Get on the bus!

One of the biggest mistakes I made in my college days was thinking it was a good idea to ride a Greyhound bus from Ohio to Missouri to visit my then-boyfriend, who was in the Army and stationed at Ft. Leonard Wood. (You could also file "Dating a chauvinist Army pig" in this file folder of "Bad Ideas.") I didn't have a car at the time -- my parents had made me leave it at home because they (rightfully) assumed that I would take it and drive down to Missouri myself. So in an act of defiance, I bought a ticket to go see him over Labor Day weekend.

There's probably a whole thick chapter of my life I could write about lessons learned on the road, albeit much more terrifying than anything Kerouac wrote, and more depressing than anything Hunter S. Thompson could provide. But for the sake of time and the sake of my attention span, we'll go with the early impressions...

My roommate went with me to wait at the bus stop, which actually wasn't a bus stop at all, rather it was an alley behind a Circle K, in front of a cigar shop where old men sat and smoked and leered at two college girls, one with her bags packed. The bus was late. I was already full of anticipation and excitement to see my boyfriend, whom I hadn't seen in two months. The bus finally rolled up and I looked giddily at my roommate -- who mostly looked terrified, mostly because the old men in the cigar shop were loudly discussing the rotundness of her ass, and now I was leaving her to walk home from the cigar shop alone -- as I passed off my bags to the bus driver.

"Hi!" I said cheerfully. He was a black gentleman, probably in his 60's, with his crumpled Greyhound uniform sporting sweat stains in the armpits and chest. He looked at me, unimpressed by my chipper demeanor. He held out his hand. I shook it. His reaction would indicate he was asking for my ticket rather than a cheery "How d'ya do?".

I waited while people got off the bus. A couple hippie looking people -- this was a college town after all -- got off first, followed by a dirty looking man muttering to himself. I sidestepped to get out of his way and after making sure nobody else was getting off -- and that all multiple personalities had left with their respective owners -- I got on the bus. I was off on an adventure.

What ensued was kind of like that scene early in Forrest Gump, when a young Forrest gets on the school bus. The bus was packed to the gills. My excitement was quickly fading into panic as I realized that I'd have to sit with someone... a stranger. But who? There weren't even any seats. As I was frantically scanning past faces and looking for an empty seat, I spotted one near the back of the bus. The only open seat on the bus was smack in the middle of a large group of large, black women.

You have to imagine the scene. Sweet little country girl taking off on her first solo cross-country adventure, walking down the aisle of the bus trying to mask the sheer terror that was inevitably spreading across my face. I looked at the woman sitting in the aisle next to the window seat that would become mine.

"May I sit in that seat?" I asked as sweetly as possible.

I was met with a long silent stare from her and her group. I looked frantically back toward the front of the bus, hoping I'd missed a seat. I hadn't. In that time the bus started up. I lurched against the side of a seat and against a man in an Army jacket and a long, straggly gray ponytail.

"Fucking WATCH IT!" he sneered at me. I looked desperately back at the woman next to the seat again, my eyes pleading with her. Look, I want to sit there as much as you want me to sit there next to you. But please, please don't make this difficult, I pleaded in my mind. She leaned back, smashing her fat into the seat and pulling her purse up into her bosom, indicating for me to squeeze past her (impossible) to my seat. I thanked her and got into my seat by more or less leaping over her into the seat and squishing myself as close to the window as possible. Even then, her fat spilled over onto my side.

I have a thing with touching people. Especially strangers. Especially fat parts. Especially sweaty parts. My phobia has gotten worse since then.

I settled into my seat and took out a book, feeling the eyes of the group around me narrowing. As the bus cruised down the interstate, I tried to read -- it was a Stephen King book but I don't remember which now... it was the one that had Rob Lowe in the movie -- but I kept watching the road and glancing at my watch and realizing that I was going to be on the road for a full 20 hours before reaching my destination. And realizing perhaps this was a mistake.

So I did the only thing that I could at 19 when I was in a self-imposed bad idea. I called my mom.

"I just wanted to let you know I'm on my way," I said as cheerfully as possible. My mom had been adamantly against the idea, citing that Greyhound buses were only for "rapists, retards, child molesters, and the clinically insane." I was pretty sure I'd passed all of the above in that long walk down the bus aisle looking for a seat, and all things considered, maybe it wasn't so bad that I'd wound up next to a very large woman who only resented me sitting next to her, rather than wanting to rape/kill/molest me.

"Well I hope you have a safe trip!" she chimed back. At the time I thought she was trying to be as optimistic about the situation as possible, since there was nothing she could do to stop me by this point. But I realize now that she knew that I knew that this was a huge mistake, and there was nothing I could do about it. She quickly got off the phone and I stared down the interstate.

This was a very bad idea, I decided. This was my declaration of independence from my parents, it would be an adventure, I would see my boyfriend soon and... hell, this was a horrible idea. And I have to pee.

But I wouldn't pee. I wouldn't pee on the bus. I wouldn't pee in the stations. (That's another story entirely.) I didn't pee, despite reeeaaaallllly having to, for over 24 hours. The end result would be a raging urinary tract infection that would land me in the student health center two weeks later, crying and pissing needles every five minutes. The urinary tract infection had graduated into a full-blown kidney infection, but I somehow wound up getting tested for every STD imaginable. It came back as a clean bill of health on the STD front, though it was great to get that phone call from my parents when the labwork showed up on their health insurance.

In the first hour on the road, the trip I'd greatly romanticized in my mind was revealing itself for what it was -- a massively, incredibly hugely bad idea. I considered taking a bus back to school from Cincinnati, the first stop, but I couldn't give up so easily. Looking back, I probably should have.