Chapter 1: The Bus

When I think back on it, I feel like I’ve had sexual encounters on long-haul bus trips slightly more often than I haven’t. That probably sounds creepy, but the fact is I haven’t taken the bus very often and only two of those occasions were random stranger encounters.

The first time I was 21 or 22; a tall, lanky kid, shy, with overgrown hair and an incipient beard. I had just come back a few days before from more than a year in a foreign country, where I’d immersed myself in the culture and barely spoken a word of English the whole time. I was still trying to re-adapt to America.

I was taking the Greyhound bus across the country — ultimate destination California, where I was going to start grad school. Because I was abroad, I had waited too long to make my travel arrangements, and couldn’t afford airfare out of my meager US bank account; hence the bus trip. I had mostly traveled by train when I was abroad. It was cheap compared to what I was earning over there, so I’d always bought tickets at the last minute, first class; and the country was small so trips never took more than a few hours. My initial thought had been to try the same here, but it turned out that Amtrak would have been even more expensive than a flight.

A cross-country trip on Greyhound is a long, exhausting slog. You switch buses once or twice — at Chicago, I think, and maybe one other major hub. They do stop at mealtimes, for gas, and periodically so passengers can get out, stretch their legs, and (if applicable) smoke. And of course to change drivers. But other than than that, you’re basically on the road 24 hours a day for three days straight.

All of my worldly belongings were in a backpack in the cargo component; I only had a small carry-on bag with some books (this was long before Kindles) and snacks. I’d neglected to take out even a change of underwear, and by the second day I felt gross, and probably looked and smelled gross too. A cavalcade of random, non-memorable people, not going as far as I, had sat next to me at various parts of the trip, and I’d done my best to ignore them and stay huddled against the wall of the bus reading or staring out the window. In the evening, we stopped at some godforsaken depot for a driver change and to let off and pick up passengers. When we started off again, my seatmate was a black woman in a flowery dress. She was probably in her 30s, though it might have been late 20s. She looked like she’d had a harder life than mine.

Beyond saying “hi” when she sat down, I paid no attention to her, just as I’d paid no attention to anyone else sitting next to me. But as the night wore on, I noticed she was falling asleep and leaning a bit against me. This was by no means the first time I’d had someone start to fall asleep on me on the bus, but up to now I’d just jerked my shoulder to wake the offender up. Usually they would just mumble an apology and then start snoring again, hopefully leaning the other way. This time, though, I felt a little sorry for this tired-looking lady and let her sleep.

After a little while, though, her head fell on my shoulder and she woke of her own accord, straightened up and whispered “I’m sorry.” I don’t know what possessed me, but I said, in as kind a voice as I could, “That’s OK. You’re welcome to rest there if you want.” I immediately regretted saying it: I thought she’d think I was a creep, and smelly to boot, and I’d have to sit embarrassed for God knows how long. But to my surprise, she immediately put her head back on my shoulder.

I sat there kind of frozen for a while but eventually relaxed. I felt good — just from the knowledge that she trusted me, that I had evidently done her a kindness by letting her rest. In the late night quiet I could hear her breathing slowly near my ear. It felt kind of nice to have even this minimal human contact. I’d spent a year abroad in love with a girl who, in the relatively conservative country I was staying, wasn’t ready to date; and while I’d kind of made up for it with a summer fling, I was still kind of starved for simple touch.