What does it mean to be close to someone?

crossing paths, perpetual guilt and theories of displacement

Raleigh, North Carolina
After the Greyhound disaster Friday morning in Asheville, I was thinking differently about Greyhounds. A new fear of uncertainty had replaced the old. Before I was worried about someone harming me, now I was more concerned about whether or not I would actually arrive! Someone once said to me, “the human condition requires anxiety, so you might as well worry about something worthwhile.”

My time in North Carolina was so special; I saw so many old friends and I met new inspirational people too. I stayed with my college roommate Chelsea, and her wonderful parents. Another dear college friend of mine, Mandy, lives right down the road from Chelsea, and the three of us hung out all weekend, paddle boarding on the Haw River, bar hopping in Durham and everything in between. You can read more about our fun time in the Newcastle Herald.

As we established in my last Substack, you can get in and out of Raleigh via Greyhounds, Amtraks and another mysterious bus line I booked with but don’t quite understand called Southeastern Stages. While visiting Chelsea and Mandy in the Raleigh Durham area, the one thing I sadly did not do was try their public transportation system. It does exist though; it’s called Go Triangle and it looks fun. I’ll have to go back and force my girlfriends to ride buses with me.

On Saturday night in Saxapahaw, I met a hula hooper and writer named Ann Humphreys. I too hula hoop, and, like me, she once attended Warren Wilson College. I loved her instantly. I interviewed her and took a video of her. I hope our paths cross again one day.

This region of North Carolina is so interesting, three cities right next to each other with smaller bustling, growing towns around like Carrboro and Hillsborough. I have story ideas and local controversies from here I want to follow up on.

After a big weekend with friends, it was sadly time to keep moving. Chelsea dropped me at the Raleigh Greyhound Station. I arrived super early, 8am for the 10am departure.

At that time, no one was really inside the Greyhound station, (besides one person sleeping). I had been standing outside maybe five minutes when I was amused to meet a character named Emmerson, a 27 year old muscular man, about my height with an afro, tattoos and a tight pink shirt that flattered his build. He appeared out of nowhere; it almost seemed like he’d just been kicked out of a house. He was lugging clear trash bags full of everything he owned, from clothes to peanut butter. We started talking, and he asked me to watch his stuff while he went inside.

I gave him my Substack details and he asked for my number. I gave him my Facebook instead, as my mobile number is temporary on this trip. He told me he’s a dad and his kid’s mom is white. He was clearly hitting on me. I found him harmless and maybe I kinda enjoyed his attention. He let me take a picture of him. We went inside and it was me, him, one staff member and a homeless woman in the Greyhound Station. (I knew she was homeless because she announced it as she manically paced the place.) Emmerson kindly gave her a bag of cookies from his pile of stuff. He was having trouble getting his credit card to work to get a ticket to Texas. The Greyhound staff member told me that I should to sit in section E for my bus. I moved, and Emmerson came over and stared intensely at me. Never had I felt more under the male gaze. He’d never heard of the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, so I sent him a link to the Wikipedia page about him, seeing as we are now Facebook friends.

More people started to arrive and I got distracted from Emmerson. I began chatting to two friendly bus drivers, Elvis and another. Elvis told me he’d been driving Greyhound buses for 34 years and the craziest thing he’s ever witnessed is when a passenger jumped out of the window of his moving bus in Madison, Wisconsin and then ended up in a nearby Lake Monona (the same lake Otis Redding’s plane went down in.)

Me and Elvis the bus driver

The other driver told me he once had a passenger try to take his own life on a Greyhound bus! Yikes.
 
I checked my messages and saw that Emmerson has responded to my Ralph Waldo Emerson message by asking me “want to do it right now?”

I wrote back “lol. You are crazy.”

Unlike the Asheville gas station, this Greyhound stop had bathrooms, a roof, water fountains, helpful Greyhound staff, and even a little kiosk where a lovely woman named Cambria McCoy was selling snacks.

