A pungent gust of exhaust filled his lungs as the bus drove off around the Embarcadero and out of sight. He was home, alone, two miles from his apartment, ten thousand miles from his former self. Or maybe he never understood his former self well enough to have measured the distance between then and now. Labor Day was coming to a close as the sun began its decent towards the other side of the world, casting long shadows off the myriad skyscrapers whose spires reached for the heavens. He lingered in the cold blanket of these shadows for forty five heartbreaking minutes. The bus had departed, leaving in its place the certainty that his own two feet had to carry him forward, towards home, into the warmth of a late afternoon's light. The very thought of moving frightened him, froze him in his tracks, suitcase in one hand, red track suit jacket in the other, and two tears forming at the corners of his hazel eyes. His dirty dish water blond hair grew progressively disheveled as the wind blowing in from the bay tossed it into a spiky mess. The smell of salt water and fish began to nauseate a stomach long devoid of nourishment. Sailboats littered the horizon and in the distance a Japanese freighter, stacked four stories tall with freight, coasted under the Bay Bridge and out to sea.
His flight from O’Hare had arrived to San Francisco two hours prior. During the four hour journey his mind was locked in a turbulent state of confusion and distraction. A copy of the Fountainhead lay upon his lap, half read, rising and falling at the speed of a restless leg. He could hardly stomach the Salisbury steak and mashed potato meal, pushing it aside after two bites and opting instead for a second Diet Coke. The in-flight movie was yet another lame attempt at capturing the magic of a close group of friend's senior year in high school, all trying to score on prom night, breaking their virgin bonds to adolescence. Both the book and the movie were merely distractions from the inevitable truth that the plane would land in a city he longed to escape. Escape was always his answer, the instant solution to any problem, any misstep, or anxious disposition; run or push everyone and everything away, out of sight out of mind. He spoke to no one during the journey, gaining no insight into the life of the aspiring twenty something entrepreneur sitting adjacent to him, or the woman in the aisle seat, a writer whose self help book sold modestly in the late 1970's around the time of his birth. The other people didn't exist, they weren't real, or at least they weren't as real as the anxiety that drove him to worry incessantly every waking hour of every day for eight arduous weeks. When he rose to use the washroom, it was not with the intention to relieve his bladder; he needed a mirror to peer into, a reflection to prove that the test he was enduring was truly happening.
The aisle was crammed with people socializing, stretching their limbs, laughing and joking about the long awaited day off of work. Two people were ahead of him in line for a single lavatory as the other’s toilet was malfunctioning, “a calming thought to think when 30,000 feet in the air,” he wondered to himself. “If they can’t fix the damn toilet, whose to say the flaps won’t fail upon landing, causing the plane to overrun the tarmac and end up on CNN’s breaking coverage as the Labor Day disaster of ’02.” Ten minutes passed and he was finally next in line, eaves dropping on the stewardesses small talk of People magazine headlines, lipstick and that asshole in 24A who kept calling her up to flirt with him. A click and a snap and the door swung open. He let the elderly woman pass, stepped into the stainless steel confines, and slammed the door shut. He had found his sanctuary, a place to be alone to suffer and to escape the garrulous passengers. As a youth he’d always enjoyed plane flights for they signified an adventure into the unknown, the uncertain future which awaited him in another part of the country amongst strangers and new terrain. Travel was once his passion, as was reading and learning and meeting fascinating people with creative visions of shaping the world. He felt ill thinking such thoughts of what once was: ill and pissed and confused as he finally built up the courage to view his own reflection. Staring with contempt into his own cold, empty eyes he pulled his hair as hard he could and pinched his arm, the pain of which proved he was in fact alive and enduring, not lost in a nightmare from which he could awake. A knock on the lavatory door woke him from himself long enough to nod and apologize to an obviously irritated passenger. "Jesus Christ kid, what the hell were you doing in there," the thirty something business man exclaimed loud enough to alert nearby passengers. "Fuck off, prick" he thought to himself as he headed back to the confines of a cramped seat to fidget and worry and fear his very own fragmented, delusional thoughts.
The bus ride from the airport to the Embarcadero terminal was unpleasant not because of the smell or the discomfort of the tattered pleather seats, but because he was fighting a losing battle in the "What If" game, cycling and recycling myriad scenarios in which he wouldn't have come undone. There was little linearity to the process. He'd place himself back in time eight weeks and imagine what might have happened if he hadn't followed his co-worker T.J. back his condo after work that Friday evening. Or supposing he had followed T.J. back but stopped at 7-11 for gas or slurpees, anything to have prevented meeting T.J's new neighbors at a condo complex he resented forever finding himself in on the weekends. Three minutes later he contemplated what might have happened if he hadn't followed through on an ill planned voyage to Berkeley, or why, in a drunken haze he revealed his summer destination to T.J.'s girlfriend in a bar that stank of pretension and stale beer. As disparate as his imagined reinterpretations were, they were centered on a path to nowhere, an attempt to reverse time, to revise his story to have headed South or East instead of West. And to most of the fellow passengers who paid him no mind, he was just another kid on his way somewhere in the Bay area. The divorced woman sitting two seats back was prevented by her own nerves from approaching him, despite her newly found thirst for afternoon carnal delights with virile young men. An old man in the adjacent row saw the young man and was reminded of the days when he was twenty three and stationed in a foreign base, an MP during the day and a connoisseur of Guinness and prostitutes at night. Just behind him sat a mother and her seven year old son who boldly stated that he wanted his hair spiky and messy like the young man's. Thirty stories were playing out in the confines of that bus, twenty nine of which he was completely oblivious to.
A flock of seagulls circled overhead, swooping down to the Embarcadero station in search of anything edible, scattering to nearby light-poles as the bus rumbled closer. Forty five minutes later he awoke form his catatonic state as the winds of fate or mere dumb luck cast a steaming brown and white turd into his hair. "God fucking dammit," he shouted to the firmament, "is there anything else you'd like to do to me you fucking bastard." Unsure of his religious beliefs yet convinced in a higher power he found the incident ironic, proof of the thought that God was in fact taking a shit on his life and had been for the past three years. But the very same incident to which he reacted in an explosion of bottled up emotional turmoil, was the catalyst that awoke him from a self indulgent state of mentally repeating, " I'm never going to get through this, I can't, I can't do it, I can't live through this," and the coup de grace, "if I don't move, time won't pass."
Overwhelmed by the truth that he was once again alone to face himself in a city 1500 miles from home, he fell to the cold cement and began to shaking his head in defiance of the present situation. In a barely audible whisper he repeated, "this can't be happening, this can't be happening." His throat began to constrict and dry up as the moisture was redirected to tired tear ducts. He pulled his hair and banged his fists on the ground, as if such an act would solve or change anything. Acknowledging an undeniably overwhelming state of confusion and despair, a deluge or tears cascaded to the pavement. Blood rushed to his face, casting a crimson glow of embarrassment for having indulged his own grief. As he turned his head to wipe away the snot and tears from his face, he saw another bus approaching. Out of fear that strangers might see him in such a state and either pity, offer help, or ignore him, he gathered his belongings and stood. With bloodshot eyes and remnants of seagull shit still in his hair, he took his first step forward, out of the shadow of the bus terminal and into a late afternoon Labor Day's fading light.
