(I prefaced Part I of this series by saying I may not get this done before the 40th anniversary of my hitchhiking trip from San Jose to Bread Loaf in Vermont, which I'm chronicling here. That anniversary has arrived. My last installment was over 16 months ago. Hey, I had a novel to write.)
Okay, now it gets weird. I'm on a roadway with no shoulder, behind me is a strip mall that seems to run all the way to New York City, across the road is a beautiful, hilly, wooded area. I'm in PA or NJ. Who knows, for sure? I'm standing on a sidewalk with my thumb out trying to get the attention of rush-hour traffic commuters who have nowhere to pull over even if they want to pick me up. I've been standing here for hours with my chances of making New York City by nightfall slipping away.
Behind me, I hear the crunching of tires stopping in a parking lot. A fat man's sweaty face shows in the driver side window. “Nowhere to pull over on this road,” he says. I don't know if he somehow saw me from a distance or passed me earlier and doubled back. I didn't much care.
“It's the only road I got,” I said, climbing in. He immediately starts in on his own hitchhiking story—they all got 'em—only his is different. He's twelve and a station wagon full of guys pick him up and ultimately gang rape him. He tells it vividly. They leave him in his shame and the next morning he's hitchhiking again and the same station wagon pulls over. They apologize and promise to not do it again. He accepts the ride and gets raped again. Fool me once...
Of course, I'm feeling pretty sorry for this poor sap, though his tales of subsequent therapy sessions grow tiresome. Suddenly he swings a left up into the picturesque hills. “I have to take a leak,” he says after I question the detour.
Now, short of jumping from a moving vehicle, I have no escape. He turns up a path and further back into the woods. He finally parks. I don't mind saying, I'm scared. “This is where the gays hang out,” he says and exits the car. There's a shack—outhouse—but he walks past it and out of sight. He's fat and, at 25, I'm still in pretty good shape, so I'm not too worried about him—unless he returns with others set on retribution for the gang rape twenty-some years earlier. I'm checking the door handles as he returns, having taken longer than one would to piss, though not long enough to establish any sort of romantic relationship back there. And, thankfully, alone.
That's his story. Here my memory fails, but somehow I end up on a ramp to nowhere overlooking the Holland Tunnel with the sun beginning to set.
“What the hell're you doin' up here? Nobody gonna pick you up here!” a man calls out, pulling over to pick me up.
“You just did,” I say, throwing my pack in the backseat and climbing in.
Dismissing that, he asks: “Where you headed?”
I point to the NYC skyline and say: “There. Specifically St. Mark's Place.” I mention the name of the restaurant my friend Kevin Hazlett works at.
He puts it in gear. “I'm gonna take you to Staten Island,” he says. I protest. He goes on: “I'm gonna drop you at a bus stop that goes directly to the Ferry, which is free going into the city. Get off the Ferry and there's a subway station right there. Take the subway to Sheridan Station, walk up the steps and you'll see your buddy's bar right across the street.”
Again, jumping from a moving vehicle is not an option. The fellow drives like a madman to Staten Island, telling me all the way about the two women he was with the night before, how much coke they did, how much liquor they drank, and how much sex—and at what angles—they enjoyed.
He was wrong about the bus and I had no change. Driver drops me at a stop with a bodega for change and the correct bus heading for the Staten Island Ferry. I enjoy a nice boat ride, get off and buy a token, next train's mine. I jump off at Sheridan Station, walk up to the street and before I can sit at a sidewalk table, Kevin is out the door with a Beck's Beer on his tray.
“How was your trip?” he asks.
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