Making Love to the Bus

August 29, 2007

The longest trip I’ve ever taken on a bus was an overnighter in Egypt. Frankly, it was one overnight bus trip too many. What ensued was later referred to as ‘making love to the bus.’ It was hot, it was sweaty and I was constantly changing positions. It challenged even my most basic notions of pleasure and pain and heaven and hell.

We left from Sharm El Shiek in the early evening, set to arrive in Alexandria eleven hours later. We had to be in Alexandria the next day and that was the last bus out of town. There was a small liquor store we somehow found near the bus stop and we loaded up, hoping to get so blissfully drunk that we wouldn’t remember the ride at all.

None of us had the heart to really go full throttle waiting for the bus with a bunch of native Egyptians all eying us warily. I drank a little bit of whiskey to help dull the senses, but that was it. We all knew it was a stupid idea to begin with, especially before a long bus ride. A kid, in his early teens, was mesmerized by our unopened bottle of rum, still in the paper bag.

If there is anything I’m going to hell for, it is giving that kid that bottle of rum. I barely even had to gesture to him, he knew that we weren’t allowed to take it on the bus. He walked up to it and cradled it in his arms. As we left, he looked back at me with joyous, watery eyes. There must be something somewhere that says it’s forbidden to give a devout Muslim, and a minor at that, a large quantity of cheap rum. Whatever circle of hell that entails, I surely have a one-way bus ticket there.

We embarked on a brilliant, clear night with a large full moon looming over us. There was barely anyone else on, and I managed to score an empty row. About twenty minutes in, we stopped for a passport inspection. We stopped again after another hour. And another. And another. In all, there were seven passport stops, each one regarded as if it weren’t really necessary, but merely obligatory.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, except for the fact that it took almost the full hour to finally figure out the way to maneuver into a position that was at least comfortable enough to make one not want to jump out of the window. The legroom was woefully inadequate. I am not a tall guy by any means, and even I could not stuff my legs comfortably into the space provided. Worse yet, the backs, on all the seats, wouldn’t go down. Periodically throughout the trip, one could hear the moan of a fellow comrade as they realized that sad fact.

It seemed as if the bus had been designed to inflict maximum discomfort, at all times, to any occupants inside. When I was finally tired (but, mercilessly, not sleepy) of contorting myself into the seat, I figured I’d stretch and take a much needed bathroom break.

We were almost half-way into the trip and, inexplicably, I was the first one to use the restroom. In the darkness of the bus, I stumbled past people in all manner of amazing and acrobatic positions and walked down the four rickety steps to the bathroom.

Luckily, I had a stuffy nose. I opened the bathroom door and a rush of warm, stagnant air blew past. I vaguely smelled something like a cross between rotten potatoes and mayonnaise. I tried various angles at the open doorway, to try to get a layout of the room. Somewhere behind me, someone gagged. Somewhere further back someone yelled, “Close the fucking door!”

Still mostly unawares of the stench, I fearfully crossed the threshold and closed the door.

Alone now in the bathroom I tried to take stock of things. Somewhere at my feet seemed to be two buckets of something. While the door was open, the dim light barely offered me a brief glimpse of the closet sized space. The only thing I saw for sure was that the toilet was speckled– I had seen that much. With what, or why, I could only guess. There was no pretense, nor was it likely that there ever was going to be one, that this room hadn’t been cleaned, at any time, in recent memory.

I really had no idea exactly where the toilet stood or what direction it was oriented in relation the where I was standing. The horridness of the room made me immediately lose my bearings. I didn’t want to move my feet for fear of ripping off the newest layers of urine, thus exposing older, staler layers underneath.

I was never happier to be able to pee standing up than at that moment. My shoes were stuck the to ground and the brackish liquid in the buckets was swirling, like the wine of death, villainously close to the edge as we drove over the bumpy desert road. I steadied myself.

I dropped my fly and had at it. I figured, even if I missed no one would notice or care. Hell, the pee could even wash the shit from the toilet. I opted for a gentle, sloping arc around the room, listening intently for the sound of urine hitting poop stained porcelain. What a glorious sound that is!

And then something terrible happened. We hit a particularly large bump, and the buckets went spilling over. The ugly, mercurial mass was now on the ground, crawling towards me. A tiny ray of moonlight somehow managed to pierce into the room from a pinhole in the wall, and it shot through the approaching puddle, revealing its sinister, dark, speckled color.

Once I felt the liquid soak through my shoe, something in my brain snapped. I jerked my foot up and immediately regretted it when I heard the loud rip. The sludge quickly filled in the hole left in the layers of urine, penetrating even deeper into the hard pee crust that existed on the floor.

By now the smell had permeated through the blockage of mucus in my nose. It was absolutely horrendous. I couldn’t expel urine fast enough to get out of there. I started to fear that the stink was getting into my hair, soaking into my skin. I had wild visions of myself, ostracized from all humanity and forced to make a living as a circus freak show, an abomination so horrid that only the heartiest and most foolish of thrill seekers would be able to stand my presence.

I finally felt the last of the pee leave my body and I quickly zipped up and clawed for the door. I didn’t dare move my feet in the process, for fear of adding any more fresh wounds in the skin of the floor, especially lest it might further mix and congeal with the cesspool that had spilled over. I stepped straight back towards the stairs. Dual loud, ripping noises from the soles of my shoes and the floor accompanied my exodus through the exit.

I collapsed on the stairs, my drunken buzz long gone in the shock of the bathroom, and now replaced by the blissful exuberance of being safely on the other side of the bathroom door. I returned to my matchbook sized seat, kicked off my soiled shoes, and tried again to find my most comfortable position—opting now to wedge my head between the armrest and the window and undulating myself around the other two armrests.

I stared out the window at the glorious full moon above and the endless desert all around. Even though I had to endure cramped quarters, a hot, crowded bus, and the bathroom that surely rivals any that wait for me in hell, I felt good. I felt like I had somehow repaid something within the universe that had been hanging above me, cosmically, for the misdeed I had committed back at the bus-stop.

The ride itself was actually, in retrospect, an abomination for the sanctity of human existence. It was so bad, that, in spite of myself, I reveled in it. It was the ride of a lifetime. We arrived in Alexandria at midmorning, necks and legs terribly cramped and dignity crushed into oblivion.

Somewhere in Egypt, maybe even at this moment, there is a saint driving a bus fit for only the most woeful sinners. On that bus, in that bathroom, someone, somewhere, is regretting they were ever born.