Internationale Bussy

Luke Worthy

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I take a picture of the sign for international buses. In edit mode, I gash out ‘sen’ in digital ink, add ‘ssy’. Save it to my phone – for no one in particular. The green bus pulls into the station. 

The sad hydraulics of its brakes go chhhhhh and people rise from a crouched position over their backpacks, tightening some zip or sheathing a bruised banana. 

I recently read about the trend of raw-dogging. It started out as something done on planes, where passengers spent long hours mid-air just staring straight ahead. It suits me; my mind dissolving into the plastic tray table, rereading the safety stickers over and over until the symbols keep symbolling and lose all meaning. I decided I probably needed that level of a detox and got a lift to Eindhoven bus station. I couldn’t afford a flight anywhere or accommodation, so I thought I’d rawdog the Flixbus from there. It doesn’t matter where I end up. I am going to use it the way a writer would a little cottage in the middle of an ancient, oak forest. I’ll treat it like a residency.

I buy a ticket to the furthest destination possible: Zagreb. I’ll try and get off before Milan, as I know at that point a load of models will get on and I’ll start feeling ugly. With the driver’s help, a man chains his bike to the back of the bus. The certain way he wants it stored is at odds with how the driver wants it positioned, and after a few adjustments, they tie it onto the rack. Some sinister and vengeful part of me fantasises about it falling off. In the middle of the night, whilst everyone sleeps, I imagine hearing a tiny clunk, the frame and wheels a vortex of scratching and sparks. The driver would be completely oblivious as the bike catapults into a ditch somewhere beyond the hard shoulder. 

After the driver scans my ticket.pdf, I stuff my phone down to the bottom of my tote. Soon we are on the motorway, and I feel a slow severing in my chest. The evening through the window darkens. I focus on the fuzzy fabric of the seat in front, I’m a microbe making my way through its lush forestry. Eindhoven was the first stop and already the bus is full of breadcrumbs and trash. The movement lulls me. I need dopamine, so I start thinking about cock. The scenery scrolls past.

I was once on a National Express from Heathrow to Sheffield and saw a queen pull out a Tupperware box from her bag, the popped-off lid letting out a beefy smell. She was eating a cold cottage pie with her hands, wiping the mash that congealed beneath her fingernails onto her leggings. There I was, starving. Folding my legs over my carry-on as I didn’t want to take up any more space, was anxious about losing my belongings. Every part of the situation screamed: how alive are you willing to be? 

I can’t stop seeing stuff and mentally saying me or mood. It could be a pylon, a bubble-gum stain, a used tissue. The poet in me is always desperate to connect one thing to another, the chronically online/queer part craving the dissolution that it brings. I can tell by the grainy surface quality of the road that we’re in Belgium.

The sound of a flush wakes me up. The toilet is only three rows in front, the wheel of the door-lock a protective red. The inhabitant doesn’t emerge, and I start hearing a trail of whimpering, a sob stifled through the door. 

Without my phone, I have no way of measuring the passage of time. Twenty, thirty minutes must have passed and the cries from the toilet only become more pronounced.  

I slinker down the aisle, careful not to disturb my fellow passengers who are either asleep or illuminated by screen-glow. I’m not usually this confident or concerned. More than that, I’m curious. I knock, gently. A murmur in response. I stand in the stairwell, hearing a person beyond quietly compose themselves. The smell is what you’d expect: piss sloshing around a tank. A man in his thirties opens up, and I begin to feel awkward – like I’ve intruded on something deeply private. I mask my concern and pretend I just need the toilet myself.

“I’m sorry I-” he says, stuffing some of the 1-ply roll into his pockets.

“Are you okay?” I ask. He looks into the tiny rectangular mirror, lit by the blue of Flixbus’s night mode.

“Yeah, it was just a scene in a movie,” he says. 

“Oh I get it. I cry at everything these days,” I say, and it’s true. I don’t know whether to start flirting or talk about Cars 3. His eyes are salty lagunas glistening beneath the LEDs.

“It wasn’t even that the movie was sad,” he went on, “it was just an image. It released all this.” He opened his hands, gesturing at the snot-filled tissues and the soaked front of his shirt.

“What was the image of?” I ask suddenly, as if it’s my right to know.

“It was a scene with a lunchbox. There were stickers on the front, a sandwich and an apple placed neatly inside. Something about it felt so right,” I nod emphatically. I’m not going to psychoanalyse him.   

“I love how open you are about it to me,” I say, wondering if he’s studied Affect Theory. He must have. We begin speaking about where we are going. He’s heading back to Lombardy for the weekend. I tell him about my residency on the bus. 

