As a man, you would like to venture far and transmit stories home about your encounters with the world and with your self. Descriptions of ordinary lonely places, and the extraordinary things that sometimes transpire there, especially when you're only passing through. These are the places most people don't notice, and you can't seem to stop staring into. As a boy, it was like that too.
You would like to write long letters home, but you don't remember the address. So you write them in fragments, folding the pages, leaving them under rocks, in bus shelters, slipping them into the pockets of unattended coats.
Waiting in bus stations thirty years ago like some undiscovered prince. The girl in the white short- shorts and cowboy hat. A vivid story from a middle-aged man of easy living in Guadalajara. Another girl, sleeping on your shoulder, her sailor boyfriend just having shipped out on West Pac. You went into a Casper, Wyoming bar with her, and all the patrons started laughing, so you bought a pint of tequila to go.
Mostly there were no girls beside you, no stories told, except for the ones in your head about the people and the scenery going by. There was just the miles, the frequent stops, leaking time and your hurting ass.
Near Christmas, groggy, you opened the doors to the one in downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the night to find a sea of black and brown faces waiting miserably and staring back at you. "Look, Mama, a white boy!"
You drank wine on the bus somewhere with a long-timer, just paroled, hoping to spend Christmas with his daughter estranged now 20 years. He was holding your bottle when the two of you dozed off. It hit the floor with a tell-tale clank and slid into the aisle. The driver pulled off the road in the middle of the winterized American West and told him to get off the bus. You both pleaded with the driver.
It's Christmas, man. He's just trying to get home!
But there are rules, and the driver put him off in accordance with those rules. The ex-con shook your hand, wished you well, and got off into the darkness with a particular sort of resignation that suggested he'd always been told he couldn't stay.
There were a lot of people like that. There still are. And their stories get into you and they change you a little bit. You thought about some of them today.
You would like to write long letters home, but you don't remember the address. So you write them in fragments, folding the pages, leaving them under rocks, in bus shelters, slipping them into the pockets of unattended coats.
Waiting in bus stations thirty years ago like some undiscovered prince. The girl in the white short- shorts and cowboy hat. A vivid story from a middle-aged man of easy living in Guadalajara. Another girl, sleeping on your shoulder, her sailor boyfriend just having shipped out on West Pac. You went into a Casper, Wyoming bar with her, and all the patrons started laughing, so you bought a pint of tequila to go.
Mostly there were no girls beside you, no stories told, except for the ones in your head about the people and the scenery going by. There was just the miles, the frequent stops, leaking time and your hurting ass.
Near Christmas, groggy, you opened the doors to the one in downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the night to find a sea of black and brown faces waiting miserably and staring back at you. "Look, Mama, a white boy!"
You drank wine on the bus somewhere with a long-timer, just paroled, hoping to spend Christmas with his daughter estranged now 20 years. He was holding your bottle when the two of you dozed off. It hit the floor with a tell-tale clank and slid into the aisle. The driver pulled off the road in the middle of the winterized American West and told him to get off the bus. You both pleaded with the driver.
It's Christmas, man. He's just trying to get home!
But there are rules, and the driver put him off in accordance with those rules. The ex-con shook your hand, wished you well, and got off into the darkness with a particular sort of resignation that suggested he'd always been told he couldn't stay.
There were a lot of people like that. There still are. And their stories get into you and they change you a little bit. You thought about some of them today.
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