Destitution Fair

A week of riding US buses

(Yes, the title is a play on the fantastic novel, Vanity Fair, which I’ve been reading this trip.)

Patrick, my seat mate from Pittsburgh to Columbus, is a small, exceedingly polite man with a large grey dog (Benji) he needs because of periodic seizures. I tell him the three of us won't fit in the two seats, so I move to the only open seat, next to Silas, a young gaunt man, no more than sixteen, with gelled blond hair, wearing an ill-fitting suit, and clip-on tie, who spends the entire ride reading the Bible. He's headed to St. Louis, fourteen hours away, for church business, a point he proudly punctuates with a tap on the plastic portfolio laid neatly on his lap, presumably thick with important papers.

Silas and I might be the whitest two people on the bus. Since our seats are adjacent to the bathroom, it provides J, behind us, with the perfect quip, "you two are the crackers next to the crapper." I find this funnier than Silas does, but then again I'd joked with J earlier, mocking his AC/DC shirt as the whitest thing a black guy could wear.

J was gregarious, a little too much so for my taste, but he'd kept me entertained in the otherwise forlorn Pittsburgh bus station, with endless lies of a grandiose past that, depending on your perspective, he either wielded to try and hide the ignominy of his homelessness, or was a symptom of an illness that had led to his "current predicament."

J's good humor only left him when my camera came out, saying he couldn't be photographed because any publicity would jeopardize his case, the one currently in the courts that was holding up his rightful windfall for the last decade.

Both Silas and I were relieved when J nodded off a few minutes later, happily taking his snores over five hours of nonstop banter, no matter how playful. His sleep was so deep, or so induced, that he didn't wake during our stops, despite the driver's theatrical commentary: "Welcome to wild wonderful West Virginia. Not sure what's wonderful about it, but it is wild. Definitely wild," and "anyone who has a nicotine fit, you got five minutes exactly, we not gonna be one second longer. We will leave you no problem, because you're on my ride."

At each stop I hung out with Patrick, because I liked his cheerfulness. He was heading to San Diego, which he’d expected to make in a few days, if he made all his connections. He’d been in Lancaster, “doing demolition for the last few years, and now heading back to be near my mom since work dried up. How many siblings? Eleven sisters, and two brothers, all same mom, but different dads. My own dad? He's in jail right now, doing life, somewhere in California. I haven't spoken to him in like fifteen years. I didn't meet him until I was thirty-eight. He left me when I was a little boy. Very little boy. He's why I get these seizures. He used to make me inhale ammonia when I was a kid. Since then, I just zone out. Go blank. I don't know where I am or what I am doing, you know what I mean? Yeah, that's not the entire reason. I have done some drugs in my life, but nothing heavy in a long time. That's not why he's locked up though. He did a lot of worse stuff. No, not sure details, like I said, I don't want to know him."

Our bus stop in Columbus is a few trees in the middle of a long block, next to a parking lot that smells like the impromptu bathroom it is. I fist bump Patrick goodbye, before asking him the question I ask everyone,

Me: What’s the American dream?

Patrick: To be happy.

Me: Do you think you have it?

Patrick: With her (pointing to Benji), yep. She is my family right now.

Me: So you still believe in the American Dream?

Patrick: Oh, yes. Very much so. I love our country.

Me: You don't have to answer this. Who did you vote for?

Patrick: Trump.

Me: You told me you have some Mexican heritage, right?

Patrick: Yes, I do, both parents have some.

Me: And you have no problem with his policies on...

Patrick: Nope. Come here the right way, and don't steal from others by doing wrong. That shouldn't be hard.

The McDonald's is only a few blocks away, and since it's hot and humid, and I've got a few hours before check-in at my motel a few miles away, I go there to rest. Within a hundred yards of it, seeing who's coming and going, the detritus of addiction littering the sidewalks around me, I know what I will find inside, which is an ad hoc shelter for those living on the streets.

Despite a small drama playing out at almost every table, despite the bathroom's role as the chamber for everyone's half-hour-long daily personal toilette, the McDonald's is rather clean, quiet, and functional.