“I wonder what would happen if we pulled that?” I say impulsively, pointing at the emergency alarm next to the toilet seat. 

“I think it ejects you out of the bus,” he says, grinning. I kinda wish that was true. Standing in the stairwell without any tether to the horizon, my travel sickness creeps up – the fluid in my ears that regulates balance sloshing around like liquid in a Portaloo. The bus veers at a roundabout and we bump into each other. My skin turns the pallor of a sickly, Victorian child. 

I’m soon on my knees, and he’s gently patting my shoulder as I’m about to wretch. We close the door, together in the filthiest organ of the bus. Now I’ve got connection, I think I need more of it. I need my phone. Without thinking, I grab the lever of the emergency alarm and pull.

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Munster to Trento, March 4th, 2024

Annalisa Volcan

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It is nine degrees in Munster 

From this angle you look tired  

the sky is fully of clouds  

or expectations 

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I want to dig myself in someone 

nestle in like vermin  

with them to their grave  

over this blanket  

there's a nice sunset 

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It’s ten degrees in Frankfurt 

I want to sow myself to my house  

Bring it on my shoulders 

Slowly make my way through  

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We move slowly on the autobahn 

I want to explore all your insides 

a small version of me 

nestled in your stomach, in your liver

in your heart? is that too much-

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It’s is twelve degrees in Heidelberg 

Am I bleeding 'cause I travel 

or unconsciously deciding to move

do I travel 'cause I bleed 

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I have it under my teeth 

I hunger for something 

and so I walk 

and I have no house on my shoulders 

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Only with lips soaked red 

From wanting  

And then I open and swallow everything down

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A Bus Ride Into the Night

Susanna Olmi

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By miracle survived.
Countless strangers telling me how lucky I had been.

My partner’s glasses, lost somewhere in the impact;
My own glasses, miraculously returned by a shocked crying woman.

Being woken up by screams and yells.
Desperately searching for my partner in the dark.

Lucidly thinking “This can’t be happening.”
Brutally realising it was very much happening.

My trembling hands around my phone, helplessly trying to call an ambulance
Fingers slowed down by shock, forgetting how to type.

Street signs in a foreign language, as foreign as the reality I had fallen into.
My bag in a deserted Swiss police basement, the reminder of all I miraculously had
not lost.

A handful of cookies the following day, and the realisation that I hadn’t eaten in more
than twelve hours.

Thinking how twelve hours was yesterday and a lifetime ago.

My face covered in dark, shockingly warm blood.
My confusion in understanding what exactly of me was bleeding, and how much.

My partner’s pleas for it not to be real.
The impossibility of it not being real.

My legs, an abstract painting of green, black, blue, yellow bruises.
The entirety of my body, exhausted by fear and tension.

The unnatural stillness of dead bodies.

My own broken body, this suddenly unbearably frail thing I am burdened with
Forever bearing that night’s traces.

The record of my scars being the story of my trauma:
Not visible at first glance, yet indelibly there.

Realising I am only alive by chance:

Might I had chosen a different seat, I might have died on that Flixbus.
Might I had forgotten to fasten my seat belt, I might have ended up in a coma / in the
river / on the asphalt / in a casket.

But I chose what I chose and I am here.
Me— the result of sheer luck and casualty.

That lime green shade repels me with memories now, makes my skin crawl.
Buses have been out of the question for years;

Cars are to be avoided whenever possible;
Planes —for some reason— make me feel like it is all about to happen again.

I take pills to deal with being trapped in moving objects, now,
And I talk to a therapist about it.

I take deep breaths and draw circles and count numbers in my head
Distracting my mind from the unbearably tangible chance of dying.

It is not always successful, this process, nor pleasant.
It is what it is and it will always be so, thanks to a sleeping driver

Who burdened me with the awareness of mortality,
Robbed me of my sense of safety,

And took my innocence in the grave with him.
Dying began that night.

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We Flixbuse

Franek Dziduch

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nigdy nie pamiętasz która poduszka 

jest moją ulubioną. muszę 

powtarzać to ta z niebieską poszewką i 

ziarnami lawendy

które już nie 

pachną gdy mówisz żart 

śmiejesz się

bezgłośne na przydechu 

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półsen. monotonne miganie lamp

przyciszone rozmowy 

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telefon dzwoni ktoś odbiera

przystanek w lille następny w antwerpii

ile mamy tutaj przerwy 15 minut

to akurat żeby pójść siusiu i napełnić wodę

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grupa “Is this liminal space?” na facebooku

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spójrz tutaj obok jest hotel

zatrzymaliśmy się tu

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w październiku 

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wiązy zdążyły zakwitnąć 

zrzucić liście

i znów zakwitnąć

rysujesz koła

palcem na mojej dłoni

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i śmiejesz się

bezgłośnie na przydechu 

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silnik warczy w obcym języku

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półmrok. opierasz głowę ręką

otaczasz tułów pobudka

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już jesteśmy.

