“Well, first thing’s first, we’ve got to get you laid!” He smiled, revealing a mouth full of rotten yellow teeth. His name was John, and somehow I had ended up wandering around an unfamiliar town in the Okanagan Valley just after sunrise with him as my guide. John was a Bus Person. I had spent the last few weeks traveling around the West coast on Greyhound after finishing my first season of tree-planting. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of riding on a Greyhound bus, you should know that their vehicles function primarily as mobile asylums for the mentally ill and socially maladjusted. Most of these people don’t really have anywhere to go. Greyhound just happens to be the cheapest and easiest way to get Anywhere-But-Here. They’re not bad people and for the most part you just end up feeling sorry for them.
Then there are The Others. The Bus People. There was the guy who called a fellow passenger a retard, then rolled himself a huge joint and got everyone delayed for half an hour while the driver kicked him off the bus for trying to smoke in the bathroom. Then there was the guy who switched into the seat next to me to let me know that the woman who had just gotten off the bus was a ‘working girl’ and had given him a ten-dollar blow-job five feet away from me. Finding myself regularly in the company of people for whom this is not only socially acceptable but brag-worthy behaviour led to one of those moments of self-reflection about the life choices I’d been making (If you actually keep up with what I write on here you’ll notice this has been a recurring theme in my life the past few years). The Blowjob Guy also offered me a copy of Playboy to replace the novel I was reading, which he thought looked really boring.
“Sorry if I’m buggin’ ya. I’m just such a people-person ya know? Can’t stand to sit there by myself.” He got kicked off the bus about twenty minutes later after trying to smoke a cigarette in the bathroom. This is a surprisingly common event on the Greyhound. I could probably fill an incredibly disturbing book with Bus People anecdotes, but the point is that John was one with this clan.
I first met John at three thirty in the morning, wandering through the streets of Salmon Arm. I had caught a late bus between Kamloops and Kelowna, thinking I would sleep on the ride or in the station when I got there. Had I checked the schedule more closely and realised there was a four hour stop-over in Salmon Arm in the middle of the night, and that the bus station there would be closed I probably would have found somewhere to stay in Kamloops. It was about five degrees Celsius when we arrived, and I was in a t-shirt and shorts, having packed all my warm clothing away into a bag that was locked up under the bus. I paced around the city trying to keep warm. That was when I met John. John had also been on the bus and had elected to spend the duration of the stopover drinking alone in a 7-11 parking lot. We recognised each other from the bus as I walked by. Naturally, I pretended I hadn’t seen him and immediately turned around and headed back to the bus station, figuring sitting outside alone in the cold was a better option than being forced into a conversation with a guy I could only assume was a mentally unstable alcoholic. As lonely Bus People tend to do though, he decided to follow me, looking for some company until we got going again.
When we got back to the bus station I immediately pulled out a book, hoping this would be enough to deter any conversation. It was an introductory philosophy book a friend of mine from the planting camp had given me.
When we got back to the bus station I immediately pulled out a book, hoping this would be enough to deter any conversation. It was an introductory philosophy book a friend of mine from the planting camp had given me.
"Philosophy eh?” John started, bending over to read the title of the book. “I used to have a philosophy.” I nodded and smiled, hoping he wouldn’t feel a need to explain. “It was . . . Weed . . .” And here, he looked up into the sky, and became quiet, as though making a truly profound statement “. . .Is everything.” He paused for a few moments. “I don’t really believe that anymore though. Can’t smoke too much. Gotta be responsible for my kids.” John looked to be in his early to mid-twenties, and like I said, I had found him drinking alone in a convenience store parking lot in the middle of the night, so the talk of responsibility and children (plural) came as a bit of a surprise. I would learn later that he had two children by two different women. He had been in Kamloops visiting the mother of his first child, and was trying to persuade her to move with him to Kelowna, but it was a difficult process because she didn’t understand that he needed to be a good husband to the mother of his other child as well. He had started wearing a condom now when hooking up with women at the bar, he explained, so at least he wouldn’t have to worry about getting stuck taking care of a third family. I thought I had escaped him when we got back on the bus and he left me to hit on a woman who seemed, from what little of their conversation I picked up, to be unhealthily obsessed with the Twilight book series. I was more than happy to leave them with each other, though I hoped for his children’s sake that John didn’t get her pregnant.
