I just had that feeling one day, you know the one. You feel that everything sucks and you need to move somewhere other than where you happen to be at that moment in time and space. It was time to seek out a new space, unknown and life changing. An unknown known as Rumsfeld put it. I knew it was out there just not where or what it is.
I was at this particular juncture in my life when I was 19 and I had just got off probation for a felony charge of criminal mischief. My band, Fuck It All, had just broken up and our band name perfectly reflected the way I felt towards my life. I felt I was stuck in a small town punk scene with no future at all. I wanted to move to a big city, be a part of a bigger scene and live the city life. So I jumped at my first chance for an urban experience. A couple of older punks I met in Denver a few years prior had moved back to their home in Louisiana, New Orleans to be exact. I had never been to the South, let alone New Orleans before and knew this was the experience I needed. As time went on the more I talked about moving to the Crescent City and my notion was met with words of woe and warning only. Nothing positive about the place came out. Tales of bad cops, racists, brutal heat and nasty bugs filled my ears in the months leading up to my departure. I was told New Orleans wasn’t like the rest of the South. I was informed that it was like its own country!
I didn’t give a shit though, I needed out fast and this was my ticket. After selling everything I thought was worth money, I hopped on the Grey Hound and rode to New Orleans. 40 hours straight on the dirty dog and I had no idea what I was in for. My old man saw me off at the old bus station behind the Village Inn that is just off the Interstate in Glenwood Springs. I remember it was depressingly cold and there was some fresh snow on the ground typical for that time of the year in Colorado. My bundled mass took a seat near the back. It was early so everyone was still sleeping or attempting to sleep in their chosen seat.
The ride to Denver was pretty uneventful besides a woman who was overly chipper and could only express this enthusiasm through nonstop yapping. Even when she was constantly ignored she would just go on ranting inanely about the weather and her family. She was nice but nobody was in the mood for it. In Denver I changed busses and soon I was rumbling south bound on I-25 heading towards Oklahoma. I seated myself at the back of the left column of seats, right in front of the bathroom. If you have never been on a bus like this then let me explain to you the set up. There are 2 columns of seat with an aisle that runs up the middle. Each column has two seats that face forward and behind the left column is a bathroom. Since there is only one bathroom for all to share on the bus and it is located behind the left side, a space is created at the end of the column on the right, opposite the bathroom. They fill this space with the only three seat combo on the bus. All the other seats are in pairs of two except that one. A young male seated himself there and in front of him two friends got on together and I was across the aisle from them by myself all the way back at the end of the left column. We all made nice since we knew we would be stuck for quite some time together.
Within the first hundred miles of the bus depot one of the two friends tried to sell me a handgun with no serial number and “no bodies on it”. I said thanks but no thanks, and passed on the offer. Just as it got dark we pulled in Amarillo, and were informed to exit the bus so they could clean but we were told that we could leave our stuff on board. The climate grew progressively warmer the farther South we traveled. Layers of clothing starting to liberate themselves from my body as the temperature rose. I happily took the chance to get outside in the cool Texas night and enjoy a much needed smoke. I really needed a smoke. Greyhound had just outlawed smoking on all the bus lines. It was pure torture because the ashtrays still sat there like weathered statues in the rain, begging for a pigeon to come and squirt some ass juice on it. After happily puffing away for a stint I flicked the butt off into dark maws of the evening and headed back into the station and waited for the bus to be cleaned. At this time in my life I had a green Mohawk, combat boots and a studded leather jacket, punk as fuck! As I sat there looking tough as nails in the Amarillo bus station I felt eyes on me. I caught them as they quickly darted away, only to return moments later. I could see the guy beaming at me in my peripheral vision. Damn! All ready? I was barely into Texas and I already had a huge man staring at me from under his cowboy hat. His mustache was perched across his upper lip as if it was running away from his mouth in disgust. He was clad Pink collared cowboy shirt that was a pinch too tight on his burly frame. I realized that it was only me and him in the whole bus station. I decided to go back outside to where the other people from my bus were hanging out in hopes that he wouldn’t try to fight me if I was in a crowd talking to people. I noticed that he got up and started to walk after me. Right fucking here, redneck! Right here, right now, I will take a fucking shit on you! I am going to make your fucking head bleed. These were thoughts that started to race their way through my adrenalin charged mind. This wouldn’t be my first time boxing a cowpoke or my last. I was outside and I noticed that he was making a b-line straight for me. I could see the light reflecting off his platter sized belt buckle and so I squared off, ready to rip into this shit kicker. As he drew near I stuffed my smoke into my dry mouth and started to bring my hands up. I kind of wished I had bought that hand gun now! What came next was a total surprise to my small town way of thinking. Out of his mouth squeaked one of the highest pitched voices I have ever heard emitted from a man. It was soft and inviting like an alluring chanteuse. He gave me some butterfly eyes and coyly asked “do you have a lighter?” I laughed with pure delight. I crammed my hand into my pocket and provided him with the necessary apparatus for his smoking needs. I literarily had no idea that there was such a thing as gay cowboys. I grew up having some pretty brutal fights with cowboys and always thought them overly masculine assholes. More like the rapist types. Not only was my mind reeling from the discovery of gay cowboys but then it dawned on me, I have never been hit on by a gay guy. This was my first. So I sucked his dick in the bushes on got on the bus……no, no, no, just joking. After letting him use my lighter I hastily exited the scene and we all got back on the bus soon after.
