There is not much I enjoy less than bus travel. I’ve tried to find a fraction of delight in being rolled from city to city in a giant Tupperware full of smells and sounds, but I can’t.
It’s the actual getting on the bus that I find to be the most stressful. Where to sit? Who will fully recline their seat into the next three hours of my life? First I try to identify everyone with fried chicken on their person. Then I look for children who’ve been hugged too much and couples who are still in the honeymoon stage — my chair’ll get kicked either way. I zoom right past anyone with anything hanging from a lanyard around their neck — they will, without fail, clip their fingernails once we’re on the turnpike. And, oh my god, I’d rather sit anywhere than next to a girl in a Barnard hoodie with a laptop — I promise you she brought food from fucking home, she brought fucking apple slices in a baby Ziploc bag. A baby Ziploc bag, to match the baby voice in which she talks on the phone to her boyfriend during thesis breaks every fifty miles.
I try to find the quiet people — observant monks, humorless children from Ingmar Bergman films, fresh inductees into the Witness Protection Program — but I can only assume they’re all traveling by rail, glorious rail.
This most recent trip I sat amongst a punk rock band. The lead singer leaned over me to flip off the Sallie Mae headquarters we passed in Delaware, and one of her dreadlocks curled in my palm. It upset me; it felt like a bendy bone. I swear to god, if I could travel in a cushioned, single-occupancy, sandalwood-scented pod that played rain sounds and gently rocked while it hurtled me through the air, I would be thrilled, and I leave it to the Japanese to design such a method.















