my idea of a supposedly fun thing 1

I always forget how long the bus trip to Atlantic City is, and because of that I'm consistently surprised that, three hours in, I'm still on the bus. I was thinking that a 6:00 bus would get me to Caesar's in plenty of time to settle in and watch Seinfeld, but my thought processes were slightly faulty on that one. As it happened, I only missed 15 minutes, but Elaine seemed to be cat-sitting, and I can really relate to cat-sitting stories, but that happens later.

As it is, we're still at the beginning. After I purchase the ticket, which comes with a voucher to get more than half of the bus ticket money back in quarters at the casino (and which, while most people will promptly lose in slot machines, I will save for laundry), I run and get a near-$2.00 apple juice from the very sleazy seamy dark gloomy food concession in what they quaintly call the lower level of the Port Authority, but what most who have been there and done that would call one of Dante's levels of Hell. The concession is darker than the rest of the lower level of the Port Authority, and the furnishings, the best in molded plastics (molded plastics often remind me the little one-word: plastics speech from The Graduate, which in turn reminds me of the I don't want to buy sell or produce anything speech John Cusack gives in Say Anything ) from the late 80s, are even darker still, giving the store a sort of your-uncle's-basement-den-like feel. It makes one think that they may not want one to see all that well while one's in here. Perhaps I am overly suspicious. But even the air is dark in here, like rancid oil. I'm glad the apple juice is pre-packaged. I see the line is starting to wend its way onto the Greyhound bus, but the man in front of me is counting out pennies, pennies, pennies to pay for his very large very hot cup of coffee that is in imminent danger of spilling on him, on me, and on the cashier. For some reason he has neglected to put a top on the sucker, and for another reason he has decided to pay for the $1.29 coffee with as much change as humanly possible. I want to tap him on the shoulder and tell him Some of us have buses to catch, but I'm afraid that this will not only disrupt his counting but cause coffee spillage. If I had $1.89 in exact change I could make a dash for it, but, as it turns out, I make the bus in plenty of time.

The bus is crowded, filled with large middle-aged women with jewelry and perfume and soft-sided coolers with chicken and beverages. They try to settle in around each other, but there is also a large group of Japanese tourists, mostly men, who too are trying to settle in near each other. And then there are loners and couples who have straggled in previously, so both groups get split up. What happens is, after the bus starts and the bus driver tells us our estimated time of arrival and that he'd really appreciate if we could trash our garbage when we depart because this bus is going straight to Philly after with no time in between to clean the seats and aisles, the women start calling to each other. "Who's got the chicken?" "Over here!" "Who's got the cokes!" "That's Selma up front!" and food and beverages begin to get passed over seats and aisles to the appropriate women and greasy cold chicken odors begin to fill the bus which had previously had a just-but-not-too-thoroughly sanitized aroma, a little citrus and bleach smell, and the bus driver makes a joke about not forgetting to throw out your chicken bones and maybe next time you should bring those boneless chicken nuggets and we begin to chug our way through the clogged artery of the Lincoln Tunnel.

The Lincoln Tunnel is very narrow and the lighting is a yellow-grey and it sort of gives one the impression that one is traveling in a tunnel deep under a very murky cloudy cold river, which one is. Additionally, people who are not normally claustrophobic begin to feel closed in about 1/4 of the way through, which, during a rush hour, could conceivably mean you have another 20 minutes to go, feeling close and stuffy in a tunnel under a murky cloudy cold river. Apparently, this was happening to the man behind me on the bus, a young, casually-but-well-dressed Japanese gentleman, who, about ten minutes into the yellow-grey underlit Lincoln Tunnel, began to make heaving noises. One of the food women was seated next to him and I hear her go "Oh no." And then the vomiting sounds come, and when you hear someone else doing it, you know why they call it retching. This sound, like a rend that begins somewhere in the stomach bag, just tear-asses its way up the esophagus and out the throat. I recognize the sound and thumps of some fumbling behind me; he's grabbing for the plastic bags that are attached to the wall next to every row of seats on the Greyhound bus, but he doesn't make it, and he speaks no English and some of the food women are offering him napkins to help him clean up. This guy feels so bad he can't even make it the 10 feet to the back of the bus to go to the bathroom and clean up, and the stale vomit smells like left-over tempura and Heineken. Before we exit the yellow-gray underlit Lincoln Tunnel, the gentleman has vomited yet again, and the woman of the food group who had been seated next to him has found another seat.

