Go Greyhound! and leave the weirdos to us...

When I was 17, I bought a cheap plane ticket to New York and decided I would travel through the US to do my own Thelma and Louise. Without Thelma and the car though.

So Louise left with ideas of far-west and Hollywood. Secretly, I hoped I would end up in LA and be discovered as soon as I stepped off the Greyhound bus. In America, anything was possible. I knew it.

I bought a one-month Greyhound bus pass and headed west. Needless to say that I didn’t make it there and didn’t actually make it anywhere. But still I was hopeful.

I sat on those buses for days. I still remember the smell of cheap scent-stick through these buses. I found these vehicles quite comfortable with good leg-room. Unusual for me who was more used to small cars, small buses and small people. When I saw the population traveling on these buses I immediately understood the necessity for space though.

I didn’t know what the word weirdo meant by then, but after this experience I did. I don’t think I ever met that many fascinating creatures gathered at the same place.

First I met some weird people with straw hats and neat clothes. They didn’t move a toe during the whole trips and they wouldn’t talk to anyone, not even to one another. But unfortunately, at that time, I was already this annoying nosey Frenchman who felt it was absolutely legitimate to ask all sorts of disturbing questions to everybody. What the hell, I was away from my home country, my parents were far and I could do whatever I wanted.

So I talked to these funny people with the funky hats. Here is the exchange I had with an old man on the bus.

Me: Cool hat!

Him: (…)

Me: Can I try it on?

Him: (…)

Me: oh sorry, I know my English is not very good but CAN-I-TRY-IT-ON? (inisting on every syllable as you do when you talk to foreigners with poor language skills)

Him: (…)

Me: (to myself) : What's wrong with him? Is that what they call a weirdo?

When the bus stopped in some remote little village in deep Pennsylvania, I saw lots of those hat-people walking around or riding wagons of some sort. A few years later, I saw the movie Witness and understood I had made a very big mistake and an unforgivable faux-pas.

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Innocently, I believed that Americans were cool and had all in a way or another some special connections to Hollywood or the music industry.

Suddenly this big black guy sits next to me and we start chatting.

Me: Hi!

Him: Oh hi! I’m so happy you are so interested in my life, let me tell you everything...

And he talked non-stop between Baltimore and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Here is a summary of what he basically said to me: when he heard that I was a foreigner, he informed me that he was James Brown’s son (the singer). First I thought he was bullshitting me, but then he showed me his ID and it did say James Brown Jr on it. To us French, everything that is written or on a legal document can only be true, so of course I believed him. I was so impressed and felt totally star-struck. I was so happy! This could only happen in America. He said he worked in the music industry and knew both Madonna and Whitney Houston. He actually revealed amazing secrets to me: Madonna is nice but short. Whitney is lovely but she sleeps with women. I felt so honoured to be shared such secrets and knew this would remain a very special moment in my life.

A few weeks later, I heard that James Brown's only son had died in a car accident many years before I met him. I also checked James Brown Jr. in a Charlotte phone book and was amazed to find 14 pages of "heirs" to the famous singer. So I thought, is that what they call a weirdo?

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Then there was the guy who was a large as a house and who also turned out to be a wacko.

There was only one seat left on the bus I was riding. This seat was next to mine. When I saw him attempting to get on that bus, I immediately put all my bags on the empty seat and started pretending to be deeply asleep. As soon as he saw the empty seat next to me, he yelled and said something I didn’t quite catch that ended in fuck. He pushed me and my bags against the window and had firmly decided that I would suffer a slow and painful death squeezed between the window and his tummy. It was impressive how he didn’t need one of those travel-cushions, his head held straight during the whole trip as conveniently placed flesh-cushions surrounded his neck and made him look very comfy.

I had never seen such a large person, I was both fascinated and scared. His love handles were as large and wobbly as an air bag and I thought that if I leaned against them to sleep, it would certainly be very comfortable and he would surely not feel a thing. That would have been great if he hadn’t been a weirdo on top of that. In the middle of the night, as I was still pretending to sleep, he looked at me and started yelling YOU SON OF A BITCH! I did understand that expression but said that I wasn’t American and that I didn’t understand what he was saying “sorry, no English, no English” I said.

I really didn’t think I had taken a Japanese accent when I said that but apparently I did. Since he yelled: You FUCKING JAPANESE SHIT, GO BACK TO YOUR COUNTRY… or something like that. People around were laughing as I was slowly but definitely turning into something liquid next to him. Basically, as we say in French: I was so scared that you could have put a walnut in my ass-crack and I would have made oil out of it!

And then I took another bus from New York to Boston but woke up at the Canadian border in the middle of the night, but that's another story as I ended up visiting Québec and Montréal, which was cool.

I was 17. I can’t believe I found all that amusing and I’m not even telling you about these long nights I spent in bus stations waiting for my connections. Watching these small black & white televisions, trying not to fall asleep on plastic armchairs. I wonder if these TV chairs still exist. I remember all these people sleeping in lockers at the stations, these old ladies who sat next to me and asked if I could protect them if something happened. (ok, yeah you’re laughing, well so was I). I would also sleep on buses, wouldn’t take showers for days, and ate at tacky diners. Talked to the strangest people.

On these buses I met with Americans who told me their whole life-stories in details. Some slept on my shoulder, some ate up all my chips, some gave me presents and some stole my money, some smelt of dead animals and some smelt of cologne. Some were crying a lover left behind and some were eager to arrive. Some played footsie with me and some got to do more. The strangest thing was how uninhibited everyone was, there was absolutely no had shell on these people, it was all raw and honest. I can still remember where they got on and where they got off. I believed that after the private conversations we would get into, we would at least keep in touch, they did say how "absolutely wonderful it'd been to meet me" and "how we were like best-friends already" and "we should definitely exchange phone numbers" but they always got off the buses, said bye and never asked for a phone number.

I made such trips three summers in a row, traveled through more than 30 states , saw the most amazing landscapes and met the weirdest people.

Yes, I was in deep America, a bit disillusioned but for a strange reason, more in love with it than ever.

So I guess, I'm the weirdo.