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you never remember which pillow

is my favorite. i have to

repeat it’s the one with the blue cover and

lavender seeds

which no longer

smell when you say a joke

you laugh

noiselessly exhaling

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half-sleeping. the lights flashing monotonously

subdued conversations

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a phone rings someone answers

a stop in lille next one in antwerp

how long is the break 15 minutes

just enough to go pee and fill up the water bottle

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“Is this liminal space?” facebook group

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look here is the hotel

where we stayed

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in october

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the elm trees had the time to bloom

shed their leaves

and bloom again

you’re drawing circles

with a finger on my hand

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and you laugh

noiselessly exhaling

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the engine rattles in a foreign language

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half-light. you rest the head the hand

envelops the torso wake up

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we’re here.

Who is Driving This Bus

Emily Marie Passos Duffy

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Dear inbox intimates— 

I fucked off for most of July. But we’re so back. <3 I’ve often thought of this newsletter as something like notches on a wall, or rings on a tree. A core sample of my own interior landscape that I’m able to share with all of you. Growth wrapping itself around a center I can’t name. I consider an older version of myself examining the rings: this year there was blight, heartbreak, war. This year the flowers bloomed early. This year was exceptionally hot. This year the rain didn’t come like it was meant to.  

I’ve been asking myself recently why I continue to write. What is the purpose of working with language when we are experiencing so many horrors beyond words. I don’t know. I used to say that writing was my way of making sense and meaning. The more I read and study and live in this world the more uncertain I feel, like standing on a beach at night and staring out at the place where ocean and sky conspire into one dark void. 

I’ve also asked myself a lot recently, who is driving this bus? I mean that within the scope of my own small life and also collectively. Ask anyone and you may receive a range of answers — God, the ruling class, the final bureaucracy boss…idk. 

For this two-in-one midsummer edition of big moods, I’ve compiled some impressions in no particular order. Some on the bus, and some off the bus. Little windows into a summer spent only in Portugal. I missed this season, here. 

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Home in Lisbon 

If you tie a cherry stem in your mouth in your kitchen and no one is around to see it, are you a single, childless woman in her 30s? I do it again and record myself as evidence. It takes 4 minutes and 19 seconds. I am determined not to reference any sort of online tutorial. Just me, my tongue, my teeth, and the pliable stem of a stone fruit. The way God intended. 

Wax melts down the neck of a wine bottle in ropy streaks. My cat vomits on the hardwood floor. The tower fan oscillates. I ignore my phone. There are heat waves all over the United States. Here, it’s just summer.

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Coimbra—--> Lisbon (evening) 

A man at the front is standing. The bus driver starts yelling at him to sit down. It’s giving: road trip dad. He threatens to pull the bus over. Everyone is watching Portugal v. France on their phones. Track lighting in the aisle glows green. I fall asleep with my mouth open, breathing stale bus air. At one point, the bus driver pulls into a gas station. He commands us to stay in the bus and is gone for ten minutes. Maybe he’s buying cigarettes. 

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Santos 

I get college drunk off white wine and sangria and eat bites of bifana. We stumble upon an abandoned shopping cart in an alley. I get inside and my friend pushes me down the cobblestoned hill. Nobody falls down. She parallel parks the shopping cart and we continue on to another arraial—teeming pockets of block parties for saints. Pimba music pumps through the speakers and suddenly we are packed in line the sardines piled on plates and laid on slices of bread. It begins to rain and I open my umbrella. Standing on a curb above the crowd. My eyes grow heavy. 

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Lisbon—--> Lagos 

When every hour feels like a preamble. When the colors of the sunset make melted wax. I watch sunset after sunset. At miradouros, on hills, at beaches the colors bleed into one another. I briefly think of the damage I’ve been doing to my retinas ogling these sunsets and marveling at their colors. Under the prompt “Let’s make sure we’re on the same page about…” someone on a dating app writes “Sunsets are an ordinary occurrence and enjoying them is not a feature of personality or taste.” 

I delete the apps.

