Washington DC, New York City, and London

Planes, Trains, & Automobiles

Toaph's Amazing Journey

I hadn't rented a car in years. I didn't know what kind of selection I'd have with respect to the make and model they'd assign me. I wanted the smallest, micro mini car possible. They offered me a Ford Taurus. I asked if there was anything else. They said they also had a Toyota Camry or a Chevy Impala. I said I'd take the Taurus.
Monday night I decided to go have a couple drinks in a gay bar while I was in DC. I checked PlanetOut.com and found something nearby called "The Badlands." When I got there I realized it was the same club I went to a few times when I lived in DC briefly in 1986. It had been the first gay bar I ever went into. What a flashback! Unfortunately at this time it was closed up tight on a Monday night.
When I travel I tape movies and TV shows to watch on the flip-out LCD panel of my camcorder. The Amtrak train had an AC outlet by my seat, so I could plug in the camera and watch a movie without draining the battery. I wound up watching "Snatch" with Brad Pitt. It was a good movie, but not a very pleasant portrait of life in London. I hoped this wasn't foreshadowing.
When I arrived in Penn Station it was a total mad house. I knelt down to get out my iPod to listen to some tunes on the subway. Two girls with Long Island hair came over to me, pointed up to the big board, and asked why there was no gate listed for the Hauppaugh train. I told them I was just a country hick, and I didn't know where I was or what I was doing.
I got to HowieJ's place just as he was getting home from work. I was still keyed up from the trip, and told him I was going downstairs for a smoke. He suggested I go up to the roof. In all these years I'd never been on his roof. Off in the distance I saw the World Trade Center light sculpture. It was two bright spotlights pointing in the sky from Ground Zero where the towers previously stood. I had heard about this, but didn't realize it would be going on while I was there.
On Wednesday I went to Rockefeller Center to see a motorcycle exhibit HowieJ told me about. It was practically hot out for early April. I wore a t-shirt and jeans. When I got to Rockefeller Plaza I saw people ice skating in short sleeves. The motorcycle exhibit was pretty good. Perhaps the most interesting bike was a replica of Peter Fonda's "Captain America" chopper from Easy Rider.
When exiting Rockefeller Center I took a moment to observe the art deco decor in the lobby. I looked up to check out the frescoes on the ceiling. They were all men in thongs, positioned as if they were giants actually standing above our heads. I was looking up at enormous crotches and ass cracks. I couldn't believe it.
The NYC International Auto show was cool in that it included a few concept cars, but beyond that it was really just a typical mall car show on steroids. I somehow managed to miss the Aston Martins and the Ford GT-40 reproduction concept car. By the time I left it was cold and drizzly outside. I was freezing in my t-shirt. I had to walk almost a mile to the nearest subway station. I got there at exactly 5:00 (rush hour). The train that arrived was absolutely packed with people, but they all got off at that station. I entered a practically empty subway train at the height of rush hour in midtown Manhattan.
Todd, the guy I stayed with in Queens, was someone I'd met only a couple months prior while on vacation in Key West for the first time. I stayed at Lighthouse Court, and he was the first person I met there. After talking for just a few minutes we discovered that we both knew HowieJ. At some point Todd mentioned that he lived only 15 minutes from JFK, and somehow that tidbit of knowledge stuck in my brain. It was the perfect place to crash the night before an early flight.
Orbitz.com recommended that I get to the airport 3 hours early for an international flight. I set my alarm for 4:45. Somehow it didn't wake me up. My trip to London was almost over before it even began. Todd came out and woke me up at 5:00. I jumped in the shower and ran downstairs. The car was right on time, and it was truly a 15 minute drive to the airport. I whisked through checkin and wound up with 2 hours to wait before the flight even boarded. I watched "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" on my camcorder LCD panel (please learn from my mistake and never ever watch that sorry excuse for a movie).
I had a day flight to London. It left JFK at 8AM and landed at Heathrow 7 hours later at 9PM London time. I was a little confused on where Joe told me to meet him. I wound up standing in the totally wrong place for about a half hour sweating bullets. But when I dared to roam around I found him straight away. We dropped my stuff off at Joe's flat and went out for a couple pints. On the way back home we took a London taxi. That was one thing I wanted to do on this trip. I had always wanted to ride in one of those spacious, limousine-like vehicles. The reality was a bit anti-climactic, however, as the interior appointments had all the luxury of a Greyhound bus. My strategy was to remain on East Coast time by staying up all night and sleeping all day. Joe went to bed but I stayed up and surfed the Internet until it was the equivalent of 10PM back home.
Friday Joe got my ass up at 1:30PM. I got shaved and showered, put on my "filmmakers outfit," and we left for the venue. I decided not to bring my camcorder with me. It was a decision I would later regret, as that wound up being my only opportunity to get some footage of London. In the train to town we passed Battersea Power Station. Joe, not a Pink Floyd fan, had no idea why I was going bonkers at the sight of it.