The smell from the ralpher's vomit dissipates when he's not vomiting, and after each time I think to myself, that's it, he must be finished. Surely there's nothing left in this man's stomach. He's not that big a guy. But each time he begins to vomit the smell gets worse. I'm imagining it has something to do with the stomach acid, but I'm no medical copywriter. It gets to the point that whenever I hear that little beginning belch, my hand immediately goes up to my nose. I'm kind of glad I hadn't planned on eating dinner on the bus, like the food women.

I try to read The Liars' Club. I imagined that as I read it that there would be a constantly nagging scenario in my twisted mind--a super-8 porn loop with David Foster Wallace and Mary Karr having sex, that big bear flipping the little vixen all over the bed, sheets getting tangled, liaisons in the bathroom, meals left half-cooked while she gets backed against the wall, her skinny legs wrapped around that big hunky author--but her prose is so dull and her narrative voice so whiny that I can't even muster up any bile to spit at her (perhaps I could petition the gentleman behind me). In fact, while reading The Liars' Club, I begin to doubt the veracity of the rumor: that David Foster Wallace was so in love with Mary Karr that he got her named tattooed somewhere on that over-6 ft athletic body of his. I begin to think that it must be another Mary Karr, one deeper and smarter and less of a whinger. "Oh, mommy and daddy had a fight on my birthday! Oh grandma smelled bad! Oh, daddy didn't drive fast enough and I didn't get to go swimming!" By the time her mother tries to kill Mary and her older sister, I was cheering her on. It's amazing to me what people use as excuses for being fucked up mentally. This is like Marilyn Manson acting like it was such a horror at age 13 discovering his grandfather's farm-animal porn. Marilyn, if you were six and had to dress up as a ewe and suck grandpa's weener I might feel a little pity for you, but at 13 you should have been mature enough to deal with whatever psychological scarring such a non-event might cause. But, back to Mary: Oh, I've been married 18 times because my grandma was mean and sick and lived with us and made daddy go away. Tell it to the hand, Mary. These are not big deals. And for this you get to fuck David Foster Wallace? Where is the justice in this world? Dag, if there really was a god or a wheel of karma (could this be a game show? Can we get Vanna White?), I'd have David Foster Wallace, William T. Vollmann and John Cusack. As my houseboys. I begin to wish I had Infinite Jest with me, or that I hadn't recently finished Gravity's Rainbow...

The Liars' Club tires me, but I can't sleep with all that hoerking going on behind me, and the smell of stomach acid and fried food is too strong to nap through. I glance out the window and the beauty and majesty of industrial New Jersey slaps me in the face. At sunset the chemicals in the air and the water give the landscape a glow that cannot be matched by nature. The sky is a scintillant orange, the pools of stagnant water a deep magenta shot through with indigo. This, coupled with the lazy radiance of the rhythmically quivering car headlights, lulls me into a peaceful slumber.

I, and just about everyone else, am pretty anxious to get off the bus once it finally makes its stop at the casino, but me and my compadre wait until the aisle clears before running out. The food women finish helping Ralph clean up and everyone waddles away, bus-cramped and fume-addlepated, into the cold March night. We pretty much tear ass over to Caesar's, where a lushly appointed room is awaiting our arrival, and attempt not to get too distracted by the songs of the slot machines.

There is a fairly long line at the check-in desk, which is ensconced in this arena? Atrium? It's some sort of Roman-esque open area with a faux-sky and lighting to make it look like a perpetual magic hour and it's stuffed with stupendous statues dramatically lit. The first one I see is a replica of what appears to be Augustus of Prima Porta, with the bothersome cherub carved to look even cuter than the original. If this is Augustus, it's about twice the size of the original: it's easily 18 ft tall. It is displayed on pedestal in the middle of a pool, roped-off and standoffish. We make our way over to the wending line and while we wait I begin to take all this stuff in. But the first thing I notice is there is a guy in a cherry picker doing something to the ceiling. I can't believe I didn't notice a cherry picker on a hotel lobby right off, but that gives you an idea of how huge this place is. A stupid fairy-tale/loony toons idea goes through my head: he's fixing an untwinkling star. If someone else said that to me I'd smack them. There is a remarkable amount of opulence in just the lobby: brass, marble, bromeliads, twinkly things. There are two young amorous couples in front of us on line. The first couple, the girl is wearing a belly shirt and spandex and high heels and she's literally all over this guy, practically climbing on top of him, slithering, licking, kissing, slurping. She's really turned on that this guy is spending room-at-Caesars kind of money on her (uh, no one is spending room-at-Caesar's money on me, by the way. The whole reason we're here was this huge discount promo that arrived in the mail). The two right in front of us give off the aroma of newlyweds: they've got luggage and they're very white and probably not from here. They both have new leather jackets and the guy has a really small earring, as if he didn't want anyone to notice. They're politely romantic towards each other. At this point I notice the nine muses.

