God of the Greyhound

Lately, the San Diego beach had taken on a screaming emptiness. There were people there, sure, and sun and sand and sea and sky, but they were hazy lines against the roaring void that I'd come to call the Big Zero. Plus I no longer recognized anyone at my hostel up the street. The crowd had changed to mostly young Europeans on holiday whose eyes passed over the zone of invisibility that my urine-scented top bunk had become. I was one of those guys who had stayed for too long. They knew it. The Big Zero knew it. And so did I.

"For $20, I can get you all the way to the bus station." A cab sidled up to me as I swayed with my duffle bag across the sidewalk. I wasn't sure if that was a deal, but I said okay.

My Greyhound ticket was for Austin, Texas. I found a seat on the bus and felt the empty space recede with San Diego. After an hour or so of staring out the window, I could see my better life taking shape somewhere new once more. It was solid because it was nebulous, and real because it hadn't happened yet.

It was either later that day or the next where I hit the first of many delays somewhere between California and Texas. The station wasn't a big change from the bus. It was crowded and rectangular and I hadn't planned ahead. There were vending machines but nothing to ward off the beginnings of what promised to be a multi-day hangover.

And we weren't going anywhere. There was no line per se, but a security guard blocked the entrance to the bus depot. Time wore on as muttered complaints grew louder and pointed questions grew horns. A man who looked to be in his 30s started crowding the guard.

"Sir, I'll tell you as soon as they tell us," the security guard said loud enough to warn the rest of us off.

The man had skin the color of coffee without a drop of cream and ears that stuck out symmetrically. He paced over to the vending machines then started talking to a pale guy wearing a beat-up straw fedora. I edged closer to their conversation and heard "Texas."

"You guys are trying to get to Texas?" I asked.

The pale guy said yeah, but the man wasn't concerned with places.

"I'm out here to make it big as a singer, but I need a tagline."

"Tagline?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm like the male version of Katy Perry." He tapped his right hand against his sternum and sang a few bars to the station ceiling. "Or, I was thinking: The solution to Michael Jackson," he said in the space of silence that followed.

"Whoa, I like that one," the pale guy said.

"I don't know," I said. "It could be too soon and saying 'solution' makes it sound like he was a problem." Michael Jackson had just died a year or maybe two years back. I wasn't sure because I hadn't been much of a fan.

The man tapped his sternum again, muttering to himself instead of singing this time, then looked at me. "Exactly, you see the problem."

He then introduced himself as JR, specifying that JR in no way stood for Junior. The pale guy's name was L, or maybe it was El—I don't know, it's not like I asked him to spell it. I just regretted not having introduced myself as R after learning both their names.

JR serenaded us at odd intervals to pass the time. His voiced sounded decent but not spectacular to my untrained ears. But who was I to judge? At least he had a dream.

But singing wasn't going to bring our bus to us. Perhaps JR realized that because, after a while, he stopped singing and talking and simply stared at the security guard still posted in front of the bus depot entrance. The guy glanced back in that strange way security guards have, a combination of looking while refusing to see.

JR tapped time against his chest and muttered up a storm. I asked what he was doing.

"I don't like it when people stare at me, so I say their thoughts back at them."

"To gain the upper hand?"

He didn't answer my question but released the security guard from his incantation by looking at me instead.

"It's hard to look into your eyes," he said.

"Oh, sorry." I looked to L for help. He was nearby but didn't seem to be registering the conversation. I was beginning to learn that L had a tendency to space out.

Then, JR started talking about God. His belief was this:

If you think perfectly natural thoughts, then those thoughts are God.

It wasn't so much a matter of speaking to God as letting your mind become God. I guessed that reading the thoughts of someone else was a simple step once you'd reached that stage.

JR seemed utterly sincere in this belief, and his confidence drew me and L like a magnet as he approached the security guard for another sally.

"Hello sir, I know you are a professional working with the information given to you, but is our bus to Texas waiting in there?"

"I told you, they haven't said anything," the security guard snapped.

"Okay, let's keep it professional. I'm simply asking a question. I, too, am a professional."

"If you could back up, then maybe everyone will get out of here sooner."

"That's okay, we're keeping it professional. I was just asking, as one professional to another." JR took the slightest of steps back with me and L at his elbows.

But there was no peace to be had for the security guard. JR kept hammering him with the word "professional." He never raised his voice. He kept it soft and soothing, but relentless.

