November 21, 2002: To Hell, er, Pennsylvania and Back

This is the tale of some events that occurred not too long ago that really needed to be chronicled somewhere in HTML, but I never was motivated enough to do so until now. It was the summer of 1999. Bill Clinton's penis was the news topic of the day, the Chicago Bears had high hopes for a young running back named Curtis Enis, Usama Bin Laden was just "that guy who blew up that battleship a million miles away," and a young lad who still couldn't decide whether he wanted to be called "Beren" or "Lucas" on the internet had just flunked out of his first college and was hopelessly addicted to that godless beast men call a computer. And it was on this infernal device that I became quite taken with a somewhat younger girl from York, Pennsylvania, whose name will be omitted, just in case I ever get famous and something on this page provides some grounds for a lawsuit. For the record, though, her name rhymes with "felony." Anyway, yeah, I did it. The single nerdiest, geekiest thing imaginable; the gayest thing you can do while being actively heterosexual; even gayer than starting a weblog full of poetry about how the oppression of the popular kids in school has you trapped in a cage of some sort - Yes, even gayer than that. Yes, your beloved webmaster, the scraggly-bearded (sort of), burly mountain man who once pancaked Pork Chop Womack, was knee-deep in a full-on internet-based relationship. Shut up, she was hot. And I have multiple witnesses to confirm this, so I know it wasn't a 40 year old man, too. Anyway, I'm not going to go into the details of the ill-fated affair or its hellish collapse, but I will go into the details of the trip. Yup, the trip. Not only was I gay enough to fall in love over the internet, but I was also gay enough to justify spending about a year's worth of money my unemployed ass scraped up to go meet this person. Yeah, it may have been at least partially inspired by my desire to experience a vagina firsthand, but trust me, in hindsight, it was pretty fucking gay. Anyway, here are some details of the trip, blurred by the mists of time and embellished by the need for entertaining web pages. Some of the details might be off, but if you have the information to actually point out where I'm wrong, you're a fucking obsessed stalker, and I'm deeply afraid of you. Unless you're a hot chick, then maybe we can hook up or something. Anyway, here's some of the more interesting parts of the trip...

Greenwood - The odyssey began and later ended in the August of 1999 at the Greyhound station in Greenwood, Mississippi. Not much to say here, as it's basically just a tiny little building with a bunch of Greyhound posters on it. Greenwood the town, though, claims to be the "Cotton Capital of the World," which is kinda neat.

Jackson - Ah, Jackson, the largest city in the wretched shithole that is Mississippi. Speaking of wretched shitholes, the bathrooms here were a sight straight out of my nightmares. Someone took a dump in one of the urinals. Stop for a second, take a deep breath, and read that again. Someone took a dump in one of the urinals. That's not even something you can do in a "huh huh, that'll be funny" Jackass sort of way, as it sends an open invitation for shit to run down your leg. It's just wrong. Sick and wrong. And so is life. I can only shudder to think of what the women's restrooms look like. As a two-year employee of the Kroger corporation, I was often sent in to clean the ladies' room, and goddammit, whoever went in there wasn't no fuckin' lady. Shit on the walls, shit on the seats, piss on the floor, used tampons thrown on the floor, and piss on the seats. How in the hell does a woman piss on the seat? Her anatomy just doesn't allow for it. It has to be intentional. Because women are evil, as the events of that week taught me. But that's another rant entirely. Anyway, next in the fun aspects of the Jackson terminal was the place where you wait for your bus. Basically, we were herded off into this big garage that could more accurately be called a gas chamber, because of the various fumes we inhaled for the hundred fucking hours it took for the next bus to arrive. As I sat there, choking on chemicals that are probably ravaging my internal organs in cancer form as I sit typing this, I noticed the major difference between bus passengers and airplane passengers, or simply the difference between bus passengers and human beings in general. As my mom puts it, "it's just a different class of folks." I don't want to sound like I think I'm better than everyone else, but I am, so I really can't help it. Concepts like "dental care" and "that shirt just doesn't fit anymore" are completely foreign to the average bus passenger. Fat, old, tobacco-chewing men who apparently viewed the front of their own shirt to be the most effective spittoon of them all. The stereotypical Mexican family of seven, whose luggage consisted entirely of a Nintendo 64 and a bundle of stereo speakers wrapped in wire. An endless throng of sweaty girls between the ages of 10 and 13 with belly shirts, hip huggers, and at least two missing teeth or a black eye who I expected at any moment to offer to trade me a handjob for any loose pills I might have on me, or at least rob me with a box cutter. Yup, a different class of folks indeed. And by default, I was now one of them... Luckily, I managed to secure a seat by myself for nearly the entire trip, basically by being a big ol' bastard with a shaved head, camouflage pants, and an S.O.D. shirt. Even though I was a nerdy internet fucker, I looked like I was ready to kick some ass, so bus people steered clear of me. I was glad.

Montgomery - The terminal in Montgomery, Alabama wasn't that bad at all. So let's move on.

