As I stand in line for a midnight bus the delicate rustling of the uncharacteristically cool summer night belies this humid southern city. I am soon to be en route from Charlotte, North Carolina to Washington, D.C. Despite this short weekend trip the same nervous excitement boils in me that has accompanied each of the great unknowns upon which I have embarked in the last two years. Like some sort of strange Pavlovian response to the sight of an overnight bus, the thrill of escape envelopes me, if only for six days.
As the random mass of strangers gradually forms and files onto the bus, in the way our culture was trained to do, another easy breeze sweeps my hair across my eyes closed and I revel in the peculiarly sweet loneliness of travel, the feeling of the unknown ahead. Though this is no great adventure for me I wonder the stories of the people with whom I will share this journey. Surely none of them on great adventures either, only American accents are heard around me. Visiting family in Raleigh, a college trip to New York City, or maybe just on their way back home. The bus to me feels like a lost art in America and missing the culture of travel I sit with a straggling sub-section of the lowest socioeconomic class, my poverty-ridden self included.
vietnamese sleeping bus = good times
But this is the only way I know how to travel, as cheaply as possible and swimming in shambles. My pillow drops from my arms as I go to hand the driver the bookmark on which I have scribbled my reservation number. But of course I have written the wrong number down, and my distaste for forming orderly lines has the entire bus waiting for me to get my shit together. The driver looks at me quizzically,
“What do you mean you don’t have a phone? You need to call customer service to get your itinerary number to get on this bus.” She is unflinching.
“Right, I understand that, but how can I call customer service if I don’t have a phone?” She is a brick wall, and my usually adorable incompetence falls flat on her unforgiving glare.
“Maybe you can ask someone on the bus.” She looks up towards the bus packed with tired people, ready to get on their way, and already annoyed that they are waiting for one last disorganized passenger to board.
I smile at her with the same apologetically clumsy puppy smile I offer to everyone who is forced to endure my own brand of ridiculousness and sheepishly ask, “Well…maybe…do you think…I could just…use yours?”
I look down at the phone clearly holstered to her hip. Her eyes follow mine to the obvious solution. With an exaggerated sigh she purses her lips askew and rolls her eyes, but succumbs, and makes the quick call to customer service to get me on the bus. For one incredulous moment I believe even this trip wasn’t meant to be. She is on the phone for less than two minutes. Wildly thankful to her I swear I see her fighting back a smile as I clumsily trip over my backpack while attempting to throw it under the bus. Typical Taylor, but I am finally on my way.
Minor disaster averted, I sit with my head pressed to the window as the unremarkable Carolina countryside passes by in relative darkness. The excited bubbling of anticipation has fizzled flat. This is not a thirty hour bus from Thailand to Laos. This is just D.C. for a weekend. The weekend that was supposed to be my last in the country before South Korea. And the knowledge that I no longer have an escape, that I am bound and gagged by my own poverty, suffocates me. Discarding the need for most material possessions freed me, but real freedom still only comes with having the money to leave. I sigh knowing even this trip was sponsored by the charity of my friends.
slave to the paper
I have no choice but to be where I am. I will go to work at the bar for tuppence in tips. I will save every dime I can. I will watch TV and drink cheap vodka with my roommate. I will have a routine and I will have no choice. Strange to think it is something most people want: things they can count on, familiarity to warm them at night. Here I have a job and a house and close friends and family, yet I feel stalled. Broken down on the side of the road in a town I never even meant to pass.
The bus pushes forward and I close my eyes, letting myself sway in the movements of such a massive thing. In that moment Au Revoir Simone sings into my ears, “only you can make you happy oh-ohhh…” and in the single moment of those simple words I suddenly realize, I am. Charlotte may be one of the last places on this planet I would chose to be, but I am writing. A lot. I am better friends with my sister than ever in our lives. I am spending time with the nieces and nephews who wouldn’t recognize me if I hadn’t come home when I did. And I am living rent-free with one of my closest friends in the world. I have five more months to save money and fulfill a promise to my mother that I would stay home for Christmas this year, and for the first time, I realize that’s OK.
Perhaps I got so used to moving that standing still started to feel like sinking. I wanted anything but to come back to the States and so have been fighting it since the moment I touched Californian soil. But South Korea isn’t happening for a reason, the UK isn’t happening for a reason. I am here until January. And as a wise, young Aussie once told me, if we are only excited about what is to come, we will miss all the joys of what is right in front of us. The rest of the world still lies ahead of me. But for the next five months I will revel in this present and remember how much I missed the ones I loved in the often sweet, but sometimes bitter loneliness of leaving.
Another beautifully written post. I can relate.
I’ve changed plans and thus routes so much in the past year that I’ve finally accepted the fact that I am staying put for 1.5 years (6 months down) in order to save the money I need to take off work and travel-wise.
Watching as friends and relatives focus their lives around stifling careers they despise, and the purchase of vastly expensive material goods makes me want nothing more.
I hope our paths meet again on the long and winding road.
oh kelly, i’m sure they will! for all the miles around this globe it’s an amazingly small place. incredible how easy it is to see people again when facebook tells us where everyone is! i miss you much and hope tahoe is treating you well 🙂
I absolutely love your blog. Though admittedly, i only get to read it sometimes, usually when you post something on it on fb and i’m there long enough to notice… but when i do… it’s engulfing. and i always find myself looking for more once i finish one. ONE IS NOT ENOUGH! it’s like i’m a crack fiend, and your blog is the fix.
sometimes. when i can afford it… and find the right street in the ghetto.
but i digress.
keep the good shit crankin tay. w00t w00t!
hi
Hi Tay…. Thanks for sending your father the blog. Forgive my slowness to recruit technology into the service of parenthood. As you know, my idea of “high-tech” is a telephone wire strung from here to the horizon forty-six feet above a corn field.
While is it clear that your porcelain good looks came from your mother, I would like to believe that your peripatetic lightness of mind and foot may have come from the shallow end of the gene pool.
Taylor, like you, I enjoy being at home, especially when I am reading or packing–in either case to go somewhere I have never been.
Having just returned from the back roads of Eastern Europe, I just purchased and old Chrysler which is even now being restored for top-down trips to the Cape and all manner of winding excursions into slightly less favored corners of America.
Thanks for the picture with Hudson. He looks like a man who could be home. I have no doubt that your life together under Heaven will be a movable feast.
Wow – Do I love you!
Pops