While I was disappointed with the level of attention the festival gave me prior to the trip, they treated me very well once I walked in the door. The curator of my program assured me that although people might not be familiar with Pee Wee's Playhouse, they all knew Pee Wee Herman by virtue of his "notoriety."
Joe and I had a couple hours to kill before Adam met up with us for dinner, so we wandered around Soho. It was interesting. We popped into a museum where I saw the original Titian that the Crash Test Dummies used on the album cover for "God Shuffled His Feet." We met up with Adam, had a couple pints, grabbed some dinner, and then made our way back to the festival venue.
The festival coordinators never confirmed that I'd get additional free tickets to the screening, so Joe and his boyfriend Adam had already gone ahead and bought their own tickets. The festival did wind up giving me 3 free tickets in addition to my own. With no one to give them to, I cruised the box office line looking for cute boys. There wasn't a lot to choose from. I wound up giving one to some old guy, one to a cute guy, and keeping the other.
The program was pretty good. My video got a lot of laughs. It was also nice to see Sexo on the big screen again. They also played "Porno Tubbies" which was perhaps my favorite short from MIX earlier that year. Afterwards the filmmakers were asked to go down to the theater bar in case anyone wanted to ask questions. Joe, Adam, and I went down there and had a couple beers. No one asked me any questions. I did see the cute guy to whom I'd given a ticket, but he paid me no mind.
Eventually Joe and Adam and I left the theater and went into Soho to a gay bar. After quaffing a few pints I announced that I was going to "go look for trouble." About 5 minutes later I came back with some Irish guy named Cornelius wearing a Mickey Mouse t-shirt. After smooching with him in a dark corner for a while he invited me back to his place. I was understandably weary, as this was a total stranger and I was in a strange city in a foreign country. I'd had enough pints to take the edge off my better judgment, however, so it wasn't long before I decided to throw caution to the wind. He took Adam's cell number, gave Adam his cell number, and we were off.
Cornelius flagged an unlicensed cab and we hopped in. I mentioned to the cab driver that I was from New York, yet he was the first cab driver I'd ever had who spoke English as his first language. He started asking me questions about America and how they treated HIV+ people. Cornelius picked up on the fact that the guy was asking me because he, himself, was positive. Cornelius started giving him what could best be described as a pep talk. The two were talking very quickly in their respective thick accents. I could barely understand what they were saying.
When we got to Cornelius' place I paid the cabby and Cornelius and I went inside. He proceeded to roll a joint. He put two papers end to end making it about 6 inches long. Apparently that's how they roll joints in London. I smoked a little, but I was already pretty fucked up from the English beer. We hung out for a while and eventually went into his bed. We got it on for a while, but I was suddenly overcome with the bed spins. Cornelius was quite accommodating, pointing out that the toilet was within crawling distance. Instead of getting sick I wound up passing out cold.
I woke up the next morning tired and hung over. It wasn't enough to stop me from getting it on with Cornelius again, though. He came twice that morning in ten minutes time. I got up to take a leak. Cornelius had Mickey Mouse toys all over his bathroom. I climbed back in bed and fell back to sleep for a while.
I got out of bed feeling like shit. As I got dressed I recalled paying for the cab the night before. That had left me with very little money. I didn't know what part of London I was in, or, for that matter, what part of London Joe and Adam lived in. I was not in the mood to figure out bus routes and train maps. If I got lost I wouldn't have had any extra money with which to rescue myself. Cornelius called Joe's number but it was busy. He called Adam's cell phone. He answered, but was nowhere near his apartment and didn't know what to say about the line being busy. I was in the worst fatalistic, hung-over, what's-the-matter-with-me, stop-the-world-I-want-to-get-off moods I'd ever been in. I'd never felt so far from home. Finally Cornelius got through to Joe. I got on the phone and begged him to come find me and escort me back home. He wasn't too happy about the considerable inconvenience, but he took pity on me. Cornelius gave Joe directions to the nearest subway station. Joe said it would take him about an hour. Fourty-five minutes later Cornelius escorted me to the bus stop and waited until the bus came. It was a double-decker. That was actually kind of cool. The other thing I'd wanted to do in London was ride a double-decker bus. It was a relatively quick ride to the train station. Joe was not there, but within a few minutes he did emerge from the station. Seeing his face was like witnessing the arrival of the messiah. I practically kissed his feet. An hour later we were back at his place.
That night Joe and Adam took me to a private party. We stopped off for dinner on the way. We had to wait a long time for a bus afterwards. A full one whisked by without stopping. Shortly thereafter another bus came by. It was *almost* full. Joe and Adam got on before I did, and the doors started closing just as I was trying to step in. If I'd been left behind I would have been fucked. I had no idea where I was, no idea where the party was, and frankly still no idea of where Joe and Adam's place was. In an "Incredible Hulk" moment I forced my way through the closing doors and onto the bus. At that moment I could have lifted the damn thing off the ground if it would have prevented me being left alone.
