Greyhound to LA

LETTER: June 3, 2006

 

It’s so nice to have you to write this to�"it’s cathartic, really.  Culture shock is a strange thing, it never seems to hit when you’d expect it.  I’ve lived in the Sumatran ghetto, eaten rats in Vietnam, off-roaded a motorcycle in Cambodia, got my head sewn up in an Ecuadorian hospital�"but Arizona is an EXPERIENCE.  I’ve never been anywhere so foreign to me.  I’m in shock.  Really.

 

June 3^rd.

 

I’m completely enthralled while in line at Target.  It doesn’t even bother me that I’m late for my new job and I’ve been standing here, next in line to cash out, for a good 15 minutes.

 

“PUSH ME!”  The little old lady in the wheelchair shouted.  I couldn’t see her face, but she sounded gnarled.

 

The older white man was pacing back and forth�"not really pacing because he only seemed to take half steps in either direction, one toward his new  guitar and the other toward his mother.  He wore a wife beater that didn’t  come down all the way to his stomach, and his long grey hair was somehow slicked back with a colossal amount of oil.

 

He spoke with a thick Arizona twang, “But the- uh�"the�"but-“

 

“PUSH ME!”

 

This had been going on for a while.  A Target employee offered, “I can help you carry it to the car.”

 

“NO.  I�"but the�"just don’t�"“

 

“PUSH ME!”

 

“No.  No. I can�"the gee-tar�"“

 

“PUSH ME!”

 

“I can�"just�"I can just come back for it�"“

 

“PUSH ME!”

 

His hands waved wildly wanting to touch the guitar but his feet rocking him back and forth towards his mother.  “you�"just�"don’t�"don’t touch it--  I’ll be right back!”

 

“PUSH ME!”  She croaked emphatically.  And he wheeled her out, hands trembling and staring at his gee-tar.

The cashier and I looked at each other.  “I’m from Los Angeles.” She explained.

 

I smiled.  “I just moved from there too.”

 

I wheeled by home to grab some food.  The big dog Midnight had the same idea, but through sheer brute force, the tiny Cricket somehow managed to keep her from the food.  The instant she’d try to eat from one, the tiny puppy would stop eating to force the huge black dog off her food and start eating from the other bowl.

 

“John, have you noticed anything about the people here?”

 

John was drunk, his voice cracking, and his eyes widened when he replied: “You noticed it too!  The people here... They’re a little... Off!”

 

“You’re back.”  Christie didn’t exactly sound happy.

 

It didn’t take long for Christie and I to dislike each other.

 

“Why are you wearing that?  I thought you were from Los Angeles.”

 

“It’s so much nicer when you don’t speak,” I replied.

 

Our conversations were often consisted of a retort or two followed by:

 

“Christie, shut up.” or “Josh, you’re an a*****e.”

 

Christie loved to talk about what a mistake her son Landon was and how miserable her life was because of him.  Every time Landon threw up or went to the bathroom, she would shake her hands and say “ewwww” and run out of the room, leaving whoever was there to take care of him.  Sometimes she would just thrust him forward her face scrunched up and turned away, and wait for Samantha to take care of him.  “One day you’ll be really glad you had him,” I offered.  She looked at me flatly.

 

20 resumes dropped off in a week, I had managed to swing 3 jobs�"a day job for the County, and two bar jobs.  On the weekends I was out for 8 excruciating hours until 4am at the local hip hop club, after a full day job on Fridays.  I barely had time to eat and sleep.  So when Sunday mornings rolled around, I always looked forward to a coma�"but not this Sunday.

 

Exhausted to the point of death at 4:30am Sunday morning, I was giddy with excitement. I was going to Los Angeles.  Just the thought sent waves of happiness through my bones.  A huge financial bail out from mom and dad and 3 jobs made the ticket possible, sleep impossible. I arrived at the house as the sun threatened to come up over the horizon, just enough time to frantically shower and get some clothes thrown together in a bag.  I’d been on my feet for 2 days hauling beer with virtually no sleep but I felt weightless.

 

I nearly dragged Sam out of bed and into the front lawn.  “Hurry! We’ll miss the bu�"what the f**k is that?”

 

Someone had taken one of the benches in the front yard and hurled it through the windshield of Samantha’s neon green Camero.  Apparently beat the s**t out of it with a bat as well.  “I broke up with Christie,” she said, matter-of-factly. “you should see the car in the back.  She threw a lawn mower through it.”  I would later notice that the mirrors in the bathroom had been punched repeatedly, with wicked-looking bull’s-eyes all over. “Who was that in bed with you?”

