In the shadowy world of transgressive fiction—where boundaries are not just pushed but incinerated—certain titles circulate only in whispers. For decades, collectors of outlaw literature have traded rumors of a manuscript that allegedly captures the raw, unfiltered id of America’s freight-hopping underworld. That manuscript is Groping America V. 1: Riding With The Train Gang by the enigmatic Ra Locke.
This article attempts the first serious literary exegesis of a work that may or may not exist—and in doing so, examines why the very idea of Groping America forces us to confront the ugliest and most compelling impulses of American street literature. The title is a three-part assault on middle-class sensibilities. Groping America V. 1 Riding With The Train Gang Ra Locke
– The author’s pseudonym. “Ra” evokes the Egyptian sun god, suggesting enlightenment or divine judgment. “Locke” recalls John Locke, the philosopher of personal identity and consciousness. Together, the name implies a narrator who is both godlike (watching everything) and deeply fragmented (locked into a single perspective). No photograph of Ra Locke exists. Some believe “Ra Locke” is a collective pseudonym for a group of ex-convicts; others argue it’s a single woman writing under a male-sounding name to avoid harassment. Section II: The Probable Plot – A Reconstruction from Fragments Based on the title and the known tropes of “train gang” folklore (gleaned from memoirs like You Can’t Win by Jack Black, 1926, and modern accounts like The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test ’s brief Merry Prankster train episodes), we can reconstruct a likely narrative for Groping America V. 1 . 1: Riding With The Train Gang by the enigmatic Ra Locke
The answer depends on Ra Locke’s intent. If the “groping” is purely metaphorical—a groping for truth, for contact, for the ragged edges of the American dream—then the book belongs alongside William S. Burroughs ( Naked Lunch ) and Hubert Selby Jr. ( Last Exit to Brooklyn ). If, however, the text explicitly depicts non-consensual sexual acts on trains, then it crosses a line from transgressive art into the territory of criminal glorification. – The author’s pseudonym
The unnamed narrator—let’s call him “Locke”—is a discharged veteran or ex-felon in a rust-belt city (Youngstown, OH, or Gary, IN). Broke and dissociated, he wanders into a rail yard. There, he encounters The Train Gang: a mobile, anarchic collective of roughly a dozen individuals who live exclusively on slow-moving freight trains. Their leader is a woman known only as “America”—a scarred, brilliant, predatory figure.
– This is the most straightforward yet deceptive clause. “Riding the rails” has a romanticized history (Woody Guthrie, Jack Kerouac). But “Train Gang” implies organized criminality. We are not talking about solo hobos; we are talking about a pack. A crew that owns the boxcars after midnight.
– The verb “groping” is deliberately jarring. It evokes blindness (groping in the dark), violation (sexual groping), and desperate searching (groping for meaning). To “grope America” is to handle its underbelly without permission. It suggests a protagonist who does not merely observe the country but molests it—clumsily, urgently, and without consent from polite society.