When the bus stopped in Kelowna, John waited for me. He stood at the front of the bus and when I stepped off he grabbed one of my bags.
“Well, where to now?” he asked. I wasn’t sure how to react.
“Well, where to now?” he asked. I wasn’t sure how to react.
“Uh, well, I was actually planning on heading out to the cherry orchards, trying to find a job picking for a couple weeks. . .Thanks for the help, but I can really handle the bags myself.”
“Nah, don’t worry about it. I don’t really have anything else going on today anyway. You know where you’re going?” I had to admit I didn’t. “I know this town and all the bus routes by heart. I’ll get you going in the right direction. You know which orchard ya want?”
“Yeah, but…Well, I’m probably gonna try to find an internet café or something first anyway. I’ve been kind of out of touch and need to send some emails. I can probably find directions online.”
“Oh, well there ain’t any internet cafes around here but I’ll take you to the library. You can use the internet there free.”
“Thanks man, but really, I can find my way myself. I don’t want to waste your day making you help me around.”
“Nah, man, its cool. I got nothing else goin’ today and I can use the internet too anyway.” I wasn’t getting away from him, and he wasn’t giving up my duffel bag. “Oh,” he added, “the library doesn’t open till ten today though, so we’ll have to find something else to do for the next few hours.” I had no idea where I was going, and while John was a bit strange, he seemed otherwise harmless, and since he wasn’t going anywhere anyway I figured I might as well take his offer to help me around. We grabbed a coffee and walked to the waterfront near the library. He asked to borrow the guitar I was traveling with. He thrashed on it while clustering his fingers randomly around the fretboard in a bizarre manner that made me think he had never actually played a guitar before. He mistook my confusion, and, frankly, fear about what he was doing to the instrument, for admiration, perhaps even intimidation at his level of skill.
“Yeah, man, my friends are always amazed at the shit I come up with. I’m just always making up killer shit like that. I don’t even know where the shit comes from. You’ll probably pick it up one day man. I’ve been playing for years.”
He kept playing and I looked out over the water, doing my best to ignore the horrible sounds he was making. The Okanagan Valley is beautiful and the sun was just beginning to rise over the water as we sat there. Even the cacophony next to me was imbued with a sort of beauty from the sight, and the feeling of freedom that goes along with giving up the few things you didn’t want to lose.
“Oh shit!” John suddenly stopped playing. “I don’t know where my phone is! Could I borrow yours to call it?” I didn’t think much of it, and handed my cell over. “Yeah, sure.” I would later regret this. He called himself and fished his phone out of his backpack while it rang. “There it is.” He started typing something in while he handed my phone back.
“So, what else is on the agenda for today after the library and orchard?”
“So, what else is on the agenda for today after the library and orchard?”
“That’s pretty much it. As long as I get a job I’ll be camping out in the Valley tonight and hopefully start work tomorrow.”
“Cool man, cool. But ya gotta come back into the city for at least a bit tonight. There’s nothing going on out in the orchards. I’ll take you out.” And here he smiled, and said the terrifying words that started this story. “We’ve got to get you laid! Man, three months in the woods! I bet you’re dyin’ to get some pussy!” I had to get away from this man. I didn’t even want to think about the kind of women John probably hung around with. Based on the stories he’d been telling me, I had the horrible thought that his overwhelming hospitality might endear him to try sharing one of his girlfriends with me. We went to the library, and then he escorted me to the bus loop where I would meet a connecting bus out to Westbank, where the orchard I was looking for was. He showed no sign of having anywhere else to be and I thought for a moment that he was going to follow me all the way out to the orchard and maybe even apply for jobs with me. When we got to the bus loop though he finally handed over my bags.
“Well, this is where I get off. Gonna spend the day huntin’ for an apartment for the other wife to move into. I’ve got your number though. . .” (He had stored it when I let him call himself earlier to help find his phone . . .Shit) “So I’ll give you a call and we’ll go out later. Get ya some action” It wasn’t a question. This man was determined to get me laid. “And hey, if its easier you can just meet me back here around six. I’ll be around.” The thought of John trying to help me pick up women terrified me, so I made a mental note to be anywhere in the country by six o’clock besides that bus loop.