I included my interview with her here, because she’s such a sweetheart. Stories about kind people doing their job probably won’t sell, but nevertheless I want to celebrate lovely people I meet, because they give me hope for humanity. It was through her that I realized that on my bus was legendary rapper Keith Murray!

Keith was lovely to speak to, and I was just so flattered that he was willing to talk to me even though I didn’t know his music. And, of course the Greyhound ended up being nearly three hours late, so we all had plenty of time to chat.

The only good thing about the perpetually late Greyhounds is that the longer you wait the more you start to get to know each other. A woman from South Carolina named Amelia had been stuck at the Raleigh Greyhound station since the night before. She hadn’t been able to eat for hours because the canteen wasn’t open, and she needed to take medication with food. I gave her some of my snacks, and when the canteen opened she was able to get a proper meal and take her medicine. She was in remarkably good spirits for such a terrible situation.

When the bus finally arrived I met more characters on board including Arabella, a transwoman who had made her way from Georgia to New York in the hopes to find funding to medically transition. You can listen to her and her boyfriend Kevin’s story here. (I kept repeating the wrong name for Arabella in this recording, and I’m sorry about that. I got it right eventually.)

It was a rowdy bus, but I felt so at ease. I sat beside a girl named Madeline who was on her way to see family in South Carolina. Arabella and Kevin were behind me, and Arabella continued to check in on me and give me candy. Keith was across the aisle from me and kept handing me his phone to share the movie he was watching, Macbeth with Denzel Washington.

Several hours later we pulled into the Greyhound Station in Columbia, South Carolina. Like the Raleigh stop, it was nice to see a place that had shelter, water and bathrooms for its customers. An Uber driver named Maurice picked me up and chatted with me along the way. He was originally from New York and had eventually decided to relocate to South Carolina, in part due to the fact that his kids could get better, more affordable education down here. He shared an interesting story with me about how at one stage he lived in Washington DC and he heard judgmental comments from other black folks living there who viewed him as “a N-word from New York.”

Southerners love to boast about The South’s southern hospitality, but some people think the concept is complete bullshit. We claim to be welcoming, but I scroll plenty of Southern Facebook groups where members regularly complain about the rude northerners moving down; oh the irony. Across the globe, I hear people complain about Sydney-siders arriving in Newcastle. The distrust of the “other” is universal. If your hospitality is selective is it still hospitable?    

Columbia, South Carolina
I had only two nights in Columbia, which was bittersweet as this is the region where I grew up. For 18 years I lived right down the road from here in the nearby town of Lexington (West Columbia), and I spent plenty of time in Columbia. These two nights, I was lucky enough to stay downtown, thanks to the generosity of my parents ex-neighbors’, Jean and Paul Denman. They kindly let me sleep in their guest bedroom, and I took them out for dinner and margaritas at Cantina76.

It was interesting waking up and walking around Tuesday morning in Columbia. It was the first time I started my day without a thought at all about what I was doing or where I was going. I left the Denmans apartment with no fear, I suppose because I grew up around here. At last, I was starting to relax. I visited two different coffee shops that cater to the homeless community, which like everywhere else, is growing. I met Joe, who’s been without a house for a while. He told me he stays with different friends sometimes. I later learned he had a reputation for his conservative politics around town, and he did speak of this to me.

I met security guard Dedrick Hannah who, two years ago, took a pay cut of nearly $40,000 per year because he couldn’t take being a property manager; he said it felt like he was a slum lord. He’s from Florence, South Carolina, a goal-driven gym shark and a foodie.

For Dedrick, the best thing about living here is the SC football. The worst thing is that there’s not a lot to do besides going to the bar. In a city hours away from the beach, there’s a lack of public pools.

Another thing Columbia lacks is state funding for its misplaced individuals. He’s witnessed first hand people coming in from other states and other parts of South Carolina. The city doesn’t have the resources to support them. Displaced people are often given a one-way bus voucher to leave wherever they are.

