The Odyssey

A full 24 hours after leav­ing Hous­ton, I walked in the door of my friend Emily’s Bush­wick apart­ment, she’s been nice enough to let me stay here 060406_baby1.jpgwhile she’s out of town in exchange for feed­ing the cat. Emily and I went to the same prep school through eighth grade and then both left to go to the High School for the Per­form­ing and Visual Arts (The mag­net school proudly issues 3 foot-​​long, white on black Hel­vetica embla­zoned bumper stick­ers to its stu­dents, one still sit­u­ated proudly on the rear end of my mother’s Rav 4. We’ve known each other a long time, is my point. Check out her work, she’s one of the most exu­ber­antly cre­ative peo­ple I know).

So what took so long to get here? Well, I will tell you. The trip stated smoothly. I made it to Houston’s Bush inter­con­ti­nen­tal Air­port with plenty of time to get through secu­rity and take it easy on the other side. No searches, thank­fully, though I did have to explain that my Has­sel­blad was not capa­ble of mak­ing video, which some­how ruled it out as a likely host for an explo­sive*. I ran into another for­mer HSPVA stu­dent, Jor­dan Hunt, who has just been cast in his first pro­fes­sional show in Boston. We talked about peo­ple we used to go to school with and teach­ers that were crazy.

In Chicago things began to go awry. We sat on the tar­mac for­ever. The plane was enor­mous, the kind with three rows of seats across the cabin, each row equipped with its own scream­ing baby. I hap­pen to be a fan of babies, and at first the scream­ing infant fac­tor didn’t bother me. It’s pretty hilar­i­ous how dis­traught these lit­tle peo­ple get over noth­ing at all, and also funny how the fits come in pre­dictable cycles, and their chubby lit­tle faces, etc. Equally adorable are the ner­vous par­ents, fran­ti­cally look­ing to con­nect with who­ever may be scowl­ing with them, to dif­fuse the sit­u­a­tion with an eye roll as to indi­cate, “Hey, man, It’s a baby. What’re ya gonna do?” I was men­tally con­grat­u­lat­ing myself as we sat there, motion­less at the gate, for being such a lov­ing, empathic and gen­er­ally won­der­ful human being. Forty min­utes later though, as we were finally tak­ing off, I was pretty much ready to start smack­ing some of these self-​​absorbed lit­tle bas­tards around.

There was a storm over Chicago, and fly­ing around it added an hour to the flight, land­ing at Dulles almost two hours late. You might be say­ing at this point, “But Greg, Dulles is not an air­port that serves the Tri-​​State area,” and you would be cor­rect. A round trip ticket from Wash­ing­ton was far cheaper than two one-​​ways, end­ing in New York. Round trip tick­ets are far cheaper than two one-​​way tick­ets, and since I departed from DC after mov­ing all my stuff into stor­age last week, I came thru Wash­ing­ton with the intent to take a shut­tle to another area air­port, BWI, to get on the 10:30pm regional AmTrak train (the last one of the night) up to the city, putting me in Brook­lyn at around 3am.

There still seemed to be enough time to make the train if every­one in the van was going to Bal­ti­more and we left rel­a­tively quickly. They weren’t and we didn’t, and I arrived at the main ter­mi­nal at BWI 20 min­utes after the train had departed, the next one sched­uled to leave at 4:30 am. The ride to BWI was $75, clearly worth every penny.

But I’m flex­i­ble. I’m spon­ta­neous. I’m young and ener­getic. I can roll with the punches. I sat on down in a row of air­port chairs, my feet rest­ing on my bag­gage stacked on a Smart­Carte. My head­phones in (though not play­ing any music) and my immer­sion in an intense text-​​message con­ver­sa­tion prompted a man pass­ing by to com­ment to his wife, “Hey, that guy’s really got it made.”

I slept on the floor for a cou­ple of hours in the dark­est hall­way I could find, hid­den behind my Smart­Carte, var­i­ous gad­gets charg­ing from a nearby power out­let. I woke up at 3:45 and headed out to the com­pletely des­o­late ground trans­porta­tion area to catch the shut­tle to the AmTrak sta­tion, 5 min­utes away. At about 4:20, with not even the sug­ges­tion of an appear­ance by the shut­tle despite a sign boast­ing it’s reg­u­lar­ity 24 hours a day, I got in a cab. After two min­utes explain­ing to him why I wasn’t tak­ing the shut­tle and agree­ing on an exploitive price of $15 for the drive around the block. got the sta­tion two min­utes after the train had left, accord­ing to a guy who as appar­ently just hang­ing out on the rainy plat­form. I called up AmTrak (the actual sta­tion itself was still closed) and they hap­pily put me on the next train, a 5:30, as my $60 ticket became a $100 one. It was time to switch from debit to credit.

I spent a very moist 45 min­utes speak­ing exten­sively about Las Vegas with the guy on the plat­form and explain­ing to a police offi­cer as non-​​chalantly as pos­si­ble what I’d been doing in the bushes when he pulled up if not pee­ing (I had been peeing).

At 5:15 the sta­tion opened. I ate a dan­ish. At 5:30 the train came. I got on it. I read the New York Times front to back, which felt pretty good, and then got to work on this post before some of the fun­nier details slipped my mind. I made a to-​​do list. I took a nap.

Then we got into Penn Sta­tion. Another pricey cab ride because fuck the sub­way right now. A key exchange with the neigh­bor who had my key, she was about ready to go to work with­out leav­ing it for me. I opened Emily’s door and went in, put my stuff down, said hello to the cat.

Ok. I’m here.

*Due to a recent ter­ror­ist sur­veil­lance over­haul recently passed by Con­gress, I’m com­pelled to indi­cate at this point that in no way is my cam­era rigged to det­o­nate, nor do I pos­sess an ide­ol­ogy com­pat­i­ble with such an action.

Posted on Tuesday, August 21st, 2007 at 12:26 pm

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