No More Nice Girls: Countercultural Essays

Escape from New York

Escape from New York or Americans, long-distance buses are the transportation of last resort. As most people see it, buses combine the comfort of a crowded jail cell with the glamor of a liverwurst sandwich. Though I can't really refute that assessment, I don't really share it, either. As a student with lots of time, little money, and no driver's license, I often traveled by bus. Un-American as it may be, I feel nostalgic about those trips, even about their discomforts. In my no doubt idealized memory, discomfort was the cement that bound together an instant community of outsiders, people who for reasons of age, race, class, occupation (student, soldier), handicap, or bohemian poverty were marginal—at least for the time being—to a car-oriented culture. It is this idea of community that moves me now. Lately I've been feeling isolated, spending too much time hiding out in my apartment , wrestling with abstract ideas.What better remedy than to take a bus trip, join the transportation-of-last-resort community, come back and write about what I'velearned? I am not immediately struck by the paradox: that in search of community I'm leaving home. Breaking out of my everyday web of connections—to my friends, mywomen's group, the man I've begun to think about livingwith—and going on the road. i On a long bus trip, the difference between a tolerable ride and a miserable ride is having two seats to yourself. Anyway, there are a limited number of games you can play on abus, and scoring two seats is one of them. My technique for getting people to sit elsewhere is to take an aisle seat near the back, put something ambiguously proF E X I L E O N M A I N S T R E E T 168 prietary on the window seat (ajacket, say,or a book, not something that's obviously mine like a purse), spread my body out as much as possible, and pretend to be asleep. As I leaveNew York on Greyhound's express to Montreal I am selfconsciously taking none of these precautions. I throw mybackpack on the overhead rack,claspmy trustyVanMorrison tote bag between my knees, sit by the window and try to look inviting. But the bus is half-empty and no one sitswith me. Most of the passengers are older women traveling alone, Canadian students, and foreign tourists. A little Hispanic girl skips up the aisle, inspecting faces; she has on a sky-blue skirt and a T-shirt that says DANCE DANCE DANCE. My nearest neighbor sits across the aisle, a plump, dark, curly-hairedwoman who looks unidentifiably foreign and impenetrably self-contained. Ten minutes out of the Port Authority terminal, a familiar sensation hits. I recognize it from childhood. Whenever I went to an amusement park I would makea point of going on the roller coaster. Every time, as soon as I was irrevocablytrapped in my seat and we had started to move, the idiocy of what I'd done would overwhelm me. But why should I feel that now? I'm not trapped. I can get off the bus at Saratoga Springs and be back in New York by tonight. Between Montreal and Toronto I watch a teenage couple neck, listen to a bunch of high school girls sing "One Hundred Bottles of Beer on the Wall," and read Doris Lessing's The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four and Five. The story is sucking me in despite my revulsion at its basic premise—that the rulers of a certain section of the universe have a benevolent grand design ungraspableby lesser beings, and so their orders must be obeyed however cruel and incomprehensible they seem. In Toronto I have an hour's wait. Since there are no seats in the crowded waiting room I find a spot on the floor and open my book. A girl who looks about 16 sits down close to me and pretends to be absorbed in a pamphlet. A New Yorker to the core, I make sure I know where my wallet is. The girl has straight blond hair and metalrimmed glasses; she is wearing a long navy skirt and a gray sweater with a hood. After about 30seconds she asks me what I'm reading. I pass her the book. Escape from New York 169 "I've been...