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.