My burgeoning liberalism is having a tough time compromising itself with my general distaste for the masses. I want to reach out to people, to help people, to appreciate their woes. But this is hard, because they keep pissing me off.
People are idiots, and they smell.
My ideological conflict was typified over Thanksgiving, when I had to go to the bus station in Richmond … twice.
The first occassion was seemingly harmless. I had come home by car with a friend and didn’t have to worry about catching a bus until the way back to D.C. However, I had to go pick up my brother Patrick, who was returning from Appalachian State University by bus, on Wednesday night.
(Appy State is located in Boone, N.C., up in the mountains of western North Carolina. Someone once asked me, “What’s he majoring in? Playing the jug?” Really, though, it is a nice school.)
So, at 11:00 p.m., I went to the Greyhound station, which is located in what white people like to call “the ghetto.” It sits across the street from the Diamond, home of the mighty Richmond Braves. I always sat in the bleachers at Braves games of my youth, staring at the bus station across the way and wondering, “What is that? Who goes there? Is that man dead?”
I finally got my chance to find out. Patrick’s bus was two hours late.
My other brother, Michael, and I waited and watched the masses as they waited in line and yelled at each other. It was hideous. My dad calls them “the fly-switching herd of humanity.”
First of all, there are the mustaches. Pubic ones, oily ones, graying ones, shaggy ones. Everyone had a mustache. Even the 18-year-old boot campers coming from Fort Lejeune in North Carolina had mustaches.
(Note to President Bush: If these are the people we’re sending to fight al Qaeda, then just give up now. I mean, one of these kids was wearing Voit sneakers and a leather jacket that said “Ready to die, but more ready to kill!” Yikes.)
I noticed many things that night, standing there next to a 50-year-old man awaiting the next bus … to Dallas! The place smelled like fresh linoleum and pomade. Some guy next to me was discussing the relative merits of “small booty” versus “big, round booty.” He was wearing a Chris Weinke jersey and proceeded to roll a phat blunt right there in the station.
At the ticket counter, the line was 20 deep and a woman with four kids was yelling at the clerk, “Im’a getcha fired! Ya hear?!” Elsewhere, I saw muumuus, weak chins, black-eyes and nose hair.
I turned my attention to the old lady passed out in front of one of the coin-activated televisions. She was making noises that I can’t describe. Michael and I fled, deciding to wait outside. Making our way through the cigarette smoke at the entrance, I realized there was no escape. Just toothless cab drivers, Rocawear and pimples.
When Patrick finally arrived, at one in the morning, we hopped in the car, and he told us stories from the road, which mostly revolved around body odor and queries as to the location of drug dealers.
I shut all of this out of my mind until Sunday night, when I had to return. The boot campers were back, ready to head back to shooting large, heavy weaponry. They said “Aw, dag” a lot.
I said goodbye to my family, and boarded the bus. I found a seat near the back, next to a huge woman who put on her headphones. I did the same, and then realized that my CD player’s batteries were dead. Alas, I was left to listen to cell phone rings and snoring for two hours. Sleep was out of the question. You see, there was the rubbing. The woman next to me was so big that she would shift and toss an elbow into my ribs, or smush my thigh into the aisle. It didn’t help that the man in front of me put his seat back into my neck.
As I departed the train station on First and L streets to come back to Georgetown, I thought about my hypocrisy. I often pride myself on my tolerance, my general optimism, and a general social concern. I, sirs and madams, was a highminded liberal.
But damn, I sure was wrong. The masses and their ill-fitting hats can keep away! Sartre was right: Hell is other people.
