Greyhound Memoirs #4

MEET HOMEBOY
5/17/01 11:00am EST

Switched buses in K-zoo (Kalamazoo, Michigan for you out-of-staters). I guess I don't have to move my own checked bags. I just hope they made it on with me. I saw one being moved on, so that is good. The other stops have more than a 5-minute layover, so I may have to watch and0 move my bags there. But that's okay because I have time there and time is important when I am worried. The more I write the less any of this makes sense because I am so low on sleep I think I could sleep through someone screaming in my ear. I'm more worried than I've ever been. I usually don't worry easily and I guess this is no exception because this wont be easy. Oh, simple naive Eva she thinks this will be the hardest thing she will ever do and there for worth wasting page after page of this nonsensical steamy pile of hooey about worry. But wait, more hooey continues...

I'm just all wound-up with worry and nervousness and hunger and lack of sleep. I'm sick to my stomach. Even the butterflies are hungry at this point. But I keep waiting for the tears. Have I really become that detached from my feelings that I can be strong on the exterior?

I didn't cry when I said good-bye to anyone (to everyone). I felt really good, really happy until last night. When I was frantically running around trying to tie-up last minute strings, it started to sink in. A lot of those strings we left untied and I will trip on them later, for sure, but I haven't shed a tear for any of them.

Saying good-bye to Jamie was really good. We sat in his car and he continued to flirt with me. He knew nothing sexual was going to happen and yet he was sweet and caring and funny and concerned. He started by asking me all the risk-assessing parental questions he was so good at. And then he turned light and funny, saying I had to promise to make out with him the next time I saw him (if I wasn't married, which we both would be) and continuing to tell me how much fun he had making out with me in the past. He threw my judgment of character out the window of his Pontiac. All this time I had him pegged for an asshole and I would reflect on so many times spent with him and realize he was nothing but someone honest and caring and emotional and fun. They say hindsight's 20-20, does that make foresight legally blind. What do we have in this world, if not our blind faith that things will be this way or that? Maybe I will never know how to think things out as well as sheltered yuppie Jamie. And maybe I will consider thanking God that lack of sight, everyday.

The last bus had rainbows on all the seats, so happy. This bus seems more modern, less roomy -- 80s, instead of 70s.

Homeboy who called me "sleepyhead" on the last bus is now looking over my shoulder and breathing down my neck. He asked if I was writing in a diary. What do you think? Is this a diary? I should have told him, "No, I am writing a letter to the president of Zaire about Greyhound travel". I told him I was just sort of writing, keeping track, and killing time. I'm writing my life story. My life and this trip have that story, shock value, adventure thing I thrive on, written all over it.

I love to talk about myself. I hate writing classes because there's all this talk about the reader and I should make a correction at this point. I used to hate writing classes because I didn't care about the reader. All I cared about was myself. I read my website and I know I sound like a pretension fuck, but it's hard no to. Writing things down make you feel like you have to be someone else. Writing makes words like "mom" turn into "mother". Uhms, and uhs and ers in conversation, completely disappear in writing. My goal is to write with the air of the common, but in the style of a pro. I won't learn what I need to know in school, but I will go and I'll take the required courses. Then I'll just write and it won't be awful, like this.

Greyhound Memoirs #3

SMOKER ON BOARD
5/17/01 10:25am

Just woke up from my nap for breakfast, which consists of a Cherry Coke from Arby's. Sleeping on a bus seat is like resting in a four-star hotel that you can't afford and have no intention of paying for. I am feeling really poor. This is just conditioning because as I live my low-wage, scraping-by life in Portland it will feel like I am very wealthy and rewarded with ample things people with money will never know. I feel like trash on this bus, but for some reason I thought I would feel powerful being within 10 feet of all my belongings and caring my net worth in cash. I tell myself that maybe I will feel better after Chicago, big-city trash to co-mingle with instead of these ten midwestern farm-town folk.

