Greyhound Chic
DATELINE 29 July 2007 Los Angeles
So last week like I'm waiting and waiting and waiting to take the Greyhound Bus from Los Angeles to Bumfuck Texas and shit.
In case you don't know, the L.A. Greyhound is on 7th Street in the pseudo-chic industrial area of downtown (to the extent that there is a downtown L.A.). It's full of big buildings that now aspire to be what SoHo might have been in in the mid-1980's. Ryan Gosling supposedly lives in the 'hood (right around the corner from where ex-teen-heartthrob and my fellow H junkie Tennessee Brad got busted).
TB aside, I was trying to avoid Skid Row Staph, a celebrated disease collaterally associated with the neighborhood beat. My bus was late, so I went to the McDonald's down the block to chow down some $1 double cheeseburgers with no ketchup, which filled me up and made me feel like shit.
So I meandered back to the Station and waited for my Bus, where all these Mexican-like dudes were lining up their suitcases (without standing next to or anywhere near them) as if they were trying to save their place in line. I say, a line is a line is a line is a line is a line is a line -- you can't just have a plastic bag or a cheap-ass 1985 boombox to allegedly "hold" your place in the queue. Where do these Mexicans learn their manners? Tijuana? I never once had to stand in line in Tijuana to buy chiva or live La Vida Loca.
Not having any luggage myself, I felt free to board the bus first, which I did.
The pigs searched me first, and metal-detected me with that wand thingy, but all they made me do was prove that I had a bunch of coins in my pocket -- American coins, I might add. My guess is that they searched me 'cuz I'm white (or can pass for white), didn't have an accent or stink of Tequila, and don't have dreadlocks and scummy clothes. Next time I take Greyhound (like there will be) I will visit the dollar stores nearby and dress more appropriately. Maybe I can even find a bootleg bottle of Faberge Babe. And if it's empty, I'll fill it with Early Times titrated with a hefty helping of something else.
So I got on the bus and baby-gobbled my day-old blueberry yogurt as a kind of pepto-bismal to sort of offset the creepiness of the DCBs. Didn't work, but I'll get to that in a minute.
The bus gets fuller and fuller and fuller, and I'm back by the bathroom where I think fewer people will want to sit, but I'm wrong. On Greyhound, everyone wants to sit next to the shitter. I staked out two seats that I hadn't realized were stuck in the reclined position, and adopted them as my new home, at least until Phoenix. But the backaches were worth every pill.
In front of me was some Nigerian dude showing off his sketchpad of pencil drawings of random people. I don't know shit about art, but this art was shit. An emaciated young white bitch with dreadlocks said "hi" to me and sat next to Nigeria. She loved his drawings. Through the night, they took turns going back and forth to the shitter to smoke crack in the bathroom, and bragging about each hit afterwards. Maybe I was jealous; after all, I wasn't a strung out dreadlocked out-of-work stripper. Just another uncomfortable frump on the bus.
But as the yogurted cheeseburgers can attest, I discreetly puked into a plastic bag, tied it shut (just so, but not quite), and stufffed it overhead toward the front of the bus while everyone else was asleep and dreaming about tequila or smoking crack or whatever. Smelling the stench on my own breath, I took off my sandals to distract anyone alert enough to care.
I love Sebagos. They absorb and retain foot stench quite well, and mine are no exception. And my feet really hurt from trudging around 7th street. So I take my shoes off and massage my heels and my toes and I feel like I'm the beach in Hawaii or wherever else you can get a one-hour, two-dollar, foot massage. And that felt better. [Though now my hands stank.]
Phoenix was another story. The Driver said that Greyhound needed to Clean the Bus. So we stopped in Phoenix at about 4 a.m. and all of us had to get off the bus. And wait for it to be cleaned and ready to head back on toward Dallas. The white dreadlocked stripper chick manages to get on the bus before me (!) and took two seats directly across the aisle, lying down, as the bus continues to get packed to capacity. I also have two (broken) seats to myself, and I tell the standing Mexicans to sit next to her. She pretends to be sick. Says she took a Klonipin. (wish she had.) Also says she had to deal with stinky feet all night and that she tried to use a special oil in her nose to unsuccessfully obscure the smell.
And I'm thinking that whatever she put up her nose, it wasn't oil.
So while she goes to the shitter (being "sick"), I explain to the people who can't find a desirable seat that she was up all night smoking crack in the bathroom and my two seats are broken and that she isn't really sick.
By lucky eavesdropping chance, a fellow stripper also got on the bus in Phoenix and sat a few aisles away, and they merrily carried on a long distance conversation about where the best places to strip in Tuscon are, and how to make $1,000 off a champagne table dance. So while I'm forcibly crammed into a conscious fixed broken-seat position, the dreadlocked stripper gets to lounge around in her two-seat mansion, gabbing and slurring loudly about stripping and sex and money and clients with her verbal penpal and adoptive fellow little sister stripper friend.
The Nigerian dude was also back on the bus, as well as some unlikely looking pudgy 50something social worker who was bitching and babbling nonstop about how rude people were to board the bus before "the luggage line" and something about anxiety and border patrol and Xanax and how to get kicked off the Bus by Rumour Alone. Always volunteering that she was on her way to Dallas to be there for her dead mother who was "still dying," but they wouldn't know until the end of the week, so she had to be there by the end of the week (though the bus was to arrive tomorrow), staying awake and babbling. Maybe she just wanted to get the fuck out of Phoenix and Tuscon and wherever else she might be headed. I know I did.
Next Stop, Lordsburg.