Atlanta - Atlanta. Fucking Atlanta. When I become God, the city of Atlanta Georgia will be fucking liquidated. And by "liquidated," I don't just mean "destroyed," either. By "liquidated," I mean that it will be so besieged by hell and fire that the very streets themselves shall melt. Atlanta is the biggest pile of rancid feces that I have ever encountered, and if there's ever a big terrorist attack directed at the Atlanta bus terminal, I'm becoming a fucking Muslim, just to show my appreciation, because they fucking deserve it. Fuckers. The journey into hell began with our bus passing the lovely scene of the Atlanta PD attending to someone outside a 7-11 who had either been beaten up or shot or savaged by vicious tigers or something equally fucked-up, because the fucking street was flowing with his blood. Whenever I see an Atlanta tourism type commercial, I wish I had Cobra Commander's power to override every television signal on Earth at once, so I could show them the REAL Atlanta, with some poor bastard bleeding like Tommy Rich at the hands of one of his fellow Atlantonians, or whatever they're called. And oh, my friends, it just gets better from there. The luggage-handling system in Atlanta is a highly sophisticated, failsafe system where they take your bags and put them on whatever fucking bus they choose. I watched them. I watched them take the bag with the tag clearly marked "Washington DC" and put it on a bus marked "Florida." I calmly approached the lady by the bus, showed her my claim ticket, showed her my bag, showed her that it was on the wrong bus, and everything should have gone smoothly. And what did I get? "Oh, I'm sorry, young man. Here, let me get someone to take this to the correct bus. We apologize for the inconvenience." Oh wait, that's not it. Her response was more along the lines of "Get your ass back behind that rope or I'm gonna call security, and you won't be getting on any fucking bus!" Jesus Christ, if I wasn't such a naturally peaceful person, ("Eternally high, as my brother calls it - Something for a future Random Shit, definitely) I would have strangled her to death, thrown her lifeless body beneath the nearest moving bus, then pissed all over everyone within a ten-foot radius, just because I needed something extra to justify the "temporary insanity" plea. But instead, my jaw dropped open and I was speechless, as I watched all my shit get sent to Florida. I eventually got it back and they (and "they" is the Pottsville, PA station, and not the Atlanta one) seemed at least semi-apologetic, but none of that changed the fact that I had to wear the same goddamn underwear and a series of borrowed Insane Clown Posse T-shirts for the first three days after I reached my final destination. To sum up, you know Atlanta is a shithole when the annoying crackhead beggar was a bright spot of my brief stay there. Luckily, my return trip was routed differently and didn't go through Atlanta. Luckily for them. I was gonna strangle me some motherfuckers if I had to, that second time around.

Columbia - I barely remember anything about Columbia, South Carolina, because I was half-asleep, and it was late at night. I'm just impressed that I remember being there at all, so I felt I should mention it.

Charlotte - Whoo! Ric Flair country! Charlotte's station was pretty nice, albeit surprisingly small, and had kickass fried chicken. If you're ever in Charlotte, go to the bus station and get some chicken. It's good. Real good. Finger-lickin' good. Also, they had a bunch of old comic books for sale, which were tempting, as I don't like reading stuff without pictures, but I could find no Transformers there, so they stayed on the shelf. There was this really fidgety guy next to me in line to get back on the bus there that kept asking me to watch his stuff while he went and did God-knows-what, and eventually he got kicked off the bus for breaking in line, trying to take a bicycle on board, and oh yeah, not having a ticket. I bet he's in jail now. I don't know why, I just do.

Fayetteville - Big, clean terminal, competent, friendly service, and lots of arcade games, including a sweet-ass old school Playchoice 10 system, where I tore it the fuck up on Mike Tyson's Punch Out and Super Mario Bros. 3 for a few hours. On the other hand, it was here that I realized how much the bus stations gouge hungry passengers on food. I justified the high price for the Charlotte chicken, because it was fucking awesome chicken, but this one only had a fairly standard burger joint, and I was paying like 7 bucks for a fairly standard fast-food burger and frozen, reheated fries. Jesus.

Richmond - HUGE terminal, with real restaurants and shit, but I was in too much of a hurry the first time and too broke the second time to take any of it in. On the return trip, Sac of Stormclad fame was supposed to meet up with me, but the bastard fell asleep because he actually had to work in the morning. Wuss. I'm more important than petty things like "rent," dammit. I mean god damn, I pancaked Floyd fucking Womack. I'm a huge rock star. Fuckin'-A, right? On the bus out of town, I looked down every street, hoping to see the Slave Pit. I didn't. I was bummed.