Had time for a cigarette, with so-called-breakfast. I spent the 7 minutes thinking about what my mom said about how I should be upfront with Jack and Sandy about my nicotine addiction. She thinks that would be "adult" and they'd respect that. I think I'd rather skip the lecture and be a kid in their eyes. I guess they're going to know. Non-smokers can detect a smoker from a distance further than bees can smell fear. I tell myself that I am ashamed of my habit, I have no excuse and if I was truly "adult" I wouldn't smoke. I tell myself I will quit after college, expecting that it will take me another 10 years to get an associate degree in anything. Four years after this bus trip Jack and Sandy still don't know I smoke (at least I've never told them and they haven't said anything). My father in-law and his wife and her two children and their husbands don't know I smoke, as far as I know. It's easier to hide habits you aren't ready to change, than admit things and apologize for the stuff you don't regret.

Greyhound Memoirs #2

BIRTHPLACE OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
5/17/01 9:00am EST

As I glance up from the exciting book I just started, I see we are pulling off the highway. Exit 139. Why does that seem so familiar? Oh, we are stopping in Jackson "Birthplace of The Republican Party". I can't figure out if this sign was put up for bragging rights or warning purposes. Possibly both. I thought I would never have to come back here.

Jackson is where I came to file my unemployment. Oddly enough I've never spent a dry day in Jackson. I hope bus rides, unemployment claims and gray skies are not foreshadowing in this story of my life. But of course, they are. Because God is a literary man and enjoys a good lesson at his children's expense.

What kind of tattoo parlor opens at 9AM? Oh, the kind that is also a motel. Only in Jackson, Michigan. The bus driver makes an announcement over the muffled and scratchy P.A. "This is Jackson. This is Jackson." And I think, 'Hell it must be'. That which doesn't kill me...that which doesn't kill me...that which doesn't kill me...

Greyhound Memoirs #1

As promised here is the first entry from my Greyhound journal. It has been edited to include reflections and inserted explainations. I couldn't wait until May 19th, there are a lot of entries to put up. I may eventually have available the actual word-for-word entries, but for now, this is how I want it...

YOU DON'T SAY
5/17/01 8:05am EST

The bus hasn't left the station and my mind races as I leave the town I grew up in, headed west, in the early morning.

Mom and I spent the night chatting about boys, playing "You Don't Say*", trying to rest. I have exactly two hours of sleep to help me through, what I thought then, would be the hardest of a three-day journey. Or so I might have thought at the time.

I will find everything I packed within 3 seconds of wanting it, because 4 duffels is not much space to pack your life away. I forgot my face wash, along with probably a million other things. But they have face wash in Portland and I'm sure I'll find plenty of things.

I developed this attitude about travel when I was young, probably 7 or 8, when we went out on one of many family camping trips. I remember my father, perfectly anal and "like a boy scout" perfectly prepared, asking 3,000 questions. "Did we pack the toothbrushes?" "Did we pack the tent?" Us kids never dare respond, our mother always saying, "Yes, dear". We all answer our own questions. After he'd asked those three thousand some-odd questions, he’d always say, "You know what, we're behind schedule. If we forgot something, we'll buy it along the way."

This phrase has never left me. "If we forgot something, we'll buy it along the way." I once didn't have time to pack due to a hectic work/commute/class schedule for my first trip to San Francisco and bought underwear at a Target in Oak Ridge, instead of doing laundry. In that occasion and since, this sentence has come in handy when traveling.

My momma always said, "Everything’s gonna to be okay." My mom said, "You wanted an adventure and that's what you'll get."

“When you're run down after the first twenty hours and still have forty more to go, just think -- that's how long I was in labor with you.”, she said. And I guess the moral (although I know it wasn't exactly the moral she wanted me to get) is good things are worth waiting for or as I told myself pre-shower, blurry-eyed in the mirror this morning, "nothing worth doing is easy." Is that the way the proverb goes? Am I INSANE? Is it: "the right thing to do isn't always easy"? or "something a little less throw-myself-into-the-fires-of-hell-and-see-what-kind-of-cinder-I-become ? Anyway, I was a little more self-righteous then, but no-less impulsive.

