I was planning to write a typically review like blog about South East Asian busses and the culture of their passengers but I felt sad so I wrote about love and boogie-man spirits instead. Alice and I have been going out for three years. We love each other. I was leaving everything behind, everything I own, my room and, most important to me, my relationship.
Distance changes things. No amount or thought, discussion or reassurance can prepare a relationship for its effects. Alice and I said goodbye at the airport terminal, the last possible place. Sticky and hot we embraced. I cried. Alice smiled. We hugged again, and again until the line in front dissolved into a bleak empty space. We let go and I watched her sail up the escalator, hoping every second she would turn to look at me again. Her final smile and wave will probably be etched into my memory forever.
Then I was alone. Left to face the exact same trip we had faced only two days earlier but this time it would just be me. Of course I would miss her — not just emotionally, but practically — I would miss her company, her conversation, her appetite, her touch. But also her departure meant my adventure could continue. My loneliness would bring my freedom — back on the road to hitchhike, ride and eat. But none of these thoughts returned to me after her departure.
I only felt vulnerable, guilty and stupid. I have never seen two people get sick on the same journey. On busses, on trains, on flights — there is always just one. One person wrenching, one person vomiting, one person self-pitying, pale and gaunt. I imagine travel sickness as a fickle spirit — a grey, emancipated ghost, wafting around like a directionless fart.
He wears a poorly fitting tweed suit and has a thin pointy head and a weak moustache. Each of them with its own tale of the pointy-headed spirit. Yesterday it was the woman next to me. It as if she had contracted the boogie man straight from my breath.
