The bus station was nice. It had good lighting. Not too bright, not too dark. I went to the bathroom and the walls of the stalls were made of metal so no one could write on them and they could wash easily. From every corner of America, from Maine, to Florida, New York to California, Americans love to write on bathroom stall walls. Men love to draw cocks. I've shit in bathrooms in Nebraska, Oregon, and Georgia. Every bathroom stall in America has a penis drawn on the wall. There was always a comment about how much somebody loved to suck cock. Usually there was one or two racial slurs and that old Homeric poem, “Here I sit broken hearted, come to shit and only farted.” There were some people that didn't consider literature on bathroom stalls to be classy. So a lot of new bathrooms had metal walls.
I left the bathroom and went outside to smoke. I went out the front door, going nowhere. I didn't know Pittsburgh well. I didn't know where I was. I knew there were several rivers somewhere in Pittsburgh, but where I didn't know. Everyone walking by had Steelers coats on. There was no ashtray outside of the gas station. Society fought a war against smokers and won. Instead of putting our cigarettes in ashtrays we put them on the sidewalk. It was a strange victory they had won.
Went to the food court. It was pathetic. A little black man in his 40s was making cheeseburgers by himself while talking on his cell phone. Everyone was on their cell phone. It didn't matter what color, what age, what gender, they were on their cell phones. Who they were talking to I didn't know. What they were talking about I didn't know. They were talking though. If they weren't talking, they were text messaging. I grew up without cell phones. All the people I knew, including myself, didn't starve to death because we didn't have a cell phone. We had friends. People were able to get married and have kids. People had jobs. I looked around the food court and four people were talking on their cell phones and two were text messaging. Who were these people I thought. What did they need to say? Did they even talk to those people they were talking to in person? Does anybody want to talk to anyone in person anymore? Does anyone fuck in person or just talk on their cell phone?
A young journalist once told me while walking across campus that people had cell phones to be perceived as important. That they were so important, integral, essential to the functioning of society that people called them all the time and they needed to respond to that call because if they didn't civilization would collapse and humanity would be plunged into the state of nature. The state of affairs would cease, hospitals would crumble to the ground, roads wouldn't be repaired, the police would go on an endless lunch break, Saddam Hussein would be resurrected and put back in power, martial law would be declared, the constitution suspended, little children would disobey their mothers, boyfriends and husbands would instantly cheat on their girlfriends and wives, gay people would become straight, the straight gay, mayonnaise would start tasting like mustard, abortion would become illegal, and history would end in a whimper because they didn't answer their cell phone call and talk loudly in a public place.
A cute Asian woman in her late 20s stood next to me waiting for cheeseburgers. We looked at each other and then at the cheeseburgers and the little black guy talking on his cell phone. We couldn't speak the same language but our looks were enough; they said, “These cheeseburgers are gonna taste like shit.”
I brought my cheeseburger to a table. It somewhat tasted like a cheeseburger. I wasn't sure when the cow was killed, where it was killed, what kind of cow it was, what the cow ate, but I was sure it was killed a long fucking time ago, it was probably a miserable cow, and the cow ate bad tasting grass that had little nutrition.
I imagined a miserable cow standing out in a field in Brazil alone. It was probably two years ago. The cow was chewing on some bad tasting grass. Looked around not caring about anything. Doing what cows have always done; ate grass and drank water. Then it was killed one day and its sirloin was ground up, stuffed in plastic bags, frozen and sent to America. Eventually it made it to a bus station in Pittsburgh.
I got in line for the bus. It was a terrible looking series of humans. Many were missing teeth; the men were bald, the women looked older than they were. Kids were everywhere. Their clothes were bought from thrift stores. Their shoes had holes in them and they didn't smell good. It wasn't a collection of well-educated-well-balanced-well-rounded individuals. Fate had not done them well. They were the kind of people one imagines Jesus spoke to when he gave The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus walked up there and looked upon 1,000 suffering Jews wearing torn clothes holding their babies in their arms, men tired from work, a nation stifled by Roman imperialism. Their faces dirty missing teeth, trying to forget the past, tired of the present and terrified of the future.
The bus driver called for us to get back on the bus. There was still seven hours to go, seven long hours.
I found a seat in the back again.
In the back there were two white women, one in her twenties and one in her forties. The one in her twenties sat with a tall black guy in his twenties. They didn't have headphones or a book to read. The woman in her twenties whispered to the man in the backseat.
A black man in his late twenties dressed in baggy clothing talked on his cell phone.
I sat on the bus for an hour in silence listening to music on my headphones when the woman in her forties said, “Hey?”
I didn't respond at first and then she repeated it, “Hey, you!”
I looked over and said, “Yeah.”
Her face was tired. Her skin was pale and ghostlike. Her hair looked dirty, it was brown and straight. Her body had a little fat on it but not too much. She wasn't attractive. She was more of those people that Jesus talked to on The Mount. Those miserable people that walk the earth in unhappiness. Not knowing what happiness is, happiness not even occurring to them as an option.
She said, “Her and I just got out of prison.”
“How long were you in?”
“Four years.”
“That's a long time.”
“I know sweetie, it is. That guy my girlfriend is sitting with just asked her to have sex with him. He just got out of prison too. We're all riding home together on the bus.”
“I wasn't in prison.”
“Where were you?”
“Youngstown.”
“I'm from Allentown, that's like the same place.”
“We both have songs.”
“Yeah, yeah sweetie. Billy Joel wrote ours, who wrote yours?”
“Bruce Springsteen.”
“I think I heard that in a bar once,” she said.
“It's a good song.”
“Have you ever been to Allentown?”
“No.”
“I think I drove through Youngstown once. But I can't remember.”
“There's no reason for you to remember it.”
“Yeah, ain't like its Disney Land.”
“No, Youngstown isn't Disney Land and Allentown isn't Epcot Center,” I said.
“Where you going?”
“New York City.”
“What you doing there? Going to the Statue of Liberty, seeing a play on Broadway?”
“I'm bored.” I could have said I was a writer, I was going to get interviewed by a magazine, but I doubted she cared. I doubted I even cared. Boredom was the truth. I was being sincere.
“It's boring in prison.”
“Seems like it would be.”
I imagined her sitting in a cell. An old white woman, missing teeth, laying on her bed staring at the bunk above her. Waiting for time to pass. What a strange punishment, forcing a fellow human to lay in bed and wait for time to pass. Knowing when they got out a period of years had been stolen from their life. A person is living out their life in the world; their life doesn't turn out in a way that is conducive to behaving in a way that is permitted by the social contract established by its citizens whose lives turned out better. They commit a crime at a certain age. A court and its lawyers decide that they must leave society. That society would be better off without them. That must be a horrible feeling. Society notifying them that they are not wanted. Society does not want them so much they must be put in a cage in a large facility. They must be guarded by people carrying large cans of mace, sticks, and outside people with guns wait for them. Barb wire electric fences line the facility. They are pulled into the compound wearing hand cuffs chained up like an animal. Some humans decide that fellow humans are no good, so terrible they must be treated like animals.