March 2010
44 posts
Washington State, By and By
Half of Washington state is pretty and the other half is boring and that’s that. I arrived in Seattle at five PM. The Seattle Greyhound station looks like the locker room of a waterpark. Grace and I both got out there but we somehow lost each other, I didn’t say goodbye or get her number and I thought pursuing either would be a bit silly. I later regretted this. “Gotta get them digits,” the Very...
Towards the end of Montana, Greyhound buses make a stop at Jaspers, the silliest fucking souvenir shop on the planet, a massive emporium of crap, the literal representation of the three wolf moon shirt. Indeed, there was an entire section dedicated to wolves. And a variety of eight or nine aquariums, all filled with trout. And a live, animatronic band. And a poster advertising the animatronic...
Montana
When I woke up next to Grace I woke up in Montana, glorious Montana, holy shit Montana, half the state is covered in mountains and all of those mountains are covered entirely in the trees that come in a size that doesn’t exist on the east coast, and at eight in the morning every mountain is covered in miles of mist. Before I left, my dad said to me, “You’re seeing a lot of states I’ve never been...
THINGS GRACE TOLD ME THAT MIGHT’VE BEEN LIES, BUT...
Both of her parents have been married five times.
She has ten siblings; they were born boy-girl-boy-girl from top to bottom.
Exactly half of her immediate family is gay.
She has a disorder that disallows her from ever having kids. This is why you don’t joke about fertility.
When she lived in Olympia, she worked as a woodcutter.
She drank the vitamin water in San Francisco and woke up two...
Grace
I first noticed Grace in the Billings station, arguing with Cartman at the desk. She looked smelly and carried a small guitar with her. I asked her what it was when she sat next to me on the bus; it’s a small guitar, she said. Oh, because I have a mandolin, etc. Yeah, this is bigger. I was tired. I had meant to fall asleep but she was talking on the phone and I had to listen; I kept hearing words...
Billings
In Montana, the land of gold and silver, people still wear t-shirts with Cartman screaming about cheesy poofs etc. The city of Billings is a flat and desolated crackhead of a town with an abandoned movie theater on every corner and sidewalks littered with wandering flyers from the seventies probably. The Greyhound station is dark brown and cozy; the P.A. system was down, quite fittingly. The...
The Girl Up Front
At the Billings terminal I got a good look at her and saw that her lipstick exceeded her lips by about an centimeter. She had a lazy eye. She got the old man on his next bus, I think, and I spent my time until Seattle wondering where the hell he was.
Existential Crisis #1
Now this is fucking silly, but I had an existential crisis, as is often my wont. This happened, I think, for several reasons all at once:
I was in a bus in the middle of Wyoming with nothing around me but desert and a mostly-black sky. I was a body in a metal tube going seventy miles an hour through space.
I had just finished reading a particularly bone-shattering section of...
Old Man
In Gilette, Wyoming, for some reason, the Italians finally got off. I quickly shuffled to the front of the bus; the banshee asked me, “Oh, you’re getting off?” I mumbled, “No, I’m moving.” I was joined by the romance novel enthusiast who said about them something like “Well, I never…” as well as the teenager and her mother, who just looked glad to be alive. A stop or two later, a heavy,...
Russian Fellow
A teenager in a green-and-white striped hoodie, he was, as beautiful foreign men tend to be, the plaything of the girls in the back. All of his statements began with a thick “IN RUSSIA…” He said that a friend recommended Greyhound to him, because taking a bus across America was “the American dream.” The girls laughed instinctually and told him “your friend hates you.”
Good Teen Parent
She had two little boys, neither of which made a sound, and she was amazing with them. One of them pissed the seat and anal girl and the banshee bitched her out from the back, because of the smell; she looked embarrassed but did what she could and she didn’t acknowledge them. If her life was a movie she would probably be played by Vanessa Hudgens in her first “serious” role and it would garner...
Wyoming
There are no holidays in August, there are no cities in Wyoming, no real ones. There are equal rights for everyone. And Wyoming is there for a reason. For a few hours, from bright to dusk, I get to exist in the badlands (you gotta live it every day, let the broken heart stand as the price you gotta pay, keep pushing til it’s understood til these badlands start treating us good). The badlands serve...