So last week like I'm waiting and waiting and waiting to take the Greyhound Bus from Los Angeles to Bumfuck Texas and shit.
In case you don't know, the L.A. Greyhound is on 7th Street in the pseudo-chic industrial area of downtown (to the extent that there is a downtown L.A.). It's full of big buildings that now aspire to be what SoHo might have been in in the mid-1980's. Ryan Gosling supposedly lives in the 'hood (right around the corner from where ex-teen-heartthrob and my fellow H junkie Tennessee Brad got busted).
TB aside, I was trying to avoid Skid Row Staph, a celebrated disease collaterally associated with the neighborhood beat. My bus was late, so I went to the McDonald's down the block to chow down some $1 double cheeseburgers with no ketchup, which filled me up and made me feel like shit.
So I meandered back to the Station and waited for my Bus, where all these Mexican-like dudes were lining up their suitcases (without standing next to or anywhere near them) as if they were trying to save their place in line. I say, a line is a line is a line is a line is a line is a line -- you can't just have a plastic bag or a cheap-ass 1985 boombox to allegedly "hold" your place in the queue. Where do these Mexicans learn their manners? Tijuana? I never once had to stand in line in Tijuana to buy chiva or live La Vida Loca.
Not having any luggage myself, I felt free to board the bus first, which I did.
The pigs searched me first, and metal-detected me with that wand thingy, but all they made me do was prove that I had a bunch of coins in my pocket -- American coins, I might add. My guess is that they searched me 'cuz I'm white (or can pass for white), didn't have an accent or stink of Tequila, and don't have dreadlocks and scummy clothes. Next time I take Greyhound (like there will be) I will visit the dollar stores nearby and dress more appropriately. Maybe I can even find a bootleg bottle of Faberge Babe. And if it's empty, I'll fill it with Early Times titrated with a hefty helping of something else.
So I got on the bus and baby-gobbled my day-old blueberry yogurt as a kind of pepto-bismal to sort of offset the creepiness of the DCBs. Didn't work, but I'll get to that in a minute.
The bus gets fuller and fuller and fuller, and I'm back by the bathroom where I think fewer people will want to sit, but I'm wrong. On Greyhound, everyone wants to sit next to the shitter. I staked out two seats that I hadn't realized were stuck in the reclined position, and adopted them as my new home, at least until Phoenix. But the backaches were worth every pill.
In front of me was some Nigerian dude showing off his sketchpad of pencil drawings of random people. I don't know shit about art, but this art was shit. An emaciated young white bitch with dreadlocks said "hi" to me and sat next to Nigeria. She loved his drawings. Through the night, they took turns going back and forth to the shitter to smoke crack in the bathroom, and bragging about each hit afterwards. Maybe I was jealous; after all, I wasn't a strung out dreadlocked out-of-work stripper. Just another uncomfortable frump on the bus.
But as the yogurted cheeseburgers can attest, I discreetly puked into a plastic bag, tied it shut (just so, but not quite), and stufffed it overhead toward the front of the bus while everyone else was asleep and dreaming about tequila or smoking crack or whatever. Smelling the stench on my own breath, I took off my sandals to distract anyone alert enough to care.
I love Sebagos. They absorb and retain foot stench quite well, and mine are no exception. And my feet really hurt from trudging around 7th street. So I take my shoes off and massage my heels and my toes and I feel like I'm the beach in Hawaii or wherever else you can get a one-hour, two-dollar, foot massage. And that felt better. [Though now my hands stank.]
Phoenix was another story. The Driver said that Greyhound needed to Clean the Bus. So we stopped in Phoenix at about 4 a.m. and all of us had to get off the bus. And wait for it to be cleaned and ready to head back on toward Dallas. The white dreadlocked stripper chick manages to get on the bus before me (!) and took two seats directly across the aisle, lying down, as the bus continues to get packed to capacity. I also have two (broken) seats to myself, and I tell the standing Mexicans to sit next to her. She pretends to be sick. Says she took a Klonipin. (wish she had.) Also says she had to deal with stinky feet all night and that she tried to use a special oil in her nose to unsuccessfully obscure the smell.
And I'm thinking that whatever she put up her nose, it wasn't oil.
So while she goes to the shitter (being "sick"), I explain to the people who can't find a desirable seat that she was up all night smoking crack in the bathroom and my two seats are broken and that she isn't really sick.
By lucky eavesdropping chance, a fellow stripper also got on the bus in Phoenix and sat a few aisles away, and they merrily carried on a long distance conversation about where the best places to strip in Tuscon are, and how to make $1,000 off a champagne table dance. So while I'm forcibly crammed into a conscious fixed broken-seat position, the dreadlocked stripper gets to lounge around in her two-seat mansion, gabbing and slurring loudly about stripping and sex and money and clients with her verbal penpal and adoptive fellow little sister stripper friend.
The Nigerian dude was also back on the bus, as well as some unlikely looking pudgy 50something social worker who was bitching and babbling nonstop about how rude people were to board the bus before "the luggage line" and something about anxiety and border patrol and Xanax and how to get kicked off the Bus by Rumour Alone. Always volunteering that she was on her way to Dallas to be there for her dead mother who was "still dying," but they wouldn't know until the end of the week, so she had to be there by the end of the week (though the bus was to arrive tomorrow), staying awake and babbling. Maybe she just wanted to get the fuck out of Phoenix and Tuscon and wherever else she might be headed. I know I did.
Next Stop, Lordsburg.
Labels: bus, greyhound, los angeles, nigeria, phoenix, stripper, tuscon, xanax
posted by Opal Mehta at 9:03 PM
2 comments
