Asia

Butte, Montana bus station.

Last August I bought a bus ticket for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Great Falls, Montana at 9:30 pm -- the bus left at midnight. People hate Greyhound buses, but I spent the next two, dirty, strange days having the time of my life. It was a little dull until I got to Wisconsin and beyond the Midwest, but after that it was West. Quite possibly all I need in life is a dark highway, a bus, and the Carter Family and Old Crow Medicine Show in my ears. Another perk of traveling by bus is the people. You spend huge chunks of time with certain people, and it's so much more than sitting next to someone on an airplane. You get comfortable with them being around, their faces seem familiar, and sometimes you talk. I met a lot of girls about my age on that trip, all with rather down and out tales to tell. I'll start near the end though, because right now I feel like writing about Asia.


I first saw Asia in the Great Falls bus station at seven in the morning. She was crying, and I immediately needed to know her story. I was on my way home after six short days in my favorite place on earth, here was someone else who maybe didn't want to leave. She was fooling with her bags and saying goodbye to a little girl who I first imagined to be her child (just the daughter of a friend, it turned out.) Aunt Molly, Tobin, Chloe and I watched the this skinny, pierced, pretty brunette plead with the man behind the desk. Sorry, your luggage is over sized, you have to pay the fees. Asia cried more, saying she wouldn't have any food if she paid, that was her food money, didn't he get it? She could hardly starve for three days. Before I could formulate any sort of response to this awful little scene, Molly was handing a twenty dollar pill to the girl. Asia was shocked and grateful, she hugged my Aunt, and the cousins and I exchanged quiet looks of pride in our relative.

Our bus was ready to go, I loaded my big back underneath, hugged my relatives a sad goodbye, and struggled under the weight of my overstuffed backpack up the stairs, and to a seat. I chose one beside the girl, who was crying again. As we waited to leave Great Falls, I fought a quiet battle with my shyness. I hate to bother upset people, thereby drawing attention to their tears (something I don't like when I am in the unfortunate position of crying in public), but I wanted to talk. My bag of tiny chocolate bars seemed an icebreaker, so I offered and the girl took some happily. She asked if the woman who had given her the money was my mother, I said my Aunt, and Asia complimented my choice in Aunts.

I was with her for the next many hours, and during this time, Asia turned my first impressions upside down. Like so many other girls I had met on buses, she was a wild child. Born and raised in Great Falls, she drank and partied hard, beat up the 15 year old skank who had taken her man, and raised hell in what sounded like the ultimate small (ish) town fashion. She was also only 18. Her little sister had ratted to their parents about Asia's doings, and now she was booted. So, she was packing her life into a few oversized bags and moving to New Hampshire, where a boy she hoped might be special lived. She had met the boy during his months ago trip to Great Falls -- Yes, yes, Asia was moving across the country to live with a boy she had spent less than a week with. It would make a kick-ass song, but seemed like a pretty bad plan in real life. Yet, I was impressed. Bold, stupid leaps like that just tickle me. I wish I were more like that.

She talked more than I did, and I can't remember everything she said. A lot about her life, a little about mine. I do know that once I was on a Greyhound bus, gliding through the Montana dark, talking to a girl named Asia and a man named Spider about moonshine. I had yet to partake (still haven't), but Asia and Spider were fans. She told a tale about drinking moonshine at a table at some party. She felt fine, she felt fine, then she tried to stand up and just fell flat on her face.

Asia was not the tearful grownup woman, leaving her home to seek her fortune that I thought at first look. She was a silly, wild little girl in many ways. Nobody I would want to be best friends with, a little self-absorbed, but she was a hell of a companion all through the night as we rode to Billings. Not shy in the least, she asked me questions that I can't remember now, and the conversation rolled smoothly for hours.

Spider and Asia left me in Billings, they had a 3 AM bus and I had to clutch my backpack and curl up to sleep until about 8. I actually saw Asia again in Columbus, more than a day later. She told me about her adventures since then and saying goodbye to Spider, who was heading somewhere more Southernly (he was one of two males who had found her interesting in her two days of travel. New Hampshire boy might want to worry a bit, I thought.) I was pleased to see her in Ohio, it was one of those false feelings of friendship, like we had made plans to meet. We stuck together for a few hours, during which Asia acousted a scruffy-looking boy who was traveling all over the USA by bus. My "friend" was absurdly, rudely, hilariously, forward and may have actually asked if he was gay. The boy was more amused than anything else, and I wish I could remember some of the interesting things he said.

