5.18

I feel cautiously definitive when I say that people do not ride Greyhound buses. Maybe they were interesting before (He leaned over there seat back and said "I've been married once—" She threw her head back and laughed. "I've been married three times!" "Three!" "I'm Marilyn Monroe." "You are Marilyn. You are.") but boarding the bus destroys some vital energy in all of us. We all sleep (The four-year-old traveling with her dad popped up every ten seconds to make another silly face. Rajiv smiled every time. The movie he is watching has a mixed cast, but the main characters are ludicrously attractive Indians. At one point, a statue if the Buddha appears, fades, is replaced by a cross, only to be replaced by Rama. She's still making faces. At the rest stop, he buys some candy and tracks down her dad: "Does she want some candy?" He offers me a Snapple and we talk about education [how did he guess I'm an English teacher?] and India and Mother Theresa. He met her.) like lifeless husks. Reduced, as it were, by boiling, to a homogenous humanity, ("When do we get to LA?" I don't mean to misgender him; he presented very strongly male. But his hands were gorgeous, with long, perfect nails painted a deep crimson. He sighed at my answer—"An hour until Redding, more until Sacramento, and more stops until noon"—and said "Well, it just means more smoke beaks, I guess." His jeans fit like a mom, his hat with ear flaps askew, his satchel manly with a woman's coin purse tucked inside.) no part of us more bland and tasteless than the whole. We only speak about the trip: how far? What's the delay? Why did the driver suddenly pull to the shoulder and exit the bus? And that, only in hushed tones ("I'm retiring in the next few years. My children, they say 'oh, you should relax!' but why? I have an idea: the home, in the Philippines?" "Yeah?" "It is too perfect, I could make an air b&b, or a bed and breakfast, you know. The island there, there is a small island and the word has got out about us. It is a small town, but the beach is very good and the tourists are starting to flock. I could start a b&b and maybe have some extra money in my retirement. See? This is my house." "Wow, actually." "And this: this is my town, my island." "Oh, it's gorgeous. Ah, I'm jealous. I've wanted to go to the Philippines for a while." "You should! It's a good base, and from there you get flights to Thailand, to Vietnam, to anywhere. I got a flight to Bangkok and it cost me, you won't believe, it was thirty eight dollars!") devoid of life. The bottom of the barrel has been upturned and the last remnants scraped out and squeezed, and the wine it makes is congealed into the seats like a Dickensian scene. We are the worst available, and the best they have (She hasn't taken her earbuds out since LA. She does not seem like the sort of person to be even curious about a boy growing a Civil War-style handlebar mustache. I am intensely curious why I am doing it. She and I made eye contact twice. The second time, I threw her a thumbs-up. Why the hell not? She blinked and rolled her head away as if letting it fall, avoiding my thumb, my smile, my mustache. She is the most attractive person I've seen, apart, maybe, from Rainn, the driver who's not even on this bus. He had a dope hat and a cavalier way of demanding that you not make him kick you off for smoking pot. He gave fist-bumps to kids. She got off the bus in Phoenix, and while I'll miss the idea that hot girls ride Greyhounds, I'll miss the actual person of Rainn. She's a host, a homogenous solid, a distillation of an abject aspect of humanity that dares not board a bus unless at the extremity of need. She reads this post, skips the parentheticals, and nods like she gets it.)

Honestly, I don't know when I get off, but it can't come soon enough.