I thought about the homeless man in Zach’s car. I thought about a few people I’d encountered at Greyhound stations.

Dedrick said a lot of people are sent to South Carolina because they hear the cost of living is better, but that’s not really the case.  

“I’m about a paycheck away from being misplaced myself, he said.     

Later that day I explored the Columbia Museum of Art. Then I caught a pretty rainbow bus, The Comet to the Columbia Craft Brewing Company where I met up with my high school friend Blane Ellisor, who now wrestles on the weekend and has an entire persona dedicated to his wrestling character, Billy Brash. He bought me beer all afternoon and I asked him questions about his job, his life and the South. Then we strolled along the Congaree River and rendezvoused.

I feel a little bit guilty for how short all my stays have been on this great southern escapade, especially this stop as I grew up so close by. I feel guilty for living so far away; I feel guilty for not staying longer with my family. I feel guilty for everything.

I covered so much ground, but how can you really try to get to know a place, or return to a place in just a few days? I caught up with my childhood friends sisters Michelle and Stephanie, and their mother Ginny at dinner. I hadn’t seen any of them in a decade or more. It was like dejavu and old times. We all remembered and sang songs we’d made up as eight-year-olds in the car on the way to gymnastics.

Michelle told me a kid we’d grown up with had recently passed away on the floor of a punk show at the New Brookland Tavern. This was a place where lots of friends used to attend the underage shows twenty something years ago. I later heard different stories about how he’d died, maybe a heart attack or a brain aneurism. Since then so many different memories of him have flooded my mind. He was a misfit. Another friend and I teased him in elementary school. He lived with his grandmother, and I can see her short feathery blond/white senior-lady-hair and hear the way she called him “Christopher.” As teenagers he and I became closer, seeing each other at shows and occasionally hanging out one-on-one. But he could be mean too. I distinctly remember him telling me in my late teens “Alex this is the fattest I’ve ever seen you.” He was painfully honest. Years ago he unfriended me on Facebook, which did not surprise me based on everything I knew about him. During the pandemic I looked him up out of curiosity and read a public post he’d made announcing he was having health problems. I’m not shocked that he’s gone, but I am surprised at how sad the news made me and how much I’ve thought about him since.       

I walked home from the Gervais Street restaurant and chatted briefly to the Denmans before bed. I had to get up in the morning and catch another bus, this time for Atlanta. I stayed up late trying to write an article, a bit tipsy from beer with Blane and wine with the girls. I didn’t sleep great, but I was raring to go in the morning, ready for a new location.

I waited on a street corner for my Uber to take me to the bus station. A woman I had noticed hanging around the day before at the coffee shop approached me and said good morning. Her eyes were droopy and she was missing teeth. She looked to be in in her 40s and she was tiny. I said good morning, and we started talking. Her name was Katrina but I could call her K if I forgot Katrina. She asked me for $3 to get a coffee cake. I handed her five. I thought she might then disappear, but she hung around to talk to me. She told me she’s looking for a man around here who’s done her dirty. She’s from California. I wonder how she got to South Carolina. She told me she hated it when people don’t say good morning to you out on the street. I thought about it, and I hate it too. She asked me where I was going, and I told her Atlanta. She asked if she could come too. We laughed but I wanted to cry. I could have fit her in my backpack.

It’s funny how when you have space between yourself and another person, literal, physical distance, their problems don’t become yours in the same way. K sitting right next me changed how I saw and felt about her from even the day before. And how real and afraid I became with the man in the back seat of Zach’s car. And yet I think about the boy I grew up with but hadn’t spoken to in years and how you remember people’s presence, you remember how they are. Once you get to know someone, no matter how estranged you become, a little bit of them becomes a part of you.

Katrina watched me get into the Uber. I struck up a new conversation with my driver, a friendly stranger to distract me from current realities of a place I used to know.