Tales From A Bus, jwilson136 [best e reader for academics .TXT] 📗

the time to pay them back all the funds in the for of taxes that I’d taken from their pockets over the years to repay them but what I did have was my story. My own little adventure. My purple bus.
Knowing that they all didn’t want to hear me talk made me all the more determined to tell it. So with a loud cough, an even loud clearing of my troath and an even louder spit (I was glad to see the woman look at me with disgust and a bit disappointed to see the old guy only smile) I began the story.

“So you think that you’ve all seen something ? That you’ve all had a frightening or moving experience or that God or Old Nick himself had somehow touched you as you rode from point fucking A to point fucking B ? Well Jesus, you people know nothing. You all sit there so smug and secure in your boring little lives and think that you’ve done it all and that you’ve seen it all. Shit. Wrong is not the word. I’ve done and seen things that you people wouldn’t believe, I’ve lived my life; you’ve just all been non-dead during yours.
But enough of this talk, I give out advice only to those willing to take it and even then I charge by the hour. My bus ride ? Let me tell you about my bus ride...
I’m what some people would call a ‘special’ child and what those who know would be call a brat. I knew the alphabeth at nineteen months and could write my own name before my second birthday. In primary school I skipped first and third class. Did my inter-cert (all honours) at fourteen and finished my leaving (all honours again) at the tender age of fifteen years and seven months. But I guess some would say that I had problems with structures, problems with discipline and most certainly problems with figures of authority. Now I could blame my short attention span or my father (many have), or my mother or the fact that I grew up in a house with four very attractive sisters or my drunk uncle or my lesbian auntie who used to dress me in ribbions etc etc etc. But really who cares who’s to blame ? Like it’s directly to do with me and I don’t give a shit. I just don’t respond well to those who feel they know it all. I was always looking for something that ‘they’ didn’t agree with and that I found interesting. In college I finally found what I was looking for, it was drugs in general but acid in particular.
I don’t know what kinda idea you people all have about college life but I can assure you it’s all very different than it seems in all those fancy brochures. It’s very far from all night parties and stimulating conversation both in the classroom and out of it. The fact is that for the vast majority of college life your bored, broke, sober and hungry and that’s on the good days. The first two weeks or so are great during that time, I’ll admit that there are parties and sessions and maybe the odd conversation or two worth participating in but after that it all goes down hill at an alarming rate. Next thing you’ll come to some time midway into week three, with the hangover that you’ve been putting off for the last fourteen days and realise that somehow you’ve no money left and you’ve forgotten to budget for food. Then you fall into the cycle of scrounging loans until your allowance comes through and then using that to pay off the loans only to be forced into scrounging around for them again. It’s just a spiralling debt that gets gradually bigger as the weeks go by. Before you know it the rent is due an the mid-term exams are just over the horizon. You may think that there’s more but I guarantee you there’s not.
Around the start of November I began to skip classes. I was too tired or bored or in most cases just too lazy to drag my ass out of bed . It’s a strange fucking thing that once you do something once it’s becomes a habit very easily. Within a week of missing my first class I was missing more than I was making. And what’s more is that I just didn’t a fuck, I didn’t have the energy.
Mechanical Metaphysics 1 was where I had my first real contact with drugs and if your looking for someone to blame (above and beyond all those mentioned before) well look no further than Rob Batt, or as he was better known in the trade; Batman. He was sitting beside me, (for some reason as he often did) and he offered me what looked like a small piece of paper with a small dot in the middle. I knew straight away what it was, I’m far from naive and perhaps because the boredom of college was beginning to set in I only hesitated for the briefest of moments before popping it in my mouth. The class dragged on and I waited for the drug to hit in. For a long while I was sure that all that prick Batman had done was give me a piece of a postage stamp but just before the end of the class I started feeling a little strange.
It began (as most fucking things do) with a funny tingling all over my face. It spread down my neck and chest and soon my whole body felt alive. I tried damm hard but my face couldn’t hide the smile. I looked across at Batman but he was deep in thought, arms folded on the desk with his head resting to the side on his arms as he watched, fascinated, a small piece of rubber on the desk. I called his name (perhaps a bit loud as a few people turned round to give me a disapproving look) but he didn’t seem to notice. In fact bar the odd smile on his face his movements were pretty much restricted to somewhere none and sweet fuck all. When the bell for the end of class rang he screamed and I laughed aloud. We left the class room together me with tears of joy rolling down my face.
Along with my new found ‘best friend’ Batman we had a vote and unanimously decided that it was best if we didn’t go to any more classes that day. Instead we went to his flat (in a surprisingly clean state) and spent the afternoon laughing, crying and listening to the Soft Parade by the Doors. What I saw that day changed my world.
I never knew that drugs could be so powerful, so mind blowing.....so...so fuckin’ there. When the trip ended well over the standard eight hours later and after overcoming the depressing ‘coming down’ period I made up my mind there and fucking then that I wanted to do acid again.
And now we have the tragic part of my tale. How the guy who had it all; lost it all. The attendance fell apart and my grades with it. I lost my looks (underneath all this I’m not that bad looking) and my life fell down to nothing more than wondering where the next fix would come from. It was the natural progression I like to tell myself. Anyone faced with the same circumstances would have gone the same way. But it wasn’t anybody else, it was me. And I lacked either the concerned friends or the self respect to do anything about it. I began seeing less and less of college and more and more of the various (cheap) coffee houses around the city.
One particular morning I had spent and drank the last of my meagre funds of a big mug of bad coffee and was out on the streets again. You may think that Dublin is a big city and I suppose it is but really there’s fuck all to be see that can’t be seen within a few days. Turn those days into weeks and combine them with fuck all money and you’ve got serious boredom on your hands. Walking the streets, regardless of the weather is not fun. Walking the streets with just your bus fare home is pure shite. Certainly nothing more and most likely something less.
As I’ve already said I had left whatever establishment was the flavour of the day and was walking in some side street just off O’Connell Street when a big bright sign caught my attention. The background was dirty (and I mean a dirty ) white with bold, gaudy purple writing. It read;