I don't know if something actually happened inside the bus depot, or if the security guard's mind crumpled under the weight of God's thoughts given voice, but he waved at something inside the depot then finally took a big step back.

JR, L, and I were the first ones in. At least half a dozen buses were inside and some were already idling. We scrambled from bus to bus, trying to find the right one.

Some guys wearing the Greyhound logo started moving bags between buses as we came in. I noticed my blue duffle bag headed for the wrong bus.

"Hey, that's my bag, I'm actually getting on another bus. I can—" But the guy just handed me my bag without a word.

"Do you need to get your bag?" I asked L.

"Nah, it's fine," he said.

It wasn't, and L never saw his bag again.

Once we were in the bus, JR extolled the virtues of Elvis, his perfect combination of jet black hair and baby blue eyes.

I was drifting in and out, trying to sleep through the worst of my hangover, but I heard him from across the aisle.

He was in the marines for six years with a wife and three kids. He was an unabashed lover of men. His God was in his mind. And he was proud of all these things.

Perhaps a higher power was with the R, JR, L trio as we roused vegetative Greyhound staff and somehow made it from bus to bus. Despite delays and alternate routes and L losing his luggage, we were getting along fine until we reached El Paso.

In El Paso, we hit a non-negotiable 9-hour delay. We decided to make the most of it by exploring the surrounding area, but the streets were dead as a dodo. I just remember a lot of brick and a few trees that somehow didn't provide any shade.

We finally found an open convenience store. L and I bought 40s. They had Olde English High Gravity 800, the champagne of 40s, and that first sip set off a sweet explosion inside my head. We found an empty doorstep where we could pass our time.

JR informed us that while he didn't drink or do drugs, he wouldn't judge us and we could still be part of his entourage when he made it big as a singer. L and I looked at each other then thanked him.

"Not a cloud in the sky," L said, then, suddenly talkative, he explained how emotions were like clouds passing in the sky and how he was learning all that from a book that applied quantum physics to everyday life.

It sounded like pseudoscientific crap to me, but it was still nice to hear him talk. While he was teasing out entanglement on a macroscopic scale, a fire truck slowed down next to our doorstep. L and I shifted our bodies and backpacks to hide the 40s.

"Hi, how's it going?" L said.

In the passenger seat, a man with a mustache hung his arm out the window and gave us the faintest of waves before the fire truck continued on down the road.

"See? That's all you have to do. Just say hi like nothing's wrong, and everything will be okay," L said.

So, when a guy in his early 20s like me and L, saw us from across the street then approached, I said, "Hey, how's it going?"

He took it as an invitation to sit down. I didn't recognize him from the bus station and he never said where he was coming from, but when he asked for a sip of my 40, I said sure and instantly regretted it.

I couldn't look at my Olde English, covered in another man's spit, when he handed it back. I was thinking about how to surreptitiously wipe it clean while the newcomer talked about MMA.

"So do you want to see?" he asked.

"What?"

"The move."

"Uh, okay," I said without thinking.

We stood.

"Grab my elbow."

I did. He grabbed my elbow back then vanished.

I was on the stairs, my eyes inches away from the 40's dark urine hue as the newcomer pressed his forearm against my jugular.

"Okay, I think that's enough." JR loomed over us, then he was pulling me to my feet.

"It's a good move, right?" the newcomer said.

I couldn't bring myself to say or do anything, so I swallowed my cowardice by taking another drink of Olde English before realizing that I hadn't wiped its mouth clean.

The newcomer left soon after that, probably to go cheerfully choke another stranger, but our moment on the doorstep was already ruined.

L was getting antsy. When a kid who might've been Mexican passed by on the sidewalk, L called something to him in broken Spanish. The kid shook his head and kept walking.

"I was asking him about drugs because we're right up on the border, but he's probably too shy with people around." We didn't ask which drugs as L said he'd see us back at the station then took off in the same direction as the kid.

JR and I sat on the doorstep with the empty 40s. I was still seething from being suckered into a sleeper hold by the newcomer.

"What's wrong?" JR asked.

I told him.

"What month were you born?"

"July. Why?"

"I knew it. You're a lion."

It was stupid, but it made me feel better. Still, we had only managed to kill an hour or two so far, and I didn't want to go back to the Greyhound station just yet. I thought about what L had said about the border. An idea struck me, an adventure to compensate for the cowardice that I was still feeling.

