounces Washington with nasal precision: Waaaaah-shington is a scheduled smoke stop. In Waaaah-shington, we will have to switch engines because the South exists in a time loop where electrified rail has not yet been invented. The AC switches off. The temperature becomes uterine. I have purchased many beers from Petra, and now I learn with dismay and a spasmodic bladder that when the train loses power, the toilets do not flush. [²]

The Amtrak Carolinian brochure promises I will “discover a charming and welcoming blend of Southern hospitality,” but instead I discover a blend of stormy Southern weather and outdated Southern infrastructure, resulting in signal failures and track congestion. We clank and grind to another unscheduled stop outside a state prison festooned with wedding cake spirals of barbed wire. Beneath us, the soil where 30,000 wool-clad men bled and oozed gangrenously in 1863.

Angry Cell Phone Woman calls her sister, who has—just as she suspected!—spotted that raggedy bitch’s car outside her house. [³]

We’re stuck again somewhere near Cary, NC. I am powerless to describe, according to modern physics, how a train can take this long to get through the state of North Carolina. The semi-agoraphobe fears he will never escape the torment of coach class, and its 68 other passengers. [⁴] I have no choice but to face my own thoughts and all that mystical stuff. What if I’m just the guy Angela Mead let get to second base? Do we of course end up becoming ourselves? Am I not a wise old fish?? What is water??? I begin to spiral into a panic of rail-induced claustrophobia, then remember everything is OK because Jason Segal played me in a movie.

I buy another bag of potato chips from Petra and try to catch her eye. She turns to the next customer. I am suffering from a delusion, and I know it’s a delusion, this envy of another passenger who now has her complete, and might I say excessive, attention as he purchases one of Sandy’s Amazing Cookies (™) (chocolate chunk, pre-packaged, 55% Daily Value of saturated fat), but it is painful nonetheless. I return to my seat in car number 5, looking out the bug-spattered window, empty chip bags all around me and my shoes urine-soaked, feeling a little bit dulled to know that we are running three hours and forty minutes behind schedule, but mostly good, good to know that I would one day get off the Carolinian, and that a journey on American rail is every bit as bad as I had feared.