“Does she belong to those who have molded her and made her feared by other lands,...”
– -Forster, H.E.
I just want to read my book, my book about only connecting, about the connecting with those from a different class, from a different context. And I hate myself for hating the banshee and not taking my time to get to know everything about her that I don’t already know. I don’t think...
Cast of Characters
The ringleader of the group was a large banshee of a woman who never once faced forward, instead lifting up the armrest and directing her underlings face-forward for the eight hours we spent together. She sat on me. There was never a point in our trip where a portion of her ass was not resting on my right leg, save for the few points where I’d ask her to just move forward, please, which would last...
The Bothers
In Sioux Falls, we switched to a Jefferson Lines bus; in case you ever ride the Greyhound, “Jefferson Lines” just means “don’t get on this bus.” The seats are about half as wide, it smells like sweat and corpses, and the whole damn machine is falling apart, which drills into you a nascent fear that the wheels will fall off at any point and pretty it much guarantees you’ll never get any sleep worth...
Gordon Ramsay
And then I saw the Domino Sugars sign that hangs above Baltimore, fixed in olde black and white, the point being that Baltimore used to be a lot better than it is, even though the Domino Sugars sign is still in the same damn place. And my eyes were glued to a television in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (where the people rule under God), because any mention of Baltimore is shocking and significant,...
Sioux Falls
“in sioux falls listening to siouxsie sioux. im precious. i like the midwest. all the street signs have birdhouses on the back.”
I found out how to update Facebook with my phone.
I had a thirty minute layover in South Dakota in the tingly warm of the midday. I’m pretty certain the Sioux Falls Greyhound station is a renovated one-story house. In the waiting area – which used to be a living room –...
“I hate this continual flux of London. It is an epitome of us at our...”
– Margaret Schlegel, Howards End
“It’s better to be fooled than to be suspicious.”
– The late Mr. Schlegel, Howards End
When I read this, I realized that I would be repeating it over and over again for at least two months. I’ll probably never stop. You beautiful, beautiful Schlegels.
How To Ensure No One Will Sit Next To You On The...
Bring a backpack.
Bring a book.
Whenever there are new boarders, put that backpack on the seat next to you and read the crap out of that book.
Don’t you dare look up. Don’t you dare.
The point was, of course, to read. It’s silly of me to reject the possibility of human connection, especially given the context of the book I was reading, but, I don’t know. I’m shy. I needed to...
The Italians
It was at the Minneapolis terminal where I became aware of the large group of Italians, at least fifteen of them, none of which seemed to speak any English; I assumed they were tourists. I switched buses in Minny. When this happens and you’re waiting for your next bus, you secure a spot in line by putting down your luggage. I hurried into the terminal and was only behind one of the Italian...
Minneapolis
The Minneapolis Greyhound terminal looks almost exactly like an Ikea. Above its doors are large squares of solid purple, yellow, red, little flourishes of design. It feels like you could live there. It has an indoor playground.
Howards End
Is a book by E.M. Forster. Its motto is “Only connect.” That’s a good motto. It’s a fitting motto. I loved the book before I ever picked it up, if only for that motto. I spent half the trip reading it. It’s about a house, a house, a house; about the metaphysical connection an individual can have with a house, about the metaphysical connection we’re supposed to have with each other. I never have...
'The New York City of Wisconsin'
Milwaukee truly is, or it tries to be, after dark. Tiny little skyscrapers and too many amphitheatres with too many pretty lights, too many failed attempts at appearing interested in anything other than beer and cheese. Maybe it’s a nice town, but nobody was out. It’s the only part of Wisconsin (FORWARD!) that I remember. At this point, I realized that I smelled really bad.
KATE I
On July 17, I tried to convince Kate not to move. We had planned the month before to take a plane to visit David, but things in Baltimore changed, and I won’t get into it because she’ll hate me if I do. “I dont want to move to Chicago and everyone wants me to and I need to run away.”
Chicago
We entered Chicago at eight in the evening when the sky’s twilight was wilting, a steely, steely, blue that should eventually turn black entirely because that’s what it’s like in Chicago: it follows a different color spectrum. I thought to myself, very distinctly – in the moment I woke up – “Chicago is God’s loneliest soldier.” The first thing I noticed was the Sears Tower standing over the South...
snuh:
X: The New World
flint ford auto mobile...