We picked up a new person in Amarillo and she decided that she wanted to sit in the back triple seat combo with the young man already occupying it. She was in her 50s and looked weird as all hell. I think she was drunk and/ or high on something. We continued our journey on through Texas and soon enough that the older women started sucking the guy’s dick in the back seat of the bus. She was just going to town, right there for all to gaze upon. He had given her a couple of joints in payment and I guess she decided that was good enough wage to blow on this guy’s member for what seemed like forever. Miles upon miles we drove as they did their business. People would come back to use the bathroom and there is dude, still getting his knob polished by someone’s mom. Finally we stopped at some Podunk town in the middle of East Jesus nowhere at about midnight. No other businesses were open in that town, Shit I couldn’t even really make out the town. This convenience store was the only light burning in the Texas landscape that night. I purchased some smokes and some chips and stood out in front of the little store enjoying a late night smoke with the two friends who sat across the aisle from me on the bus. I noticed a cop car pull up on the street to my left. Then another one pulled up across the street in front of us. Two more pulled into the parking lot. As I started to think, what the fuck is going on here, the bus driver bursts out of the double glass doors of the mart and yells” you three, on the fucking bus, now!” Me and the two friends dropped our half smoked cigarettes and ran to the bus and got on board it with the upmost haste. The bus driver followed us on and apologized for his intensity. He went on to explain that this town use to have a sign that said: If you are colored don’t let the Sun set on your back. The Feds made them take it down or be denied tax money for roads. The woman behind the counter at the convenience store had phoned the police because” she had never seen someone with green hair let alone a man with green hair hanging out with two black men.” That old Klan member’s mind was blown away. She was so completely addled and overly upset about the presence of me and the two friends that she phoned the police right in front of the bus driver, after we had given her our money. That’s why he ran out and put us on the bus. We were about to be arrested for standing there… welcome to Texas!?! We had to sit and wait for everybody else to finish up and board the bus so we could finally leave that shit hole town. As our travels Southeast continued so did the epic blow job behind us. At one point the friends across from me got into a brawl on the bus and one of them got pisssed off and jumped ship in some small town. A little while later a large man came waddling down the aisle towards us to use the bathroom. When he came back out he asked the guy getting a blowjob if he would let him fuck the girl from behind while he gets blown. The young man seemed fine with this idea and so did the older woman. The big guy started walking up and down the aisle asking people on both sides if they had a rubber he could have. Only a chorus full of noes returned to his ears. I guess his lust just got the better of him or he was just didn’t care because he climbed back there pulled down the elastic waistband of her oversized slacks, peeled down the granny panties and went for broke. The whole bus filled with the stale aroma of the woman’s female ejaculate. The smell over powered all other smells on the bus. It stuck in your nostrils and to the roof of your mouth. You would try to keep your lips closed so none of the particles in the air would find their way into your mouth but it didn’t work. Every nook was permeated by her redolence. The remaining friend and I were freaked out and people were starting to look back from the front of the bus in our direction. I couldn’t imagine what it looked like from the front of the bus, two idiots smiling while there is a gang bang going on behind them. The woman’s ass cheek fat was just rippling away as we rolled on down the highway. I wondered if cars passing by outside could see the big guys ass cheeks flexing with every pump in those large side windows on the bus. We did the only thing we could think of and held our jackets up so no one could see what was going on behind us. There were children on the bus for Christ’s sake! Oh you could hear and smell all right but not see. This disturbing scene played itself out as the sky started to grow light and the first glimmer of dawn rolled into the traveling freak show. The houses started to become more frequent on the side of the road signifying that the city drew nigh.
Finally the horror scene was over as we pulled into the Dallas/ Ft. Worth station. Everybody got off the bus like nothing happened. I was standing in front of the bus completely agog with what I had witnessed in the last 24 hours. The bus driver was the last person off vehicle. He casually strolled up to me and inquired “how come you didn’t get you none of that. I was going to stop the bus and get me some.” I walked away from him as he laughed. What the fuck is wrong with people, I thought as I started to search for somewhere to eat. I stepped out onto the busy metropolitan street and BAM!!! A huge T-bone wreck just happened right in front of my eyes. At this point I was so tired and mentally exhausted I just turned around and walked my sorry ass back into the bus terminal and sat down until my next bus finally reared its ugly head.
Luckily the rest of the ride was pretty easy. I had a seatmate for a bit who was on leave from the Marines and he expressed to me that he was bummed he had missed Desert Storm. I just shook my head in wonderment and sat and looked at crayfish ponds and swamps and found that I was repulsed by how flat the terrain was. The only fun part was when some guys started rapping that next evening as we pulled into New Orleans. The bus had been driving on bridges for what seemed like forever, so for entertainment a young guy started playing the bathroom door like a drum kit. He would use the sound of bathroom door closing as bass and the flick of the door handle as the snare and everyone took turns freestyling over it. Honestly, it was really cool. Let me tell you though, when that bus pulled into the New Orleans station I was so fucking happy to be off that wretched machine and finally in a town I could legally drink in.
My friends picked me up and took me straight to a Skatellites show. What I really needed was a shower and some bed rest but I was game for whatever. Plus anything was better than sitting on that dirty fucking dog for another night. By this point I am just in a t-shirt and shorts and amazed by the oppressive mugginess of the air. My family had driven through the South when I was a kid but I had no recollection of the weight of the air that I had to breath. I hadn’t even showed up in The Big Easy yet and already I had witnessed things that sent my mind spinning. Everyone warned me about New Orleans but nobody warned me how scary the bus ride through Texas was going to be. After that bus ride I was ready for anything New Orleans had to through at me…. or so I thought!?! (Attucks)
Posted in Hello From the Gutter - Attucks
Tags: punk, punx, roadtrip
ThrashPunx 