"Hey, I'm going to Mexico," I told JR. "So, I'll see you back at the station?"

"No, I'm going with you."

"Do you have a passport?"

"No, but I can't let you go alone."

That rubbed me the wrong way, him acting like I needed protection. "I'm fine on my own, and you're really not going to be able to get back in."

"I will get back in if I'm meant to get back in."

I shrugged and started walking south. Getting to Mexico was easier than riding the Greyhound. It was about a mile walking. As the San Diego multi-day hangover battled for dominance with the El Paso high gravity malt liquor, I didn't take in much. I seem to remember passing across a bridge then through a turnstile into Juárez, though it was just "Mexico" to me at the time.

Mostly I remember the mass of humanity in stark contrast to El Paso's deserted streets and shades of blue, though the latter may've just come from a Catholic church that JR and I entered in the middle of the day. It was cavernous and quiet, with a few elderly people scattered among the pews.

JR knelt in the first pew and started weeping without shame. I gathered that some moving communion was taking place inside his head. I wasn't sure what to do, so I knelt beside him. A prayer didn't seem appropriate somehow, so I softly sang the lyrics to Plastic Jesus while humming that parts I didn't know.

JR's conversation with God must've been ongoing because he started crying again and tapping his chest when we passed by a cantina playing some Cold Play song that he recognized. I drank beer and watched, wondering if you had to be insane to believe you were communicating with God or if communicating with God led to insanity.

At the security checkpoint to leave Mexico, I got through easily enough, but JR, without his passport or any identification really, was escorted to a side room.

On the El Paso side, I thought about leaving several times but ended up waiting for about an hour. A border agent came to the security glass to see why I was still there. I smiled, gave her a thumbs-up, and mouthed that I was waiting for my friend, which I guess was true.

Finally, the male version of Katy Perry, or the solution to Michael Jackson, walked through the one-way door and back onto U.S. soil.

JR didn't go in to detail about what had happened as we walked along the empty El Paso streets. He simply said that he talked until they listened. Then, he said, "You waited."

"Sure, I didn't think you'd get through."

"You waited…"

JR's face crumpled, and I thought he would weep once more, but his eyes rolled across the sky instead, a cloudless express lane to heaven, before settling back on me.

His eyes went wide, his sign that God was in his mind.

We had stopped walking. I waited for an epiphany from the mind of God, some secret to conquering the Big Zero's screaming emptiness.

"How would you like an 8-inch penis up your butt?" he asked softly.

"...I would not."

I took a step back and scanned the avenue. Not a person in sight. No tumbleweed blew across the street, but it should've. When JR took a step forward, I remembered to look him in the eyes.

He stopped, tapped his hand against his chest once, twice, then began muttering to himself, perhaps sorting through my thoughts, God's, and his own.

"Just the tip then."

I declined that as well. And I've since stopped telling this story in person because there's always someone who says I should've seen it coming. I didn't and there I was, caught in between fight and flight, and hanging over it all was the sneaking suspicion that maybe, just maybe, I was denying a sexual proposition from God.

JR began walking backward ahead of me as I held his eyes and walked slowly toward the station.

"JR, I'm flattered, but I don't—"

He ran backwards then came to a sudden stop and stood on his toes.

"JR? JR's not talking." He glanced at me as if I were an impertinent fool for not understanding. I fell silent.

And there in the middle of the road, his outstretched hands forming the ends of an inverted V, JR took a deep breath followed by a succession of short gasps to suck even more air into his lungs. He rose up further on his tiptoes, trembling with the effort of keeping his back perfectly straight at the same time.

From a certain angle, one might argue that he was levitating. I didn't look away from his face to check.

He let out a rush of air, dropped his heels back down to earth, then dropped his eyes.

"We should get back," he said.

So we did. We met L, who had already stumbled back to the station. JR convinced some guy in middle management to give us three free lunch vouchers. And with JR tirelessly talking us past lines, we managed to throw ourselves onto another Greyhound slightly ahead of schedule.

In San Antonio, JR announced that he intended to visit the River Walk. He asked L if he would like join. L shook his head and mentioned the bus. Then he asked me.

"No."

JR bowed his head for a moment then straightened and walked lightly out of the station.

I never saw JR again, but as L and I got on our bus to Austin, I imagined him out there, hovering over the San Antonio River Walk and tapping his chest in time to a tune, locked in an endless conversation with God that may just keep those empty spaces between the stars and atoms at bay.