 

“Lisa.”

 

The girl moved fast.

 

I was relieved when we made it to the Greyhound and I jumped out of the van and raced to the ticket counter, where I was third in line.  For 45 minutes.

 

In addition to liking the dark, Tucsonans aren’t usually in a hurry.  Jumping to the cashier, I nearly cried.  “You HAVE to get me on the 8am bus to Los Angeles.”  “I can’t.”  “PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, GET ME ON THAT BUS.  I WILL DO ANYTHING. Pleaaaaassssse.”  I was whimpering.  It was pathetic.  Apparently, due to delays, another bus, direct to LA, was arriving at 9am.  I was overcome with relief.

 

Entering the “Ticketed passengers only,” I had to face Tucson’s finest, another elderly white male who took his job, and his authority very seriously.  After an in-depth search, pat-down, and screening interview, I was allowed to pass.  I wanted to pass out.  But no such luck.  The security guard was on the job.  Every 15 seconds he would shout.  “There’s no sleeping in this area!!!” and the two exhausted black girls sitting next to me would try to cover their ears.  He got up in their faces.  “Miss!  Miss!  Excuse me!  There is no sleeping in the station.  Can you read the signs!!!! Misss!”  You have to realize that with train trips that last days, and layovers that can last 10 hours, NOT sleeping in the greyhound station is the most inhumane thing imaginable. As he was racist, he left me alone, but it was hard to sleep when he kept attacking those girls.

 

There was only one seat open on that bus, and I got it.  Boy was I excited.  I thought I’d won the lottery.  Cheerily, I marched on the bus.

 

“You going to Los Angeles?” The bus driver asked accusingly.

 

“Yeah, what time do you think we’ll get there?”

 

“Why you people that ride the greyhound got to MAKE TROUBLE!  ‘When we gonna get there?  When we gonna get there?’  How the hell am I supposed to know!  Y’all passangers been givin me problems since I got on this damn bus.  I aint ever driven this bus before, hell if I know when we’re gonna get there. Take your damn seat.”

 

The bus was overwhelmed with the smell of s**t and vomit, somehow humid, and the sounds of babies crying and children trying to out compete each other with nonsense noises “Boo bo bo bobo booo boo boo boo boo boo BOO!”  My seat was across from the bathroom’s broken door, swinging open, which exuded a stench unlike any you’d ever smelled.

 

An old woman with a throaty crack-voice hobbled out.  “You REALY doan wanna go in ther if you doan have have too,” she croaked.  “Whewee.”

 

I sat beside a man who seemed far too young to have children, with a two-year-old, crawling on his lap.  He brushed some red Cheetos off my seat before I sat down.  It didn’t take long for me to learn how I had gotten the seat.

 

“You know, that guy was crazy,” he said in a thick Arizona twang, “He kept starin’ at may wife and said ‘if you beat that kid one moar time I’m gonna rip yer arm off.  But he really wanted after that girl up there.” he pointed, “I’m not sure exactly what he was doin, but it scared the guy sitting next to ‘im so he called the po-leece on his cell phone.  They pulled us over inta some McDonalds that wuz closed and scurd the s**t outta the bus driver.  But this bus been stallin’ the whole time I been on it. “HEY HURRY IT UP!!!”  his shout spurred the galley in a series of shouts: “LET’S GO ALREADY!”  and “C’MON!” “WHAT THE HELL YOU DOIN’ UP THAR!”

 

I wanted to pass out, but it was a little difficult with the screaming kids.  The young guy’s young wife did, in fact, like to smack her son, apparently for no reason.  “Why you make me so ANGRY!” She shouted as she smacked him, sending him into a fit of tears, “SHUT UP!” She smacked him again, only making him cry harder.  It made me wince.

 

“Yup,” I ain’t got no sleep neither, not with this one around,” he looked at his son angrily.  “It’s kinda dangrus sleepin on the greyhound anyhows.  One time I wuz havin a see-zure on the greyhound and them people that was trying to help me wuz actually robbin me.  I was so mad.  I wanted to search all the people on the greyhound, but the driver wuldnna let me.  I’d’a recognized my money!”

 

Suddenly, the bus lurched, nearly colliding head on with another car. 

Shouts of “What the hell!” and “hey! watch the road!” sounded above the crying children.  Apparently the mentally disadvantaged 6’4 guy in the neon green shirt sitting behind the bus driver had gotten upset and punched the Plexiglas behind the driver’s head, sending the bus out of control.  We pulled over for a stop at the nearest Loves Truck Stop and waited for an hour while the police resolved the issue.  The bus driver was ready to get out of there, and took off with several passengers who had been left behind chasing the bus down the street.