Free Tour of the City on Bus !
Next tour departing this point: 1145hrs.

The ‘1145hrs’ was smudged and barely legible and the rest of the sign was almost rotting away but it was still there. I had a look at my watch (which was the last possession of any value that I had not sold for drugs) and it was coming up on a quarter shy of twelve. Looking around I saw that nobody else seemed to be queuing but then again it was a dull day and who wanted to go on a tour ? But I figured, it was free so why not. I dropped my bag and waited.
And waited. And waited. I had, in fact, almost given up waiting when I heard the engine of something that sounded that it either in a lot of pain or dead as this big, purple, old fashioned bus pulled around the corner and swung out onto my street.
It looked like it was from the sixties. I mean originally from the sixties but had died back then and was buried only to have been dug up quite recently. The paint job must have dated back at the very least twenty years and the once (perhaps not ?) bright purple colour scheme had faded to a dirty and dull eyesore. In some places the paint had peeled away making the bus look like it had a horrible skin disease. It had two big round headlights, one either side of a massive grill which was missing a few of it’s bars. The bars, while no doubt once silver chrome had rusted over the years and looked rotten and cracked. One of the headlights was smashed and it looked almost like some old maniacal monster missing a few teeth that was winking at you. Fumes seemed to spill out from all sides of it as it made it’s way noisily up to where I stood. It was a beast. I’m telling you now that I had to fight an urge not to run away from the ‘thing’ there and then as it approached me. It was building up speed all the time as it came towards me and for a horrible moment I was sure that it was going to mount the path and mow me down, the thought of being dragged screaming beneath that thing almost made me loose control of my bladder. But then it braked. The noise from the brakes was the sound of seven banshees in a bag, a wailing whining noise the likes of which I’ve never heard before and never care to again. When I heard that horrible, inhuman sound I was hit by a bout of the shivers, y’know, right down the back kind. If ever there was a moment that was a prime example of ‘someone walking on your grave’ that was it. The bus pulled up beside me and stopped. With another protesting wail the doors opened.
I looked in hoping to see something that would somehow reassure me but nothing came to view. The inside of the