Well, at least at first I thought they might be the nine muses: nine women with some musical type instruments. They're sort of far off, staring at us, standing atop a railing in a balcony area not accessible to humans. I can't see all that well, even with contact lenses, so I'm squinting and staring for a long time. And then it hits me: these women have the largest, roundest, most perfect breasts. Playboy material breasts. Not the breasts you'd see on real roman statues. They're all minimum double-d cups, buoyant, bouncy breasts. And these high slit skirts with one breathtaking leg peeking out. And then I notice that one of them is playing the triangle. What sort of muse plays the triangle? The muse of Ed Grimley?

At the moment I begin to chuckle to myself over the bizarre amalgam of the Roman and the late-20 century American, the small-earringed man turns to his blonde blusher and says "this is beautiful." He says it in such a hushed, awe-inspired kind of breathtaken whisper that I know he's not kidding. So I start looking too. And I continue to look. But I don't see this beauty, all I see are nine statues of large-breasted women with vapid expressions, marble the color of tan m&ms and a lot of wonder bread. Even the cherub at the feet of Augustus is disney-ized. No remnants of character or individuality anywhere. The only beautiful thing here is the quick fox climbing and jumping all over her laid-back brown man.

The room is as near to perfection as one could get in a hotel room in Atlantic City. It's more than big enough, there are more than enough chairs, the art on the walls is not too cheesy. The tv is hidden but easily accessible. There's a clock radio. There is a little line-up in the bathroom on the large marble counter of soaps and lotions and shampoos in little bottles designed like columns with the tops being ionic capitals. Off the top of my head, I can't be sure of the Romans were using ionic capitals on their columns (ionic order columns have bases, and these bottles do not. The Romans actually added a base to the Doric column, so clearly these are all wrong) but judging from the lobby I don't think art historical accuracy is too much of a concern here at Caesar's. The only things I can see that are missing from the room are a coffee maker and a heat lamp in the bathroom. There is not only a big deep-red-velvet-with-gold-tassels bolster on the bed, there is a divan that itself is reclined in front of the larger window that faces west. When the desk woman told us that there was a small ocean view and she was sorry she couldn't get us something better, I was picturing the view of the river from a very expensive apartment I was once in. It was out of the small bathroom window and you had to stand on the tub and crane your neck in a southwesterly fashion to see it. But they have a different idea of "slight" down here. The ocean view is majestic: you set up the brocade-covered high-backed chair at a diagonal to the south window and here is this amazing view, waves crashing in, crescent moon illuminating the scene from the southeast and the neon and electric lights of the casinos illuminating from the west. But neither lights the way too far, and the rest is the blackblue ocean meeting the blueblack sky at a point just beyond oblivion.

Finally arriving upstairs, I throw my stuff on the bed, grab the remote, fling open the cabinet that hides the oh-so-offensive tv and turn the sucker on. Elaine is preparing cat food. I know Elaine has no cat, so she must be cat-sitting. This is my bailiwick. I am cat and dog sitter extraordinaire. So mentally I begin lamenting the fact that I've missed so much of this episode, but I try to quote get into it and start laughing at the ensuing hijinx. However, the best episodes of Seinfeld are much like David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, they take a circular shape, they are the uroborus (snake that swallows his tail, also known as the millennium symbol to you tv addicts -- thanks Brent!), so if you miss the beginning the punch line ain't so funny (which is completely unlike Infinite Jest, whose punchline lies about three months south of when you finish reading the bastard).