The party was in a rather sketchy part of town. The walk from the bus stop was a tad uncomfortable, but in a few minutes we were there. I was still pretty cracked-out from the night before and not really in the mood for socializing. But I was reasonably entertained by people-watching. I choked down a couple glasses wine but was not catching a buzz. As the night wore on I struck up conversations with a couple people out on the smoking patio. I wound up doing some informal polling, and not a single person I asked had any idea who Pee Wee Herman was.
Joe and I left the party before midnight. We found our way back to the bus stop easily enough, but the schedule revealed that we had just missed a bus. Being late at night, the next one wouldn't be by for some time. While we were deciding what to do, some homeless person took a leak behind the bus stop bench and came over to us asking unintelligible questions. Joe suggested we go some place comfortable to wait, but I said I didn't want to take the slightest chance of missing the next bus. After about 40 minutes, which felt like 4 hours, the bus finally came. I could finally relax. In fact, Joe and I went upstairs in the bus and sat in the very front seats looking out the front windows as the bus drove along. It was way cool checking out London at night. I realized that the entirety of London is made up of winding streets. There's not a single straight line in the whole damn town.
I got up at 7AM Sunday morning, which wasn't terribly early for a flight, but as far as my body was concerned it was more like 1AM. Joe drove me back to Heathrow without incident. Despite some initial confusion, he dropped me off at exactly the right entrance of exactly the right terminal. Lines at the security checkpoint were kind of long, but I was plenty early and got to the gate with time to spare. In fact, the gate wasn't even open yet. It wasn't like in the U.S. I sat on the floor in the corridor until they came along and allowed us access to the waiting area.
On the flight back I had some obnoxious woman in the seat in front of me. She had too much champagne and was laughing hysterically at "Everybody Loves Raymond." Her level of laughter was totally inappropriate for an airplane. For that matter, in my opinion, it was inappropriate for "Everybody Loves Raymond" period. As far as I could tell she was watching the same episode over and over again and laughing hysterically every time. She also kept moving her seat up and down. That normally would have only been an irksome annoyance, but my little TV monitor was on the back of her seat, and every damn time she moved it I had to readjust the screen. She really needed a bitch-slap.
As we approached JFK they handed out cards we were to use to declare anything we purchased while abroad. Actually all I was bringing back with me were two post cards I grabbed at the airport at the last minute before getting on the plane. The instructions said to list *everything* so I put those down at about $2 value. As I passed through customs my clerk decided to send me to another line to have my stuff searched. I figured maybe he thought I was a bit snide in declaring $2 worth of post cards and had me searched as an attitude adjustment.
Once in the terminal I was happy to be back on American soil again, but had no idea how to get to a subway train. I went to the ground transportation help desk, but no one was there. I took one of their maps of Queens, and it looked like a jumbled mess! There was no way I could get my brain wrapped around it. I was too glad to be home to be stressed out, but I was still in a bit of a quandary. Finally the attendant came back. She told me I could get on a free shuttle bus to the long-term parking lot where there was a subway station. It was a no-brainer, and it wouldn't even cost me anything! Once at the station I found a left-over metro pass in my wallet. Within minutes I was on a train bound for the Port Authority. I didn't even need to switch trains along the way.
Time was a little tight before the next bus to Ithaca departed, but I knew there'd be another one in a couple hours anyway. In the end I got to the Port Authority with about a half-hour to spare. The gate was mobbed with people. I wasn't too surprised by this. A lot of people take that route on Sunday afternoons. The Shortline staff scrounged up a couple more busses and redirected us to different gates depending on our destination. It wasn't long before I was sitting on a bus bound for home.
I watched "Throw Mamma From The Train" on my camcorder. I'd never seen it before. Danny Devito seems to be aging more gracefully then Billy Cristol. It was also cool to see Kate Mulgrew before she was Captain Janeway. By the time it was over I think I could understand why it was so popular back in its day, but frankly I found it to be more than a little on the cheesy side. The camcorder battery died almost immediately after the movie ended. I got out my iPod, but that too died shortly after I started playing it. I still had a few hours before I was back in Ithaca. I was too tired to read, so I wound up gazing pensively out the window at the passing scenery as I rolled ever-closer to home.
As I walked from the bus stop in CollegeTown to my waiting car, I reflected on how this trip had been an amazing exercise in mass transit. The means of transportation I had employed included passenger cars, commuter trains, subway trains, jet planes, taxi cabs, double-decker busses, shuttle busses, highway coach busses, and my own two feet. I pictured the Earth in my mind's eye. I, a solitary human being, had just traversed a considerable part of the world. Relative to the scale of the planet and the distance I'd traveled, I felt like a microscopic speck of dust blowing in the wind across the globe. Yet the journey was made with ease and comfort. To so many this is an unremarkable reality of our modern culture. To me it was a monumental testament to the staggering echelon of civilization our species has achieved. I arrived at my little car, waiting quietly and patiently where I'd left it a week before. I pulled a small talisman from my pocket, and with a flick of the wrist the assemblage of metal, plastic, and rubber sprang to life and conveyed me home.
My strategy to stay on East Coast time worked flawlessly. I collapsed in bed about 10PM local time. The next morning I awoke naturally without an alarm clock and was more or less on time for work.