I sit next to two rambunctious boys straightening out a mound of wadded-up dollar bills. They're literally bouncing off the walls, laughing, fist-bumping, and still in awe of how much they pulled in by selling candy. The empty boxes are piled on top of the adjacent garbage bin, some still with half-melted chocolate bars in them, but they are done with those, leaving them to be picked over and divided up by the rest of the dining room.

Kevin’s ebullience brings him to every table, gossiping with everyone, as if he’s the MC of the floor, and when he gets to me he eyes me, and asks, “you like a cop or minister or something?” and when I tell him, “no, I’m a writer,” he bursts out laughing.

Kevin to me: Yo, so you heard about the YN's out here. Come to write about them?

Me: No, what are the YN’s?

Kevin: It stands for young niggas. It's like white ass niggas. They're acting up, like robbing people, shooting people and everything. It's all on Instagram. People are wearing ski masks and all that. Yeah, you feel me?

Me: I think I’ll be fine, but thanks!

Kevin: Yo. Seriously. Watch your back. People are crazy these days. I don't know why, man. Some of them are all about wanting to be hard, some of them want to fit in the group. Some YN's are good kids with glasses on. You feel me?

A McDonald’s employee, a young man in his twenties with a blond mullet, and a deep southern accent, comes up to our table and fist bumps both boys, “What you guys been selling?”

Kevin: Candy.

Employee: I was gonna say, I thought they were strippin' dollars. Like you danced over at Toolbox. All right, where you been selling at?

Kevin: Kroger's. I mean, I sell whatever, wherever it's bustin' out, I go there.

Employee: That's awesome, bro.

Kevin: Yes, sir, thank you.

Employee: That's good, that's good. That's what's up.

Kevin: Thank you, man. Good shit. Yes, sir. Good shit.

As Kevin and his friend bounce out, Tigger-like, two well-dressed older women and their granddaughters pass them carrying trays full of food, sit at one of the middle round tables, and say a prayer before eating.

One of the guys splayed out at a booth, gets up, stretches loudly, and starts pulling from his vape, his baseball cap tilted just right, dramatically letting out long streams of cotton candy-smelling smoke. The older of the ladies gets up, walks over to him, and wags her finger, "no, no, no, not in here. You don't do that. Not in here you don't. You know better than to disrespect. Your mother certainly taught you better than that."

His entire body goes limp, he shrivels up, pockets the vape, and goes into his best scolded schoolboy, "Yes ma'am, you're right ma'am, I did forget where I was, I'm sorry to have disrespected you and…"

She cuts him off with an offer to buy him a sandwich, which he declines, and then they talk for a bit, her suggesting the lord to him, he answering in a disarmingly polite voice given his hard look.

When I finally get to my motel, a two-mile walk away since everything downtown is too expensive, it’s a classic Patel-run affair¹ with more long-term than overnight guests. I know the type well, and am happy because I prefer them to the upscale choices since there’s a genuineness to them, but it begins to pour and doesn’t let up until ten the next morning, forcing me to spend most of my time running between my room and the McDonald’s a block away.

It’s an especially dreary McDonald’s, with the same customer base as the prior one, but far less functional, clean, or happy. Little works in it, and when I do order food everything is wrong, so I switch to the stash of protein bars I’d squirreled away at the start of the trip.

I spend most of my evening and the next morning talking with the regulars, who are all also uniformly critical of the McDonald’s, the most effusive being a young man from Philly who, like the hummingbird he resembles with his proofed up hair on a slight body, is on a continual quest for speed. He'd recently come to Columbus "because my baby mama is here and she has a bad addiction, and she's why I'm now homeless and use speed." Although when pressed, he admits the "trauma from breaking up" with her is more an excuse than reason, and he uses drugs because “he likes them and they're fun."

My next bus, to Indianapolis, boards at a different urine-smelling spot from where I was dropped off, and the trip is notable only for being my first on Greyhound's new Flix bus (almost exactly the same), and the young big-boned woman, wearing an outfit covering little, who spoke no English, but pantomimed she needed my help. I did my best to answer what I thought she wanted, which was "yes, this bus is going to Indianapolis.”

