The Return Pt. 1: Escape

I don’t want this to be overwhelming, but certainly a lot has happened in these past few weeks. In some ways things were planned (what a joke eh) and in most ways, seemingly spontaneous moments found themselves accidentally, needlessly, miraculously all tied together by geography and time. I’ve been lucky.

The last time I decided to write I was miles and miles away from where I am now. It was cold and depressing and then damp and brown (but not before I slipped on the ice and banged both knees up) and then I got on a train. I packed what I thought I would need for the coming year into an entirely oversized suitcase, my family saw me off at the bus station, I started heading south again.

I tend to try and leave out folk’s names. Though this blog is only very limitedly read, I’ve never asked anyone if I could write about them in what is still technically a public space, so for that reason I usually just leave individual names out of this.

Even in Kentucky, where the grass was still green, I wasn’t satisfied with the rise in temperature. I was still bundled up, my movement restricted, thoughts only on things like hot coffee, warm food, hot shower. In attempted denial of the cold, we had a barbecue outside, but as soon as the food was done cooking we all ran inside and shut the door and enjoyed the heat of the indoors again. Despite the lingering of the winter that I was trying to escape, I did get to visit an old friend and meet several interesting folks, many of which I’d heard so much about. I even met a 4 year old girl who proudly told us she could speak 4 languages (Greek, Bosnian, Spanish, English). I’m not even sure how I should go about learning a 3rd language at this point, but anyway a few days in Kentucky were enough and the next place I set off for was “The hellish Greyhound experience.”

My bus was “direct” from Louisville to San Antonio, meaning we stopped about every 4 or 5 hours to get off the bus, get our luggage off the bus, get confused about which line to stand in, and get back on the bus. I did get lucky in the sense that at least half of the time I had two seats to myself, precious time that I took good advantage of. I wasn’t interested in talking to other folks, I just wanted to ride and sleep and finally disembark in a warm place. I didn’t even eat and rarely drank water. Finally, Texas.

I wasn’t sure if by the time I got to San Antonio I would be too exhausted to continue by bus or not, so I had a couple Couch Surfers phone numbers in my pocket just in case. But I found that the only thing I wanted to do was get back on the warm, dark bus and ride throughout the night. I don’t have any trouble sleeping on buses so I bought a ticket for Monterrey and re-boarded the bus.

Sometime around 3 in the morning I woke up to see a small woman standing at the front of the bus, talking to the passengers. I could see that she was an immigration official but none of the folks in the back of the bus could hear anything she was saying. I figured at some point someone would tell me what to do because clearly I was too tired to figure out what was going on myself. Eventually I saw her point to one young guy sitting in the front row of the bus. He got off, went in the office and we all watched as he pushed the button on the stoplight and it flashed green. Someone behind me worried that they were going to make us all get off one by one. But instead, after this guy got back on the bus, we sped across the border and into the early morning, into Mexico. Was I really the only U.S. citizen on the bus? I suppose so because no one else said a word.

So, I get to Monterrey wondering what to do next. I also had numbers for couchsurfers there but at that point I just wanted to get deeper into Mexico as fast as possible. After almost 2 days of being completely alone, I just wanted to see something familiar, somebody familiar. I quickly find that there are no direct buses for Guanajuato and I listen to some guys argue about whether it’s faster to go through San Luis Potosi or Aguascalientes. I buy a ticket for SLP, then try to change it but the bus has already left for Aguas so I just get on my original bus a few minutes later. Things were quite confusing. Then on the bus, I see that the thickest, whitest fog I’ve ever seen has settled all over Nuevo Leon. Visibility extends about 6 inches in any direction. As the bus crawls at about 5 mph, I start to wonder “Where am I really? Where am I going? Why am I here? Who am I?” I feel like I’m losing my mind and it doesn’t help that the rest of the bus is only occupied by a handful of old, sleeping men, “Do any of us exist?” The bus driver’s assistant hands me two magazines about soap operas and celebrities in Mexico and I find myself reading about Dr. Simi’s (owner of huge chain of imitation drug pharmacies) many young girlfriends. Again, “What am I doing here?”

I feel that I am on the bus for eternity, a ghost destined to haunt empty Primera Plus buses for the rest of time, watching terrible dubbed movies while floating past discarded ham and cheese sandwich wrappers. Eventually I fall asleep and as soon as we arrive to San Luis Potosi I race to a phone to test my ghost theory. “Bueno?” Jonathan answers. “Hey!” I shout and then let Spanish awkwardly tumble out of my mouth. “Hey Macaouly!” he shouts back. While I do hate this nickname (think Home Alone), I am relieved that he can, in fact, hear my voice and that I am still a real person with a name, a nickname even. I jump on the next bus for Dolores Hidalgo and from there I ask very nicely if I can still get on the next bus for Guanajuato despite the fact that I’m short two pesos. The woman waves her hand, “Of course,” and an hour later I meet Mr. Paniagua (always in a suit) at the bus station.