Gary Indiana
There were three different times between Cleveland and Chicago where I could’ve sworn I was in Gary Indiana. My subconscious is stupid. I finally found myself in its jagged embrace and I realized that I’ve never really been to a ghost town before. For all I know, Gary Indiana is just two train tracks, an old factory, a Greyhound station and a silly art sculpture in the middle of it all. It might...
Sandusky
A brief interlude into Sandusky, Ohio, where all things are possible with God, brings us outside a Greyhound station that is actually a small adobe hut. Sure thing, Sandusky.
Bad Teen Parent
It’s at this juncture we observe the Bad Teen Parent; I don’t actually know if she was the mother or even a teenager, but we can be certain that she was not ready to have a two year-old on a bus from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to elsewhere. On a bus, you become unusually aware of every single baby or toddler aboard, as well as the competence of their caretakers, as well as your propensity for hatred...
Cleveland in the Afternoon
Cleveland was as unattractive as it was the last time I visited, but it’s more pitiful than anything else. Cleveland is Theodore Roosevelt towards the end of his life when he wakes up in a sweat and realizes that it was a sham, all of it, every single moment. The Rock ‘N’ Roll Hall of Fame isn’t worth it. Jacobs Field is now called Progressive Field but the Indians are still called the Indians. I...
Books
So here’s a story: one day, at work—at a bookstore—a bookstore—a coworker (coworker!) walks up to me with a wandering customer and asks:
“Ok. So. Fiction and Non-Fiction: which one’s fake?”
I just stare at her for a few moments, and I probably think about just how much I had to sell myself in my interview. And in a show of inquellable literary snobbiness and personal hurt, I tell her:
“Well,...
BUS
The first busdriver was a gigantic lilywhite-haired Indian man who took my ticket but didn’t remember who I was in Pittsburgh (this was personally disheartening). When I get on the bus, I notice a burrowing Asian girl covered in a blanket, which is how she remains until Cleveland. The bus leaves at pitch-dark. I settle in, and when the bus leaves I don’t stare longingly at Baltimore or waste time...
Pittsburgh
When I open my eyes my life is Pittsburgh; I’m surrounded on all sides and the sky is seven-in-the-morning and downcast, a battle of navy blue and gray. Pittsburgh is a beautiful city, my dad always said, and it is. It looks like it was planned all at once, with every individual piece in perfect place with the rest. The skyscraper district is bookended with green, suburbanized mountains, rivers,...
Literacy
I bought my tickets three weeks in advance, so they only cost $107 apiece, more than half the price of flying. I’d tell people that I’m excited to take the bus, that my only goal for the summer was to read as much as I can, that I haven’t read anything and summer is nearly over, that six days on a bus would give me the chance. Beyond everything else, the purpose of the trip was to read, I said. I...
Sprawling Latino Family
They never ended. I don’t know if they were a family, I don’t know anything really, but I’ll make assumptions in the hope that they never read this. There was the cute girl around my age who I noticed first in the Baltimore station; I thought she was alone until the two twin toddlers ran up to her (my dad gave me a look of pity before leaving), and then she appeared to know the parents of the...
Baltimore
The Baltimore Greyhound station is actually how a Greyhound station should be, exactly how the image has always existed in my mind. My bus leaves at 2 AM, and I sit for a while with my dad, who drove me. Everything is golden beige. The three televisions hanging from the ceiling is showing the news, which we struggle to hear over the obscenely loud air conditioning. There doesn’t appear to be a...
Listen:
From August fifteen to August twenty-five I took a Greyhound bus 3000 miles to Seattle and 3000 miles back, to visit two people I love very much. Nothing extraordinary happened, but Sam told me once that it’s my job to take the ordinary and blow it up, and I tend to do whatever she tells me to, whether I want to or not. So I’m gonna pump these oranges until their rinds are flying flecks of dust...
Tumblr
I am writing this in a Tumblr blog because when I was traveling, this is how I imagined it. This is not a strictly-chronological diary by any means; rather, I imagine it to simply be a themed blog, concerned with a certain ten days of my life, in the same way that lolcats is concerned with certain cats.