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Sesimbra 

Dozens of lounge chairs rotate through the afternoon like a collective sundial. On a grassy poolside plane overlooking the ocean. My friend and I stay in a hotel that likely hasn’t been updated since the 60s. Darkwood paneling, surreal tapestries everywhere. A helm out of context behind a velvet rope, two spiral staircases and one made of stone. Small old elevators that move slowly. Buttons that need to be punched to register the floor. 

People at breakfast buffets make me anxious. Glassy vacation faces moving zombie-like through the assortment of breads, fruits, and cheeses. It’s very possible that I am also making other people anxious. Maybe I bring an aggressive and over-caffeinated vibe to the breakfast buffet that others don’t like. Seeing families on vacation sometimes makes me feel a little sad. 

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Speedboat in Lagos 

Two friends and I don bright orange life vests for a caves tour in Lagos. The last time I was in these caves was ten years ago, by kayak. Then, I remember walking through the town square at six in the morning in a purple dress after spending the night on the beach with a bartender I’d met that evening. I think one-night-stands create spatial memories more than anything else. I remember very little about the person I was with or what connected us initially. I remember the beach, the sand. I remember someone’s house we smoked weed in. I remember the night sky.  

This trip looks very different. We enter into a portal that is in the shape of an unnamed store. My friends call it the “magic store.” I don’t know what they’re talking about, and then I go in and see for myself. Linen on linen on linen. We all enter a fugue state. Most of the garments are one-size and miraculously fit all of us. Linen-pilled in Lagos.  

Who was driving the boat then? Who is driving the boat now?

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Woman Dinner 

I speak with industry friends about how we are trying not to refer to other dancers as “girls.” A habit we’ve picked up in the club atmosphere, cemented in culture at large; girl dinner, girl boss, hot girl walk, “I’m just a girl,” neon signs that flicker GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS. We wonder aloud about a neon sign proclaiming WOMEN WOMEN WOMEN and why we’ve never seen one like that. I conclude that the word “women” is inherently political, and maybe people aren’t ready to see it lit up in neon. 

When I say the word, “girl” I have to grit my teeth. When I speak the word, woman, I push my lips out and open my mouth to make room for the vowel. I think of strength braided through generations. I think of small and large cumulative pains seeded through quiet moments. I think of migration, marriages, and children. Again, vertigo.  

We eat Italian takeout around a candlelit table in our rented apartment in Old Town Lagos with the door open. Sharing a little slice of our vibe with passerbys who peer in curiously — we commune with the neighborhood. 

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Bellicus 

A cat slides through the bars in an abandoned building’s window. The wind hits me, my entire body, a nerve. Crackling. Wearing a skirt my mother got for me at a Goodwill in Florida, pencil cut and patterned with leaves. She knew it would fit me like a mermaid’s tail. My shoulder bears the imprint of a ring of teeth. 

I have very little buying power. But I do have the power to change some things. For example, my toenails are very long and they bother me, so I will cut them. 

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Neighborhood 

I walk past a man fervently listening to a voicenote like he’s eating a nectarine. I’m hit with a wave of grief so intense it feels psychedelic. I see things that could be interpreted as signs and I tell myself, it’s just a coincidence… it can’t hurt you. I consider a litany of coincidences that have inserted themselves in my path in recent months and try to strip them of their meaning one by one. Orange peels meant for the compost. They're just coincidences, they can’t hurt you. I used to read signs hungrily—primed, always for synchronicity—led by small coincidences, delighting in my inside jokes with the universe. 

Lately, I have been feeling like I’ve never really known how to read. The pile of peels grows. I take a break from delight. 

A topskim of my notes app reads things like: 

Get this papasan chair [link] 

The closure of a karmic cycle 

I had a dream last night that 

By a man’s cowardice 

The genre of memoir invites us to co… 

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Municipal Bus to Sesimbra 

I’m convinced there is nothing a night walk can’t cure. Sun-warmed berries and salted fish. Castle on a hill and we walk through its bones, thread through the turrets and ancient grain stores. When in doubt, sparkling water with lemon and an espresso. When in luteal, sparkling water and earl grey tea. 

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Postscript 

A phenomenon wherein you slowly adopt the worst traits of the person you miss the most. Until you wince at the hypocrisy of the critic you once were. High summer air at night feels like a warm bath now just one more time on the skin, one more lap around the park. Make it last, make it count. Full moon and a campaign announcement. Feast day of Mary Magdalene and a plump, waning gibbous. You think, please take me to the people who have organized through conditions worse than these. You think, where are those people and how do I find them? Who is driving this bus? Who could drive it, in a pinch, if they needed to?

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