 

After getting lost in Phoenix and passangers screaming opposing directions to the bus driver “TURN HERE!” and “GO STRAIGHT!” simultaneously, we arrived in Pheonix for a routine cleaning, which took 4 hours because the bus was that disgusting.

 

Mercifully back on the bus, I was ready to sleep for the first time in days. It didn’t last long before I was awakened by the driver calling: “It’s okay folks�"we’ll be back at the Phoenix station at any minute!” Apparently the bus was on fire. Bad wiring had caused an electrical fire and an urgent retreat to Phoenix.

 

Another tortuous wait in a greyhound line in Phoenix.  A European tourist was in line next to me. “It’s really nice seeing the country this way, you get to know the real United States away from the tourist attractions,” it all sounded romantic.  Just wait till you get on the bus, I thought quietly to myself.

 

On the bus again, I had another short lived nap.  “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOIN’!”

 

“Folks!” the bus driver shouted, “It’s already a hundred degrees in here!  And climbing.  Were’ in the middle of the desert!”  It was sweltering and the children were crying.

 

“KEAP GOIN’!” I found myself joining the canopy of “Yeah!”s  Arizona didn’t want me to leave.  I almost didn’t care if we died, I wanted out of the damn state.

 

“It’s 105, the bus driver reported.  I’m turning the bus around.”  A series of disappointed groans.

 

Another line, another wait, another bus.  A child was screaming because he wanted another passanger’s iPod, apparently because he likes to beat it against things. 

 

“IPOD!  IPOD!!!”  he called in utter agony. For 8 hours.

 

“I wanna tell you all what a pleasure it’s been to be your driver.  Not that any of you wanted to protect your driver from being beat up.  But I won’t hold it against you.  Please remember on future rides not to have relations with a woman while on the bus.  Or to let the bus driver call the police if it needs to be done.  Oh, and not to threaten your bus driver with violence and punch the back of his seat and almost cause a wreck.  Thank you for riding Greyhound.  Get off my bus.”

 

We’d made it!  People cheered, clapped, whistled.  It was truly a celebration.  I was exhausted when we arrived in Los Angeles, but even though I was dropped off in the heart of the downtown ghetto, I felt so safe�"overwhelmed with relief.  I was home.  I cherrily walked the mile to Little Tokyo, and reveled in every moment of my sushi. I loved every minute of Koreatown and Venice.  It was like paradise. With amazing food.  10 minutes in Westwood and my good friend Jesse was introducing me to Westly, candidate for Governor, touting me as a prominent environmentalist, he shook my hand and a million people took our picture (with my wrinkled greyhound clothes and scraggly unshaven face).  There was no time to visit even a fraction of my friends, but I realized how lucky I was to have such a wonderful group of people in LA.

 

My good friend Vince was getting married on 6/6/06-- It had been the first date available at the courthouse for some reason.  In the chapel in the corner of the Beverly Hills courthouse, downstairs from where people were protesting traffic tickets and fighting misdemeanors, Vince in his  overpriced black shirt, rolled up to show his pentagram tattoo, married a beautiful Louisiana girl with blue hair.  His hands were shaking when he put on the ring.  And I can honestly say, it warmed my heart more than any wedding I’ve ever been to.

 

I stood with my old boss on the balcony overlooking West LA as he smoked�"just like we did when I worked there.  He had books to recommend, updates on tooth-and-nail California politics, equally fascinating updates on his new puppy�"it was great talking to him.  “I like it so much here�"I don’t know how I’m going to stick it out in Tucson.”  David raised an eyebrow.  “Well, you know what I think.” He thought I should move back to LA.

 

The greyhound beckoned me back to Arizona.  This time I had a 10 hour

lay over in Pheonix because the bus won’t stop in Tucson at night.  Next time I  think I’ll take a “ride-tero”�"Mexican coyotes who double as local transport throughout the southwest.  I met some guys from some remote part of the Mexican coast who had just gotten themselves into the country for 20 bucks, and they told me how to hook a ride-tero�"maybe I’ll take one to their house when they make it back there in September.  Five minutes showing them how to use a payphone and I got an open invitation to paradise.  I love Mexico.

 

Hope you all are well.

 

J

Reviews

[Sam Marsella]

As a fellow traveler I identify. Cool story, I like the 'slice of life' style. Got a little lost identifying who was who and a couple of things were lost on me, but that could be because I'm not from 'murca.

Looking forward to reading some more.

[Red Raven]

I really like the way you started off and the character of the old lady. thanks for the read.