Washington, DC - Biggest, nicest terminal so far. It was like a different world. It was clean, and it smelled nice. It was like a goddamn airport terminal, complete with "airport people." The Mexicans with stereo speakers and 13 year old crank whores were replaced by people who looked more like younger versions of Maury Povitch and Montell Williams, except holding briefcases - FUCKING BRIEFCASES. The usual drug-and-alcohol riddled rabble were replaced more with what looked like college hippies on trips to learn more about themselves or fucking geeks making pilgrimages to meet Internet women. Even the scum were cleaner, as the tobbacco-juice-running-down-my-chin gang was replaced by well-groomed gangstas and gangsta-wannabes, bling-blinging their way through the bus terminal in wrinkle-free giant pants and finely polished gold and fake gold jewelry. The most curious sight was that one of the Fubu-clad warriors seemed to be a 40 year old balding white guy, though. That was messed up. I figured it was just some guy having a severe midlife crisis, but all the other, more authentic-looking, thugs seemed to be looking up to him as though he were their leader, or something. Then, I remembered that this was D.C., so they were probably all just a bunch of Feds, trying to keep track of my travel patterns, so they could learn my plans... And oh yes, I do have plans... Anyway, they had what some might call a Hardee's or a Carl's Jr., but it had some other weird name, like "Star Burger," or something like that. Same logos and everything, but a different name. Someday, the Carl's Jr./Hardees/etc. corporation needs to standardize their operation and give all the restaurants the same name. Then, they might be able to compete with the golden-arched juggernaut. But that's another rant entirely. On the way out of town, we passed the Capitol Building, and god damn, I had no idea it was that big. Also, we had a driver who had never taken that route before, so we got lost at one point and had to back into some driveway-type place and turn around at one point. Fun.

Harrisburg - Nothing real special here, but it was the final destination, so it's noteworthy. Fuck you. For the record, though, I saw a few Amish People.

Ashland - It was here that I spent the illustrious week of my nerd-relationship's demise at the fabulous Casa Del Pyle with another internet friend, Julie, who was also close with what's-her-name, and who I actually got along with better than the other person, although I was too stupid with lovey shit to notice that until after rhymes-with-felony had ripped out my heart and stomped on it. But this ain't a bitter emo article, it's a bitter travel article, folks. So yeah, another rant entirely. This was a little bitty town up in the mountains where everyone was poor and mined fucking coal for a living. They had a convenience store, a video store, some other things I can't remember, a National Anthracite (coal, stupid) Museum, and like thirty gazillion churches. Seriously. There were more goddamn churches than there were houses. Walk a block - hit a church. It was unreal. I had apparently come on a good week, as the whole weekend was spent at various block parties where this cover band called Rhymes With Orange rocked the proverbial house, doing cover versions of terrible songs and almost making them enjoyable. I think the true measure of a great cover band is the ability to play that one Kid Rock song with the title that's a bunch of gibberish, and play it in a way that doesn't make me want to jump on stage and somehow start puking on the band members. The best part of their set, though, was the guy all fucked up on pills who made the ten square feet in front of the little stage into his own private mosh pit. On some fucked-up level, that guy is my hero. A weird thing about the coal-cracker region of PA is that everyone under the age of 18 worships the Insane Clown Posse, and everyone older has a mullet and a sleeveless Metallica shirt. It was like a twisted John Mellencamp video, or something. Those little potato pancake thingies everyone was making ruled, but it was cancelled out by the rock radio station's tendency to play "Janey's Cryin'" by Van Halen like every fifteen minutes. Fuck that song. And fuck Eddie and Alex Van Halen. Yeah, Alex might look evil, with his slicked-back hair and demonic shades, but Eddie fucking is evil. Another rant entirely, though. For a week, we hung out, watched Transformers the Movie, sucked the leftover whipped cream out of Reddi-Whip cans after Julie's brother and his friends did whippits, and occasionally made hateful and semi-hateful comments directed at what's-her-name to each other. Then, I went the fuck home.

In some senses, the trip was a disaster. I went a total of five days wearing one pair of underwear at one point, I was out over 200 bucks, I got dumped in a fucking chatroom after taking a 36 hour trip to finally meet the damn girl in person, and I never did get up-close-and-personal with a vagina. On the other hand, I got to hang out with one of my best friends in person rather than in text for once, I proved to myself that when properly motivated, I actually can get off my ass and do something, and I had my closest experience to anything even slightly resembling a "youthful adventure," or whatever the hell you would call it. Also, I got a little Pennsylvania license plate with "LUCAS" on it that is fastened to my wall, beneath a Tazz action figure, as I type this very sentence. If everything were the same, would I do it all over again? Fuck no. I don't care if a million dollars and every attractive, single Japanese female wrestler alive were there waiting for me with open arms at the Harrisburg terminal. You are never getting my ass on a bus again, as long as I live. I would rather hike through a desert with only a box of Wheat Thins to sustain me. I would rather take a flight on a plane that's filled with nothing but fanatical Arabs with brand-new boxcutters and nothing to lose. I would rather be chained behind a motorcycle and dragged. I would rather drive with Reload stuck in the CD player on repeat with no way to turn it off. Taking a long bus trip is a life-sucking whirlpool of hell that never fucking ends, and I don't care if you've got some Princess Bride severe true love shit going on, no bitch is worth it.

But you really do need to try the chicken in Charlotte.