She seemed to want something more, so I opened Google Translate, and so did she, and then I burst out laughing when I saw "$200 dos horas de diversión" on her screen, and said, "no no no no no no, not that. No no no no." She spent the ride two rows ahead of me, playing a game on her phone, and when she passed to go to the bathroom, something she did often, she would wink at me.

I was happy to leave Columbus, which seemed nice and all, but not really my type of town, and I was looking forward to reaching Indianapolis, because I'd walked it before, and liked it, but on that prior trip I stayed near the beltway and this time the bus dropped us off directly downtown at Richard G. Lugar Plaza, a park that would be a fitting welcome center, since it’s in front of City Hall, if it also wasn't an open-air drug market.

It might be the greatest symbolic representation in the US of the contrast between our intended order (City Hall embodying civic authority) and the actual lived chaos (broken crumpled bodies injecting illegal drugs).

There's also something darkly humorous about Senator Richard Lugar, who shifted all his attention in the last half of his life to foreign policy, having his current legacy in the Midwestern industrial town that launched him being a homeless addict camp. His statue is draped with old clothes, its feet surrounded by drug detritus, and the policing around it limited to administering Narcan when a bad batch of K2 or heroin comes in, which according to everyone I talked to, happens every few days.

I stayed out of the park, because it was too intense for even me. Too many desperate people wanting too many different things. I’ve learned to stay away from crowds, so I focused instead on Andrew and Mary, who were hovering around its fringes whenever I walked by.

They also stay out of the park because the scene is too much for them, although they do pass through now and then for social reasons. They are both now clean, although for them that means no more needles, or crack, only Suboxone, liquor, and especially marijuana, and while Andrew starts telling me their stories, Mary takes over and starts singing and dancing, "I do like my Mary Jane. Mary Jane. You can't take away my Mary Jane. Ha. Ha. My parents named me right yes they did. Mary likes her Mary Jane. Mary Jane, Mary Jane. Mary Jane for Mary.”

Me: So why are you two homeless?

Andrew: I had apartment. I let people live with me. Bad people, and they stole both of our papers. Now I'm back on the street. We got no birth certificates. They took both of ours. I would have a job if they didn’t steal my birth certificate.

Me: What’s the American Dream?

Mary: The American dream is, a happy life and a house. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? Stability. Right. Job, home, stability.

Me: You believe in it? Even given your current situation?

Andrew: Oh, yeah. Oh, definitely. It's all the people that keep it alive. You can’t let society drag it down. It's just you gotta have the will and the drive and not let circumstances get in your way.

Of all I'd experienced in the last week, downtown Indianapolis was perhaps the most depressing, and not only because of the plaza. I walked around for the next twenty-four hours trying to find something to pull me in, something to contrast with the scene in front of City Hall, but there were few people other than the destitute, crossing vast, and mostly barren, parking lots. The immense scale, with extra-wide streets, long blocks, made it feel even more forsaken.

Similar to other mid-sized US cities, downtown Indianapolis is dead, with far less activity than the surrounding outer ring of malls, homes, and shopping plazas. Its primary draw is the municipal buildings (courts, government offices), which open late and close early. There are a few larger private businesses, but the workers stay cloistered in their towers. There are a few destination sites (sports arenas, museums, tourist attractions) but those are only periodically busy, quickly filling and disgorging with little lasting impact. The only real long-term committed residents are the homeless, and so everything becomes about them: bathroom codes, limited outdoor seating, shuttered public spaces, etc. This further discourages people from moving downtown. It is kept alive almost singularly by government money: a large open-air social service, that even by that metric, has failed.

There were exceptions of course, like the wonderful deli, Subito, but even that was fortified, by necessity, from the chaos of the plaza across the street.

Everyone I spoke to was frustrated, from the elderly lifelong resident who laughed while telling me about the naive foreigner who had asked someone in the park to watch his bike for a few minutes, to the twenty-two-year-old at the hotel desk, whose job includes waking the homeless in the parking garage each morning, which he does by himself since the police and security rarely respond to his calls.