I wished Asia the best of luck, and was too shy to ask if I could take her picture. I soundly regret that now. She was an awful, wild little thing, but she made her mark on me, if only for the moonshine talk in the middle of Montana. I even looked for her on myspace (we discussed friending each other), assuming that Asia must not be a common name, but I never found her. Like the rest of my foolish, messed up Greyhound girls, I hope everything worked out for her in her new life. Hell, maybe New Hampshire boy was the one, but I don't know if the country song would end that way or not.

Willie Watson

This is a brief entry, where I cross over into the land of teenage -- never mind my being 22 --infatuation over a musician. But I assure you that this gentleman qualifies. I aim to write about strangers or acquaintances, people I do not know well, nor can I call up for a chat, but who still mean things to me. If we're talking about strangers who mean something, who better than a musician? I say music breaks my heart and saves my life, I even speak of its effect on my soul, and I don’t feel like I’m using hyperbole in the least. Musicians are the most important strangers in the world, even if their importance is a little easier to explain than the smile of a Guatemalan merchant boy. Yet there is still something inexplicable about my reaction to my most well loved makers of music.

Rob F and I saw Old Crow Medicine Show in a packed, beautiful theater in Homestead, PA. I was in the very front row, and near the end of the show, I lost any remaining reservations, and danced madly in front of hundreds of people. I danced with a tall, brunette stranger and her balding maybe-boyfriend. (They certainly qualify as Not Friends, as do any strangers who have ever grabbed my hand and made me dance with them. Girls especially sometimes do this, and I will love them forever for it.) I knew I wasn’t important to the band, who had a whole audience to see and engage with. But I was in their line of sight, which gave me a cheap and wonderful satisfaction. Mostly, I just wanted to get my point across through awkward stumbling, tapping boots. You people mean the world to me, and you’re making me purely happy right now. That’s what I tried to communicate as I stopped giving a shit about 800 people knowing I couldn’t dance or about the fact that life is hard and we’ll all die someday.

After the show, Rob and I joined the dozen or so people standing by the tape that separated all of us from the band’s tour bus. We were rewarded by Willie Watson, desperately skinny, cigarette tucked in his mouth, clad in a Neil Young shirt, and in need of a good haircut, walking towards us. Gill Landry, the more reserved and laconic guitar and banjo player followed. As I looked at Willie Watson, he looked right at me and gave me a grin that could easily have stopped my heart, and might have for just a moment. (Now, here is the dilemma, the difficulty in describing honestly your utterly teenage infatuation with a musician, when you’re especially in the mood to write because you just finished reading a delicious Christopher Hitchens book. But the truth must be told, and hopefully I can keep my dignity, with a minimum of tedious, unoriginal self-deprecation.)

Ultra-cool, laid-back and lively, Willie Watson interacted with us all, signing ticket stubs and draping his arm around Rob’s lucky shoulder for a photograph. My mind was blank of much of anything to say, not even the obligatory, high-on-life fawning that I do after shows. ("I love you guys!") But all the same, I felt oddly relaxed and I said some already forgotten casual conversation things. Watson’s manner was so ordinary and relaxed, that I imagined it possible to converse with him as if he were a normal person, if only you had something to say. There is no way to describe the importance of this to me without sounding silly and juvenile. I have far too many heroes, musicians, journalists, life-savers, all people whose presence would send me into stammers, or worse and more likely, wordlessness and blankness of mind, as much as I would long to talk to them. This is a horrible attitude for a would-be journalist, who wants to be able to rub elbows with people who intrigue and fascinate. That’s half the point in being a journalist, you get the excuse to ask questions about the people that interest you most. I’ll do that, if only I can get over my fawning. But how can I not fawn, when people fascinate me so? And Willie Watson’s friendliness, and his dangerous grin, cannot undermine the power and the fact that he can sing so well it gives me shivers. That response is all primal, all feeling, and dangerously moving. No wonder I can’t look at anyone who has that ability as anything but far above me. Pure words can have power, but without rhythm and melody, it’s a whole hell of a lot harder to affect people -- And almost impossible to make them dance. I will strive to string words together to the best of my ability, but I don’t know if I’ll ever shake the feeling that musicians have some voodoo that I cannot imitate, but am powerless to resist.