My aunt dropped me off at the Gananoque rail station, an unstaffed run down postage stamp of a station located out of town. We were only except for a man who showed up with his dog because she liked to hear the trains. Later an eccentric train nut turned up with a radio tuned into the VIA channel hung around his neck, he talked with the dog man and in many ways this train through Gananoque seemed to be the highlight of his day.
The train was a few minutes late, I said goodbye and jumped on, having forgotten my toque and gloves in the van. This irritated me but weeks of training on the commute to London meant that sleep began to overtake me whether I liked it or not. Three or four stops later two teenage girls enrolled in a University somewhere in Ontario sat across from me and one of them began recounting how she had recently lost her virginity. If language is the dress of thought, these two shopped at the dumpster behind a GAP producing sweatshop in New Delhi. I could feel my IQ dropping with every ‘like’ and reference to creeping their friends on Facebook. When I thought I could get them to be quiet if I appeared awake, I opened my eyes and wished I hadn’t. One would be talking while the other was texting, and then they would switch - the concept of giving someone your attention being unfathomably sacrificial. After an awkward evening of monosyllabic conversation and light petting, our deflowered star crawled into bed with her far-from-Prince-Charming and by her own account was asked whether she was comfortable with going all the way, then told it was alright if she wasn’t, and that there was no pressure. Having not been there, and thank ye gods I was not, I can’t tell you whether or not these were the words of a genuinely sensitive dude, or whether his erection was pressing into her back with every word, but in the end she did the deed, sans kissing, sans talking in a fast, violent and unsatisfying manner (when the most romantic thing you can say about your first time is that he wore a condom, think long and hard about future encounters) and when it was done he said nothing, she turned on her side so he could hold her, he mistook that for meaning she didn’t want to look at him, and another road to fucked-up self-image and future sexual hangups was succesfully paved. Bonus points: she never discussed that it was her first time, isn’t even sure if he knew or not.
In the morning he left with barely a word, and the still-virginal friend took all this in with a private self of smug satisfaction as her currently obsessive devotion to her man has convinced her that when the time is right her and her soul mate will embark upon a journey of shared ecstasy that will be borne into heaven on cherub wings. Or the Sex in the City equivalent, which I think would’ve been covered under their most expressive of descriptive words: cute. I’d like to say this was the most depressing part of the train ride, but realizing these two Epsilon Minuses were going to see Feist that night made my skin crawl. I’m glad you’ve acheived your well-deserved success, Leslie, but, like, at what cost?
Now that I’ve stepped off my elitist horse (I like to call him Reginald), I’ll tell you about how the great traveller got lost in Toronto. It’s difficult when you can’t see that giant tower with the blinking lights on it, but it’s even harder when you misread your map and get your destination and point of origin reversed. Once I corrected my orientation and had been offered the chance to buy scalped Feist tickets a number of times, I was quickly on my way to the most depressing part of Toronto - the bus station. You would think that in a metropolis as sprawling and as well-funded as Toronto that the bus station wouldn’t look like something designed by a particularly spiteful bureaucrat in the 1950s with a loathing for colour, efficiency and happiness. You’d be wrong though! Containing all the charm of the charred remains of a burnt out school bus, I verified that this was indeed the place, that I had over an hour to kill, and quickly left. I checked Canadian Tire and Mark’s Work Wearhouse for cheap gloves and toques, but there wasn’t anything inexpensive to be had. I amused myself in the World’s Biggest Book Store for a bit, felt home sick for types of reading and research material I was spoiled with in the UK and mindful of the time, headed back to the place where cheer went to die.
When the time came for us to board, my bus driver did not instill me with confidence. Perhaps it was the more-times-than-I-would-deem-necessary repetition of how he’d “never driven this bus before” and the clumsy way which he fiddled with the knobs and buttons like a child put in the cockpit of an Apollo space craft. Luckily when he killed us it would only be a death count of five, since it was just him, myself and three girls on the journey to Buffalo.
