.
"The struggle in your eyes, keeps me alive."
A song lyric from one of my favorite bands of the Eighties, The Cult, 'She sells Sanctuary.' "Yeah, the world drags me down!" Yes, I'm listening to music as the steel wheels of this bus turn on the rain slicked highway. I hate snow and rain on a bus. The damn thing is too big not to slip and slide. And yet, it doesn't. This motherfucker roars down the highway as if some naked below the waist convicts were chasing it.
My back is torturing me. It feels like someone has pulled my right testicle from my body and is banging on it with a hammer. Not very sportingly. The bus stops in Newark, New Jersey. Even at night it looks like a ghetto in Hell. I am amazed at how urban, and completely without any life, New Jersey can look like. There aren't even trees or shrubbery here. The door to the bus opens and people file in. The guy, right in the front of the line, looks to his left and his right at seats as he works his way toward me and then slips into the seat next to mine. It never fails me. I'm so approachable looking that no one but very attractive women walk by me when looking for a seat.
I scrunch up in the corner of my seat, making my testicle yelp out like a sat on sparrow. I grimace, then enjoy the ride, twisting and turning as if someone was putting a pair of pliers to my man parts. It's a long ride, and somewhere along it I droop off and fall asleep. I don't know how, but I do. I wake up a few minutes later, still riding hard through the rain. This keeps up until we reach some small town and my companion gets up and leaves me to my double seat. I stretch out, spread my legs, flex my back. Hell I do everything but zip down my zipper and dangle my balls out of my pants. This pain in my back is for the birds. WHY DIDN'T I BRING A PAIN KILLER?
Before I knew it we were circling a building with a Greyhound symbol hanging from a sign. Right there I sat up and a painted window on a nondescript window read: Norfolk Bail Bonds. I'm at the bus station in Norfolk!!!! And as we go around the ass-end of the building ALL of the buses are parked in their respective slots. My heart is overjoyed. This meant that I wouldn't have to sleep in some fleabag hotel tonight. Or rather 5:30 this morning.
I emerge from the bus to find my bag thrown like garbage against the wheels of another parked bus, but that's alright. Who cares? Not me. Not any more. My balls hurt. Well actually it's my back telegraphing the pain to my nut like Morse code. Now get this. I ask the bus driver how do I find the bus to Ahoskie. He says: "Inside, gate 2." I nod. I walk to the door in front of us. It's locked. This is gate one. I walk down, past a second door...guess what? This is gate 2. A bus driver is standing in front of it. I stop, open my mouth to speak but he points down the side of the building. I move on, passing another gate, this is gate 3. Now right across from the gates are buses parked in their numbered berths. All of their engines are off, except one.
I walk on, past gate 6, the one with the bus running it's engine and around gate 8 I find the door opened. Slipping into the building I trudge back up the gates reaching a line at gate 2. A very obese armed police officer, whose arms looked like two crocheted ornaments on both sides of his body and NOT making it to his waistline, shouted: "5:30 bus to Ahoskie! Gate 2." Well, I guess I'm on the right line.
We move forward, boarding. I get to gate 2, hand the driver my ticket and he takes one. "Gate 6" he points down the walkway outside. Down I walk, the second time tonight to the bus and drop off my luggage at the side of it with the rest, and then climb aboard. I make my way back to the same seat that I had before on the other bus. Relaxing, I squirm until I find a comfortable position and wait.
Presently the driver slides into a his seat, picks up his microphone and announces, in a heavy southern drawl, "Ladies and gentlemens, thank you for riding Greyhound. I'm your bus driver and these are MY rules. NO smoking or drinking on MY bus or you will be terminated of your ride. I don't want to hear your radio, so wear headsets. I don't want to hear your cellphone conversations, so speak low. There are no smoke breaks on my bus unless I say so. So if'n I stop, you'd best stay inside because I don't look or wait for passengers. You will find yourself left behind. If you enjoy MY rules, you'll enjoy MY ride. Have a nice day."
The bus pulls back and then out, hitting the road. I am happy. I'm on my way home.
Hobobob
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