Work Text:
Once, I stood at the edge of a platform, a train station in the middle of nowhere, when a freight train coursed by. My eyes flickered along it as it passed, and I thought about grabbing onto it. But I didn't fantasize about all the faraway places I could go, holding onto this train. All I could think about was the impossibility of catching hold of it. The train was so close that I could've reached out and touched it, but it was moving so fast. Its wake tugged at my jacket, whipped dust into my face. The noise was deafening. The train seemed to go on forever, hundreds of cars, and then suddenly – it ended. What had been a thunderstorm a moment before was now a memory trailing into the distance. I watched it go.
--
Travel always makes me melancholic. And it's not just being crowded into a cramped space with people breathing heavily through their mouths, coughing, nudging into me with their shoulders. Feeling my shoes stick for just a moment whenever I raise them from the floor of the bus. Passing by gray building after gray building, all lined up and pressed down under the gray sky. I'm always tired after traveling, like my body knows that I've gone a great distance and feels like I must have put in some effort to get there. Like it forgets that I'm just sitting there as the world moves past my window.
I rest my forehead against the window, feel my jaw rattle, pull away again. I watch the yellow stripes of the road from a distance, each one as it flashes past taking me further away from Pepper Heights. In the end, it had all been very simple. My friend Emily had returned, inspected her houseplants carefully, and given me a knowing look. I shrugged, we hugged, and then I was at the bus station, buying a ticket back to New York. This had always been the plan. I had executed it perfectly.
Well, sort of. The original plan had included writing an album. That hadn't happened, at least not yet. I'd been a little preoccupied.
My life in Pepper Heights had been a strange little opera. More had happened to me in six weeks in Ohio than had happened after a lifetime in New York. I couldn't have asked for more inspiration.
Watching a little girl peel the stripes off a zebra.
Looking into the watercolor-painted face of a bruised boy.
Covered in mud and blood, both wet and slick in the darkness, distinguishable only by the warmth or coolness of them. Or the taste.
God. I shift and cross my legs. My seatmate notices nothing.
Cora thought we were going to die in that pit. We had a small death, I guess—la petite mort. I remember the hard intensity of fucking under the watch of those ancient fish. The soft kisses afterward. It was like a fever dream my mind would've manufactured if I'd fallen asleep after watching nature documentaries and too much porn.
I've gotta stop thinking about this in public. Fuck. I turn my hips toward the window, willing my dick to soften. The man sitting beside me remains oblivious.
Please, God, don't let me be the weird pervert on the bus today. I think about Sheila, chain-smoking and giving me the evil eye as I slid in late to work one day. I think about the lion at the zoo, its tail flicking as it measures the distance between us—oh, oh fuck, that was a mistake. I guess I'm learning things about myself; I hadn't realized fearing for my life could make me so horny.
Okay, okay. I think about, umm... I think about the smell of the burned cake as Luke brought it in from Cora's driveway. Separated from the excitement of the kitchen fire, the disgusting smell of that burned and ashen lump is a pretty effective turn-off. I sigh with relief as my throat itches with the memory of all that smoke.
Man. I can't believe I ran into a burning building. (Never mind that it was mostly smoke and very little fire. I thought the house was on fire, and that's what counts.) I can't believe a lot of what happened in Pepper Heights. It really feels surreal now, all of it. Like it happened to someone else. Like I had watched the whole thing from a distance, an out-of-body experience. A fantasy. With every mile, New York gets closer, and reality comes creeping in more and more, seeping into me like water flooding a basement. It threatens to drown me.
The robot voice of the bus cuts through my thoughts. It announces the next stop, and it's nowhere near my destination, but –
Destination. Such a heavy word used so lightly. I can't help but feel that I'm traveling away from my destiny, not toward it.
Like a sleepwalker, I rise from my seat. There's no conscious thought in my mind that I can identify as I sling my backpack over my shoulders and squeeze past my seatmate. The decision is made.
Did I make it?
...Does it matter?
I stand near the front of the bus for a few minutes, swaying with the motion of it, until we lurch to a stop. I climb down the stairs and the driver follows me, helps me unload my keyboard, and then the bus is gone. Moving on without me.
I go into the dingy little bus station of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, and approach the ticket counter. “Hi,” I say, setting down the heavy keyboard at my feet. “Could I get a ticket to Cleveland, please? One-way.”
Maybe I can get that album written after all.