It
is cold on this Greyhound bus. Even all through Florida,
when the long gray machine stopped at intervals to pick
up various rednecks, I wore my jacket. Two girls in particular
brought me to the realization that Florida rednecks are
the worst variety. I don't know who gave these people
cell phones but the redneck guy in the seat in front of
me was manipulating his girlfriend between f-words.
"I'll
get off this fucking bus right now and not come visit"
He threatened. God I wish she would have told him to go
ahead and get off. You know the motherfucker wasn't gonna
blow a non-refundable $100 bus ticket.
He talked on to the invisible girlfriend, "Well, your
motherfuckin' brother is trying to keep us apart…well
fuck his ass!" I could smell his fucking Natural Light
breath around the back of his head when he puked up his
full-formed cliché drawl. "Well, you don't listen to that
piece of shit of a fuckin' brother of yours!"
Everyone on the bus listened on as he hung up and dialed
the next number. "Yeah, I just got off the phone with
your sister," he drawled. "Don't worry, it'll fucking
come together…just don't let her know we been talkin'."
I got up and moved.
The female rednecks were just as bad. Loud, cussing voices
passed through their bucked teeth and I'd sigh loudly
hoping they'd quiet, but when you were raised in a barn
you don't pick up on subtleties like sighs. You don't
even pick up on the fact that you have a French fry stuck
to your back for everyone to see when you're running up
and down the aisle threatening your sister, "I'll crack
you in the motherfuckin' mouth bitch don't you tell me
a goddamn thing to do…". So when the bus driver turned
off the lights at 11 p.m. so we could sleep, and the girls
kept up with their twangy "Motherfucker!" this and that,
I whispered with high velocity, under cover of dark, on
behalf of the entire bus, "Shut the fuck up redneck."
And then everyone fades out till morning.
PART TWO:
It was in Alabama or Mississippi that the swamps kicked
in. No solid ground for ages just miles of wet grass and
straight up water, and how the hell did they build this
bridge over it? Where did the machines stand during the
construction? Magic.
And
just as I ponder, "I wonder if there are alligators out…"
I spy the curved spine of a dinosaur twisting in S's as
he cuts through the marsh grass like his swimming spine
is pantomiming the syllables, al - i - ga - tor.
Smooth, and right on cue.
PART THREE:
Now we're definitely in Mississippi, Biloxi, and I almost
want to get off the bus and live here. The highway
runs along the beach, but I haven't a clue which body
of water it is stretching out into infinity out the left
side of the bus window. I know nothing about the geography
of America. The water's way too infinite to be the Mississippi
river where Jeff Buckley died. I've seen the Mississippi
when I was a child. Swam in it. That isn't it out the
opposite window. This is some ocean or something.
Out my window on my side of the bus is an on and on and
on and on beach community that you'd think was Florida
if it weren't so damn colorful and friendly-seeming instead
of blank like Florida beach communities where T-shirts
are 3 for $10 and the advertisements for those shirts
are bigger than the sunset and more abundant than goodwill.
Granted, this Biloxi beach community is still pretty fucking
tacky but friendlier-seeming nonetheless. More real in
some way. There are long, snaky, blue water slides every
three blocks. You get the feeling the Biloxi Chamber of
Commerce wouldn't destroy everything they've thus far
built just to replace it with something outsiders would
enjoy more than the current monstrosity.
Eventually, down the highway, the tacky souvenir shops
and fish restaurants with cartoon mascots melt into traditional
southern houses (another thing Florida doesn't have much
of) and the water's still right across the street forever.
What fucking water is that? Whatever water it is, it's
ending now as we go into the trees.
PART FOUR:
I spent my first hour off the bus stinking up the public
library, reading a book on How to Get Published and writing
an email to The Little Red-haired Girl. There were several
beautiful red-haired girls in the library, as well as
100's of bell-behaved little black kids. No kids are usually
well behaved. These talked about pussy quite a bit, the
boys, but they did so in their library voices. And when
they noticed me listening, they nodded in appreciation
of my appreciation, and then they beatboxed, in their
library beatbox, rapping; "Jesus is my homey, I hang with
him all the time." Then as I wrote to TLRHG, a little
black girl read over my shoulder and a tiny boy asked,
"Do you go computer school? You type fast!"
I stank cause I carried a ton of bags, everything I brought
to New Orleans over two shoulders, through five blocks
of thick heat to where my friend John works slinging coffee
to overfed doctors and overworked med students. It was
the hardest thing I've ever done. Every few blocks I plopped
down in the middle of the sidewalk in a pool of wet because
you're allowed to do anything here. Thank god. As I lay
plopped, a 17-year-old black kid asked me for a quarter.
I told him no.
"Why
not? It's cause I'm black?" He asked, pausing before he
stepped into the driver's side of his mother's car. His
mother waited. Engine running.
I laughed at that question cause I couldn't help it and
he smiled gold teeth. "Naw man, not at all." I rebutted
in my sweat-drenched Public Enemy T-shirt then asked,
"Do you know where Tulane Street is?"
"Yeah,
but why won't you give me a quarter?" He asked again.
"I really need to know this."
"I
ain't got one, for one thing." I answered. Then laughed
again. Had I been defensive he would have pulled some
racial tension bullshit with me. But instead he extended
his hand to my sweaty, sitting ass outside the New Orleans
public library. In his hand was not a handshake but 3,
$100 bills.
"Here,
take this." He said. But I knew it was taunt.
"Naw,
man." I was still laughing, couldn't stop and it was making
him smile.
"Why
not?" He asked.
"Just
cause. I'm meeting my friend at the Tulane Medical Center."
I told him, then asked again. "Where's Tulane?"
He pointed to the street three blocks ahead with his fistful
of hundreds and laughed. Those three blocks were the hardest
thing I've ever traversed.
PART FIVE:
Tonight I met Richard and tonight I met Thrice. That's
actually his name. He's 300 pounds and he disagrees with
me about music, but I kissed ass and got out alive. Then
there is John, whom I met in Costa Rica. He talked me
into New Orleans. We all went out tonight and it was hella
hard not to get drunk. I told them I'm trying to get away
from substances that have the tendency to govern my life,
or at least meet it consistently every day after work.
Or before work.
They all wanted to buy me shots to welcome me to my new
home and I honestly declined. In the end I consumed a
mere three Jack & Cokes ("the spirit of Van Halen" I call
it) and a single beer with my dinner. Now I sit in my
new house (apartment I'd call it, but it is fucking huge…$325-a-month…goddamn.)
smoking resin and peaking out the blinds at the most beautiful
neighborhood I could possibly live in; 200-foot houses
in every direction, each 200 years old. Where am I? I'm
not drunk.
The black kid cab driver drove me around in circles taking
advantage of the fact that I couldn't pronounce the name
of my French street. As soon as I realized I was at his
mercy I told him I only had $10 and then felt safe that
he wouldn't try to pull anything more.
The whole time he talked on the cell phone in English
but for once in my Ebonics-worshipping life I was lost
in the slang. Cryptic shit. Beautiful but too new for
me to catch right now. Usually I pride myself on that.
But he had a whole new dictionary, a new language. Every
sentence from beginning to end. It frustrated me but fucking
'A' shit yeah! I'm gonna get to learn a new English!
I'm also gonna get to hear a new music. All that's here
is jazz, and hybrids of, and it's all local. Hundreds
of bands every night. Indy rock bands don't even come
through here and that upsets me but at the same time I'm
gonna be forcefully drenched new languages.