Friday, Port Authority Bus Station: I got a ticket to ride, oh I got a ticket to ride all right. The lovely Greyhound 2437, Express: three hours to my destination.  I’m visiting a friend in another city, and roundtrip it’s $150 cheaper than the train. I’m racing through the bus station looking for Gate #26, which I think might be my gate if I’m reading the ticket correctly. I’m not. At Gate #26, a homeless man sleeps at the doorway.

Back at the information counter, there’s a line of seven people. I have fifteen minutes till my bus departs. In a panic, I turn to the person behind me. “Do you know any better than I know how to figure out your gate?” She does. She points to the clearly written, large red-lettered “74” on the front of my ticket sleeve. “You’re a genius,” I say, “and a life saver. Thank you.” And I go running off to Gate #74. She’s now one step closer to the front of the line.

At Gate #74, the woman smiles at my T-shirt, a boast for the local neighborhood association. “Hells Kitchen, all right. You’re a local. Don’t worry about the bag, I’ve looked enough. Don’t let him get your place in line. You’re set.” She doesn’t glance through my belongings at all, just blue stamps my ticket. 

I don’t know what to think about travelling Greyhound. Except that I really don’t want to share a seat with anybody. I’ve heard horror stories about men exposing themselves on Greyhounds. If anybody sits next to me, I think that there might not be enough Klonopin in this world for me to make it to my destination. Even if they’re a rich-looking person with nice pants on.

You want to sit on the right. If you sit on the left, you can’t read the road signs, and you have only your watch and a guesstimate of traffic density to tell you how far you’ve left to travel. You should also look for a seat that doesn’t have spit dried on the window. I can’t emphasize this enough. I take one behind a mother and child, even though they have their seatbacks tilted as far as they can take them. They are not likely to expose themselves. I can apparently deal with somebody’s head in my lap as long as I can see out the window and I get no shot of penis. Besides, nobody’s likely to pick the seat beside me if they’re going to have to ride with a five-year-old’s head in their lap. Minor inconvenience.

I set my bag down at my side and am rifling through it, clawing open klonopin packets. These wafers, they dissolve into sugar on your tongue, like those little rainbow-colored droplets they used to sell on tear sheets. Perhaps it’s for this reason that the makers have made it nearly impossible to open them: if an adult can barely do it, a child certainly can’t. Now, I can put the bag in my lap to look for Klonopin, but I’m hoping to buy some time as people file past me. I’m hoping that the image of somebody panicking over Klonopin packets will discourage them from taking the seat. I’m hoping that they don’t say “Excuse me,” and instead think, “crazy lady with big bag.” So I’m pathetically scraping at the foil when somebody says, “I’m not trying to save my seat with a bag, not like some people, is all I’m saying.” She totally has me. I am trying to save my seat with my bag. She’s a black woman and she doesn’t know the other black women seated around me on the bus but they all start shouting and agreeing. “Mmmm-hmmmm. No, you’re not doing that, not you. Not you.” I very sheepishly, whitely say, “Sorry” and put my bag on my lap. Swallow a Klonopin. It’s a useless gesture; everybody’s already boarded. The woman whose head is in my lap says, “Yeah, some people think they can save a seat, huh.”

I swallow more Klonopin. I am a cowardly ass.

After some time, two late arrivals show and I grit my teeth and hold my bag on my lap and hope that I don’t look very friendly. One is an old man, an old, old man, the shaky sort, the kind that just might expose himself mid-ride. He, thankfully, passes me. The second is a kid, and he takes a seat up front. Relief. I am a cowardly ass that has her own seat.

The lady in front of me turns on her little personal movie player. She’s watching a comedy. She goes to curl up against the window, but there’s spit dried on the window beside her.

The driver announces that we’re on our way. Warns us to turn off our cell ringers. Tells us if any of us talk too loud he will throw us off. Tells us if any of us brought an alcoholic beverage on board, he will throw us off. Tells us we might not make it on time, owing to traffic. Introduces himself. “My name is Ray. What’s yours?” Everybody says, “Hi Ray.” Ray says, “That wasn’t everybody.” Everybody, including me, says, “Hi Ray.” Ray says, “That’s more like it. Now the bus is going to jerk a lot. Don’t panic. The transmission fluid is low but we’ll make it.” Ray tries to reassure us. The bus is not going to make it, and I’m stuck on this bus. No spit and no seatmate, but no egress either.

The traffic we jerk through is not too bad. I have swallowed four klonopin, and I’m feeling settled. Well, not that settled. Every so often I’m thrown forward by the low transmission fluid, and the shrink prescribed the Klonopin in such a low dose that four doesn’t matter. There’s nothing to see outside highway windows really, but I do like to look at the truck drivers.  I don’t know why. I just never really got to see them before I started taking Greyhound all the time. I have heard that they were mostly Pakistani these days, but the ones I see look like what you think a truck driver would look like: hairy guys with missing teeth and a penchant for winking. One is dancing while driving, another reads a magazine. Reads a magazine, people, like while driving down a highway. Our bus jerks on past him. 

Meanwhile, the lady who yelled at me is on the cell phone. Ray says, “If I can hear you this loud, you must be bothering your other passengers. Shut up, I’m serious.” She ignores Ray, but truthfully, I’m right next to her and she’s not bothering me. Still, I’m glad he’s yelling at her. Revenge.

The jerking is only mildly annoying, but twenty minutes from our destination, Ray announces, “I can tell it’s getting to y’all, and it certainly is getting to me, so we’re going to stop by this Travel Plaza and get some more fluid.” GRRRRRRR!  Twenty minutes away. So we pull off the highway, just past the state line, and Ray locks us in and lumbers off in search of transmission fluid. Those who can’t hear or speak English try to follow Ray off: the old man, the Hasidic couple (Hasidic men seem fond of Greyhound travel, I’ve noticed), the Asian lady carrying an orchid. Everyone shouts at them that it’s locked but they try anyway before returning to their seats. Then we wait for Ray.

Did I mention that he weighs about 250 lbs? He’s a big guy, and it suddenly occurs to me that if he has a heart attack in the Travel Plaza bathroom, nobody will find us in this bus. I imagine us waiting here as the sky grows dark. I scratch out another Klonopin. At night, when we’re left here in this bus, we’ll use my vintage suitcase to break the glass. Sure there’s an emergency exit, but that is probably trickier than opening the Klonopin. Here is where I ask the mother who’s head is in my lap. “Say, do you know how long it takes to fix a transmission? Any more than I do?” She seems happy to be able to answer, “Oh don’t worry, it won’t be long. They just get the fluid, put it in.” All is well between us, which will come in handy when we have to break open a window together. Twenty minutes go by, I call the friend who’s waiting. I do not tell the friend that I’m certain our driver Ray is dead, instead I say, “We’ll just be a few minutes late.” By saying this, I can make it true.

And I do. I see fat Ray ambling up beside the bus. He doesn’t have any fluid. 

The three hour trip takes five hours.

I’m not sure how to feel about going Greyhound. I hate to think that I just don’t like poor people. But whereas driving on the highway yourself is freeing, leaving the driving to Greyhound is anti-freeing. You’re stuck there hoping you never have to pee until traffic and mechanics allow. Two days later, I return to the bus station. A line winds all the way through the plaza. Does my lip begin to quiver? Because my friend says, “You want to take the Amtrak don’t you?” Oh do I. I am a cowardly ass. But on the Amtrak, I don’t need the Klonopin.