It takes about two hours to get to the border crossing, during which time I listened to some music and thought about why I had spent my last dollars, and in fact had gone into debt, in order to have this trip. This election isn’t in my country, and it could go the way I’d not want it to go, in which case I’d be surrounded by a city who had hope snapped away from it at the last minute, which isn’t a pleasant thought. It’s not my Woodstock, I don’t buy into the whole celebrity aspect of Obama’s quick rise to power, and it’s not for the great party if a victory takes place on the 4th. I think I needed the promise of hope, on a personal level before a political one, more than anything. I’m very much in a state of purgatory at the moment, and the concept of hope can sometimes seem as remote as the palm trees and sunny beaches where Barack was born. Hope is like any other drug; coming down is a horrible experience, but pushing those thoughts out of my mind, and instead allowed myself to look forward to seeing the city of The Untouchables-fuelled childhood yearnings.
The border crossing was quick, but in some ways annoying. I compulsively blurted out a different account of my occupation to two different guards, which satisfied me that there is zero communication between the border officers. The second did not want to accept that I was headed to Chicago for architectural interests. ”There’s plenty of architecture in Toronto, why Chicago?” he kept pressing (along with the perennial “Are you travelling alone” every other question). ”The home of the skyscraper? Art deco? Frank Lloyd Wright? You can’t find that outside of Chicago.” He concluded that I “must be a history buff, huh?” to which I played the part and hung my head saying “yeah, I’m a bit of a geek for that stuff,” and with a satisfied snort he sent me through. Sigh.
We arrived in Buffalo exactly as the last public transit bus headed to the Amtrak station in Depew. I chased after it, but to no avail. I was told the cab fare could be between $25 and $28 which was more than my daily budget, so I waited outside the station to see if any of the three other girls or someone else might be headed there. The bus station creeps came in quickly. A dude circling like a shark, and a drunk chick who felt put-upon because when she had repeatedly asked in her stupor for details on a bus’s arrival time was finally asked to leave. I was starting to get a bit uncomfortable, so when one of the girls from Toronto got into a cab I asked the woman who escorted her from the station to the cab (no joke) whether they went to the Amtrak station in Depew, hoping that she would clue in that I wanted to go there, and that if the girl in the car also wanted to go there, that we could share the cab. This was how I imagined it in my head.
She asserted that their cab company would indeed take me to the station, and when I asked how much she said it was about $38, which made my eyes bulge. Meanwhile the girl in the cab was trying to get this lady’s attention, and eventually she just rolled down the window and asked if I was going to the Amtrak station too. I’m glad someone was on the ball that night.
The driver was great, the girl had a pretty smile and an easy laugh and I was as charming as a diseased newt. I tried to make light conversation about how we arrived at the same time as the last bus heading to the station, and how I found it odd that on the bus here you pay the flat fare for one zone when you get on, and if you go to Zone 2 or Zone 3 you then pay the remainder when you get off (rather than paying it all in advance). It saves the driver having to remember who paid what for where I suppose, but seemed odd. It kind of got deflated when the cab driver said “most drivers’ll let you pay it all when you get on.” Thanks bro.
She was heading back to Chicago, and was glad I was there because we were both told the fare would be significantly less. A series of amusing conversations unfolded on the dispatch radio and after a lot longer than I had anticipated we arrived at Depew station. We split it but it was still $20 each, and got inside the station to discover that our train was delayed by 90 minutes. I got my ticket from the automated machine, she waited in line and I was too tired to inflict a conversation on her after that.
The station itself was a marvel of end of empire Americana: tinny oldies radio, American flag pinned above the vending machines, uncomfortable plastic chairs and an assortment of personalities that would make most writers realize how flat, boring and uninspired most of their supporting characters generally are. I could’ve written an excruciatingly dull novella about that wait, but I was too busy slipping in and out of consciousness.
A little after 1 am the train arrived, we piled on and I found a seat to myself to snuggle against the window with a sweater as a pillow and dream away the hours until we hit the Windy City.