So I was looking forward to boarding my bus to South Bend, and was happy to find it left from an actual station, not from the street in front of the plaza.

This last trip was scheduled to be the shortest, and it was also the emptiest, with only me, Corlas (bound for Elkhart), and Barbara and Brian (Kokomo), as customers.

Yet it didn’t end up being a short ride, because the bus was an hour late, so the four of us spent the time at gate A chatting about all sorts of things including "why can't people speak proper English if they live in this country" (Corlas), a long story about a Somali woman who killed a policeman in a station bathroom (Brian), why would anyone wear a knit cap in this heat (Corlas, "He got a do-rag and skull cap, you know his hair is soaking wet under that. Don't know what he's thinking."), getting a job (Barbara about Brian, "He just got fired from a good job and now he's turning down calls from other truckers? What is my man thinking?"), and how astounding it is that they now have vending machines selling electronics (Brian).

When the driver eventually arrived, she was nasty, caustic, and dismissive, focusing most of her vitriol on me. Her behavior irritated all of us, especially Corlas who seemed to be itching for a fight, and I briefly thought of leading a peasants' revolt, but then I remembered what happened to Wat Tyler, Jack Straw, and John Ball, and while I wasn't worried about losing my head to the axe, being stranded in Indianapolis another night seemed equally bad, so I sucked it up and played peacemaker.

Despite already being late, our driver, seemingly out of spite, said we wouldn’t be leaving for another ten minutes, so I went outside to calm down, which is where I met Jerry, catching a last smoke before her bus to St. Louis. She was coming from Cincinnati, and all told, the trip would take her fifteen hours. When I asked her why she didn’t fly, because after twenty-six years working at a Toyota dealer she certainly could, she said, “I’m just enjoying life, taking it easy, visiting friends and relatives, and I like the scenery and everything, and meeting the people along the way.”

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As I wrote last week, that's also why I take Greyhounds, to meet people. Despite everything I wrote above, almost all of it which reads negative, sitting here now, looking back, I'm very glad I did this journey, because I met a lot of people I would have never encountered otherwise. Tough, troubling, but almost all genuinely decent human beings.

That's why I encourage everyone to walk and take buses whenever you can, because you end up dealing with people who remind you what humanity actually is. Not the polished cartoonish version we're supposed to aspire to, but the far more common messy, complicated, and resilient version.

So I’ll end this essay on a more positive note, with the words of seventy-eight-year-old Willie Dickson, who was the only other customer at the South Bend McDonald's at 5:30 a.m., sitting at what I learned was his regular table, cluttered with bags, papers, and books.

Me: Do you believe in the American Dream? And if so, what is it?

Willie: Yeah. To make a livelihood and live free and buy and be what you want. You don't have to be a millionaire, just an average person being able to save money, but nowadays, you can't hardly save money because of the price of living. Cost of living is outrageous now. But I had a good life, because I worked hard and didn’t take any government handouts. Raised three kids with my wife of fifty-two years. All of them been through college, and you can’t ask for more than that.

Me: What do you tell the young kids?

Willie: I tell them that the way in life is to listen to your parents, and take care of your family. If they need help, you help them, but if they get out of hand, you gotta cut them off. You can’t keep helping someone if they abusing themselves and your help. I’ve had some cousins who abused drugs, abused the law, and I cut them off because they proved they won’t learn, and I won’t let them drag me and my family down.

PS: I am writing this from a Michigan City McDonald’s, where I will be for the next few days, before spending this Sunday in Chicago.

If you want to spend time with me, say hello, or tell me what’s wrong with me, I’ll be at O'Leary's Public House (541 N Wells St) from two until four pm on this Sunday the 20th.

I won’t be drinking, but I will happily buy whoever shows up and a few beers.

Until next week!

PSS: I will be soon leaving to spend all of August busing around Australia. My plan (will write about it more, is to start in Sydney, and make my way via Greyhound, to Darwin.) If you are in the region, send me a message!

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1. Before I checked into my hotel I told someone it was probably run by a Patel, and then I get there, and go to log into the WiFi, and lol. I say this lovingly, and I should write a longer piece about Patel run motels.