I'm in the Chicago bus station at 3:00 a.m. after dropping out of the University of Iowa a few weeks into the spring semester of my junior year. A panel of girlfriends approved of this move to save an intermittent Vermont relationship. My boyfriend had impressed them when he hitchhiked out to Iowa to see me. He was a talented artist and poetic letter writer. After breaking up with him for the third or fourth time during December break and noticing that this time he was ready to give up on me, I realized that I didn't want to lose him. The girlfriends agreed that he would be a lot to lose. Instead, I lost my parents tuition money, mothers plane ticket to come and visit me, a variety of friends and a semester.
Because the Vermont bus doesn't leave the gritty Chicago bus station until 6:00 a.m., I have a three hour layover in a plastic chair on a dirty floor. I'm a bit hungry after being up all night and not eating since my farewell dinner at the Hamburg Inn with my friends . For some reason the cafeteria is open in the middle of the night. The food is partially composted so I purchase a candy bar that later gives me a stomach ache. Because it's 1979 I'm able to pull out of my jeans pocket an actual paper letter that I had received in the mail the day of my departure. My stomach leaps a little when I see the handwriting of Ryan from creative writing class. Behind his letter is a copy of my favorite Ryan story with the bittersweet line “she was as beautiful as she will ever be.” Ryan claims to be writing to me from a sunny poolside lounge chair in Texas after deciding to take a semester off to hitchhike around the country with a friend. He seems really happy to be in Texas. Thirty years later I find out, because I find his blog on the internet, that he is settled and married in Austin writing young adult novels. Ryan usually sat next to me in creative writing and regularly ran into me in the library lobby where we would stand for at least an hour talking about fiction writing and general philosophy. I reflect on his swarthy skin, thoughtful brown eyes, contagious laugh and his loving descriptions of his mothers cooking especially her salmon casserole. After several tries to tempt Ryan into a more intimate relationship, I had settled for friendship. Finding a pen and pad of paper in my backpack that I hug in as a desk, I write back to Ryan describing the bus station and telling him why I dropped out of school. Ryan never responds to my letter hastily dropped in the gloomy bus station mailbox. After finishing the letter, I look up at my surroundings and discover an ageless genderless person in drab clothing pacing while clutching a dinner roll. I have the feeling that this nocturnal person is not waiting for a bus wanting only to pace the dirty bus station floor and make the dinner roll last as long as possible occasionally taking a nibble only to drop an equal amount on the floor.
At 6:00 a.m. on a bus headed towards Vermont, I sit next to a man who is traveling from California and has been drinking coffee and reading magazines for two days. From his magazine reading oasis, he gently explains that, contrary to what I might think, Playboy is one of the best. To prove his point he spends a long time describing an illuminating interview with John Lennon. I decide that the magazine reader is about ten years older and more experienced than me. He's tall and thin with attractively rough beard growth on a handsome face. After he leaves the bus in Cleveland, I find myself wondering about him. Does he have a life in Cleveland with a girlfriend or is he visiting from a life in California? Sitting alone in my seat, I go over our mostly once sided conversation about John Lennon and think about the song All You Need Is Love.
The bus arrives in Burlington, Vermont in the evening. The intermittent boyfriend is waiting outside in the gently falling snow. I'm happy and a little guilty. He asks if I'm hungry. We sit across from each other in a booth and eat turkey sandwiches. Later, he takes me to the basement of a house full of college students. He lives in the basement because he likes to save money for travel. Indian print bedspreads hang from the ceiling creating a kind of bedroom. There is a rug on the floor, a bed and a nightstand. On the nightstand is a lamp and The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. He's always interesting but all I can picture is spiders surrounding the make shift bedroom like wolves.
“Tomorrow I'll look for a job and an apartment,” I announce while wondering if the sheets are clean.
“I found something today at a lawn sale,” he says and points to a large round metal object on a stand at the foot of the bed.
“It looks old.”
“Flip the switch.”
The switch creates a red glow in the center that radiates out to the rounded metal sides eventually enveloping the make shift room including the Indian print bedspread walls, the bed, the nightstand, the lamp, Geoffrey Chaucer, the rug and us. We are saturated.
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