The orchard I was looking for had been recommended by one of my tree-planting friends. Her directions included about a 2km uphill hike from the nearest bus stop. It was August and as afternoon came on, it got unbearably hot. I hadn’t brought any water and by the time I crested the hill I was completely dehydrated and feeling dizzy. When I found the orchard I was invited in for juice, but they told me there were no jobs to be had. The weather had been terrible and the season had ended unusually early. So early in fact that it barely even got started. The orchard had taken a huge hit in sales. They offered to let me set up my tent on their property for a couple nights if I wanted, but also mentioned that there might be work in a few towns farther south in the Okanagan. After getting contact information for a few other orchards and chatting with one of the workers for a bit about some mutual friends we had through planting camps, I decided to head out and try my luck elsewhere.
I realised after hiking back to the bus stop though that I had no idea where I was going. I couldn’t remember which bus I had taken out, or even which direction it had been moving in. I couldn’t remember any significant landmarks or buildings around the bus loop I had left John at. I was completely lost and “the place I left John” surprisingly wasn’t an area of town most of the bus drivers were familiar with, so asking for directions proved a bit useless. I tried asking how to get to the library, but of course I didn’t know which library. There were even two Greyhound stations and I would have just gone to the closest one but I had left some things in a locker at the one I arrived at. I was dehydrated, tired, and lost, but I had a daily bus pass, so I went by trial and error, riding around the entirety of two routes before I picked the right one the third time and made it back to the bus loop . . . at six o’clock. Shit. After getting lost so many times what should have been a twenty minute ride had turned into an almost two-hour journey. John was there waiting.
Now, I realise I could probably have made some excuse to get out of hanging out with him that night. He gave me the impression of being very persistent, but realistically if I had just said I wasn’t interested in going out anywhere there wasn’t much he could have done. It might have been a mildly uncomfortable encounter, but a normal person could have handled it. My socially awkward brain[1] told me my best course of action was to put my head down and make a b-line as fast as I could in the opposite direction of where I saw John standing. I had looked in his direction just long enough that I knew he had clearly seen me. I was kind of hard to miss at that point, with the muddy, beat-up guitar case, ratty clothes and generally dishevelled appearance. I realised that if he caught up to me now and I had to explain why I was running away from him as though he had been hunting me the situation would be far more uncomfortable than it would have been had I just stopped and talked to him. The faster and farther I went the more awkward I was aware it would be if he did decide to try and catch me, which led to me going faster and farther to make sure that didn’t happen. I know. I have problems. I’m working on it. The point is, I was in a town I didn’t recognise, and was deliberately getting myself lost in it by moving as fast as I could in a completely erratic pattern. By the time my brain calmed down enough to realise how insane and stupid what I was doing was I had been wandering for about ten minutes, didn’t recognise anything around me and had no idea how to get back to where I’d started.
If it wasn’t apparent already, I should mention here that after three months of living in the woods, I probably looked crazier than most of the Bus People I was talking about earlier. Hell, after three months of living in the woods, there’s a good chance that I was as crazy as most of them. Life in tree-planting camps could not be more removed from life in the city, or even in small towns. All social decorum gradually erodes when you’re living constantly in such close quarters with other people. Planting camps have their own vocabulary and culture, unrecognizable to outsiders. The point being, the people giving me strange looks and crossing the street as I wandered through the city were probably right to do so. Wandering wild-eyed and confused through a strange town, covered in sweat, grime and shame, I had become one of the Bus People. I finally found someone willing to talk to me, who guided me back to the Greyhound station and thankfully chose not to follow me there. I caught the first bus south because this experience had taught me nothing. John called and texted me weekly for about three months afterwards. All of his messages consisted solely of two words: “what’s up?”
Fucking Bus People.
Fucking Bus People.
[1] I know this doesn’t make my behaviour seem much more rational, but remember I had been living in the woods for three months at that point and had experienced basically no human contact outside of the forty or so people living in camp, so my sense of ‘stranger danger’ had been severely exacerbated. Even I’m not normally this crazy about dealing with other humans.