Erik, my traveling partner on this trip, promised to bring me pictures of a dog he knew when he was a kid. It was a big black bouvier des flanders, which used to lie on its back while Erik rubbed its stomach saying "doody dotty doody dotty." I began to refer to as Boobie the doddy dotty bouvy. So the pictures come out just prior to going down to the humungous breakfast buffet and we're looking through them and the dog is cute and black and big, and there's little Erik, even blonder than now and suddenly he says, "Oh shit, that's the apartment where the girl was murdered." And I'm like, "What? What are you talking about?" And Erik goes into one of his long-winded stories, which consists of communications along the lines of "I can't quite remember..." or "I know I'm not telling this right..." which is so completely infuriating because I just want to hear the damn story!

The story goes like this: when Erik was a child, he and his mother used to spend a good part of the summer in Germany, which is where she's from. She would leave a key with the superindendant in case something happened in the apartment or he needed to get in for some other reason. So, little blond Erik and his mother arrive home from their vacation and upon entering the apartment both notice that there is "drug paraphernalia" all over the floor, syringes and the like. Erik's mother, being a good parent, tells little blond Erik to stay near the door and she ventures further into the apartment. When she enters the bedroom she finds not only the room in disarray, but blood all over the bed and the walls. The police are called and eventually it is discovered that the super invited a woman back to the apartment, where he killed her. What amazes me most about this story is not that it happened, but that I've known this guy for over two years and I never heard this story before. He says he forgot...

The breakfast buffet came free with this particular room promotion, but even at $9 isn't too bad if you're fat like most of these people are. Because you know they're going to eat way over $9 worth of breakfast. It's probably too easy and too much of a cheap shot to suggest that the buffet room should have been modeled after a roman orgy room, complete with vomitorium off to the side. Now, I don't want you to get the idea that everyone here is Springer show fat: we're looking at 200 lb women, not 400 lb women here. And you know half of them are in sweatshirts with cats on them. And it's 11 am and they're all done up, makeup, jewelry, perfume... And, despite the fact that there's pretty much everything you could possibly want here to eat, one woman has brought her own flavored coffee creamer. This turned out to be a topic of conversation with each person who passed her table, since she had placed it upon the table as if it was some sort of prize. Me, I think I'd be trying to be a little more inconspicuous about it. Some sort of stealth creamer thing. As it turned out, coffee was the hardest thing to get. There was no big coffee urn, so you had to wait for a waitress, who first brought a too small cup, then the coffee, then, some time later, the milk. Perhaps I should have run over to the 7-11 and gotten my own non-dairy creamer.

I'm very, very cranky by the time we get on the bus. I thought we'd get a bus by noon, then noon turned into 2:00, and then we didn't know where the bus was and an hour was spent in some hotel lobby hell listening to Celine Dion wail about some lost love. I could spend pages just telling everyone why love songs are evil, how they raise your expectations to expect this unattainable level of "true love," how their banal soothing melodies hypnotize people into thinking that someday their princes will come, but then you'd probably say I was a cynical bitter person. So I'll just leave it at that. You know I was sufferring.

People are quieter on the bus ride home. Perhaps they're lamenting their lost cash, or thinking about the laundry to be done, worrying needlessly about their humdrums lives. I know I was. I look out the window and see the sign for Exit 7A on the New Jersey Turnpike. My cousins moved when Charlene, the youngest of the four girls, was just maybe two or three, so I didn't really get to know her until she was pretty much an adult. On my trip down to St. Augustine for cousin Michele's wedding we discovered that Charlene and I had shared a common obsession: aliens. Charlene's compulsion was so intense that she got a tattoo on her shoulder of an alien holding the globe. It was one of the "higher" aliens, the big-eyed, bug-eyed mantis-y ones that usually control the worker greys. I began to think that maybe I had be right all along -- that although I myself was not an alien hybrid, my dad and his twin sister were. Soon, Charlene moved on from aliens to The Celestine Prophecy, and then she studied to become catholic, then she traveled towards a more evangelical faith. She got married last christmas; she looked beautiful and had this fever in her eyes that I imagine missionaries have. When we talked she held my hand. I guess Charlene was always searching. I'm glad she found something to believe in. I wonder what's that like? I guess there's comfort in the knowledge that everything is in someone else's hands.

1 Title refers to not only to David Foster Wallace's A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again and Will Self's My Idea of Fun whose idea of fun is having sex with the neck of a headless corpse, which doesn't sound too fun to me. back to top

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