I wish she hadn't told me, as I waited for my bus, her plans of buying me a plane ticket. but as Jamie would interject, "Everything happens for a reason" and of course, he is right, unoriginal, but right.

Mom slipped me some cash and packed me a bagel. Oh, don't you worry, I'll be just fine, Momma.

The bus pulls away. Mom waves and blows a kiss. She probably saw that in a train station scene in an old country western and found it endearing and romantic. But nothing really seems that way this morning as I look out at my arbor of green wet leaves for the last time as my home.

Portland will be exactly like this, wet, gray sky, green, charming. Why am I moving again? "Change is good for the soul." Oh right, of course, Ben, thanks I forgot.

Ben had been living in San Francisco for almost a year (and hadn't made any real friends) when he told me "change is good...". When I arrived in Portland, the weather was nothing like that of Michigan's when I left. The comparison didn't strike me then, because those three days felt like an eternity and I was more concerned with getting a shower than what the outdoor conditions might be. The weather was sunny, in the 70s and blue skies with light fluffy white clouds . This beautiful weather would help me fall in love with Portland that entire first summer.

*"You Don't Say" is a game show that was popular in my mother's era. The way we have always played (not sure these are the T.V. rules), since I was a small child, two player game. player one layer chooses a famous person and then gives a hint about their name (i.e. Audrey Hepburn, hint: when you put your hand too close to a stove you get...?), second player gives a guess to the hint until they get what the first player is looking for (i.e. "scalding", "boiling", "hot", "BURN!"). As this happens the first player can give hints to help the second player get to the concept they are looking for (i.e. "not scalding, what does the scalding liquid do to your skin") Once the desired answer is given the first player says, "right" and continues on with the second hint (i.e. hint 2: a sexually transmitted disease). The second player guesses at the second, third, fourth (if needed) hint, until they arrive at all the words that sound like the famous persons name. Then the second player (or "guesser") strings these weird clues together to create a name (i.e. Burn, Hepatitis, Awe, Dry) and throws them around in different orientations until they guess the famous person in question (i.e. Burn, Awe, Hepatitis, Dry. Awe, Burn, Hepatitis, Dry. Dry, Awe, Burn, Hepatitis, Hepatitis, Burn, Awe, Dry. Oh Hepburn...Audrey Hepburn!!!). Like this example, the hints often take a lot of reworking and are as far from the name as possible with out appearing to be a "cheater". It really is a fun game that will pass a lot of time. As the years have passed, my mother and I have created rules to bridge the generation gap (i.e. you can only use famous people you think or know that I would recognize.). My mother and I must have played 1,000,000 games of "You Don't Say" in our short time on Earth. It is something that always brings us back to square one, just saying those words, "Let's play a game of You Don't Say." Try it with your friends, parents or kids. It really never should have been taken off the air.

Greyhound Memoirs

In honor of my 4th anniversary in Portland (coming up in less than 2 weeks), I pulled out my Greyhound journal. The original idea was to transcribe the journal on this very blog. But after reading it and talking about it, I thought I should make a website for all the wonderful Greyhound stories. Then as I started to compose my journal into digital form it began to metamorphosize into something bigger.

I have 5 pages completed of my autobiography. I know that I cannot release it until I am at least 35 and I have no intention to. But the story begins with my Greyhound Memoirs and continues on into my life in Portland and beyond. The Greyhound Memoirs section (one of three) will be blogged with revisions and commentary on May 19th, the day I set foot in Portland four years ago. I haven't figured out how to make it readable (as far as mass amounts of text go) but I will come up with something.

Your project: think of good names for my Greyhound story site. greyhoundmemoirs.com is the best I can come up with so far.

Also, I am expecting critical reviews on my memoirs...so get your thinking caps on and your constructively out of its box and get ready to interact with the only true interactive media.

Read the entries:

Read the entries:


• Greyhound Memoirs #1
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #2
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #3
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #4
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #5
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #6
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #7
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #8
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #9
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #10
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #11
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #12
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #13
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #14
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #15
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #16
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #17
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #18
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #19
  
  
• Greyhound Memoirs #20



• Greyhound Memoirs #21