cityscape On the Bus with Kathy Jo Kathy Jo Kramer As the bus pulls out of the terminal, the air conditioning comes on like a rush of some good smack at the end of a long jones. My skin sheds its damp memories. The air is a relief to my lungs opening, filling with the silken coolness of ease. Everything else seems to be shrinking, even my pupils. I scuff the back of my hand across my nose *ahhh.* Wow. Look at that. I'm no where near the Big Apple yet and I already sound like a dick. And I'm on a Greyhound bus, the Velveteen Underground, working as a gonjo journalist -- Hunted S. Jo. I just crossed the line between reality and the Internet and came back with a new friend I wouldn't have had otherwise success. And there's more where that came from, baby. Back on the bus, I'm my own Jo. Just me with some new tunes. Bob in Rochester, my first stop on the Whore Tour (alt.fan.dirty-whores that is), gave me a copy of Neil Young's _Mirror Ball_. But looking out the window, I feel like I'm in a Tim Burton version of Bon Jovi video as Neil sings: "Hey, Jo, away we go, we're on the road to never, where life's a joy for girls and boys and only will get better." I'm singing the words, not thinking about them, trying not to think about how strangely difficult my first stop had been. I never even considered things getting worse. And I guess it's redundant for me to comment on how surprising the differences are between what I find and what I expect from people I meet through the Internet. But I had no idea how many shocking forms of surprise exist... Picture an intelligent man who headed for the hills after being a New York City lawyer cause he, um, had too much fun there. He has a very tall voice, writes fiction, even good fiction with sex in it, on the side. Signs his notes "twist one for me." Now picture this: You get off the bus in the middle of nowhere, the humidity immediately screams down your neck and you already lost your first pair of sunglasses. In the squinting heat, a car pulls up. Santa Claus gets out, throws your luggage in the hatchback and opens the door for you. You have to get in. In the small space that exists in the sound of a car door slamming, you enter the JoZone. The car smells like my grandfather's work shirts. I tell bus stories while scanning my surroundings. My Net-friend's hands and feet are swollen, like his liver's spent. His clothes are threadbare, his shoes, torn. The man in the computer who appeared so content with his cynical acceptance of the system seems to be in really bad shape. The car stops in front of an old gas station. We get out. No one tells me what's happening. Tom gets my luggage. The car drives away. I follow him inside. The heat forces odor from the gritty air warping everything. Perfect dames holding tools smile safely from inside their calendars making me feel so, so, well, *female.* Thinking I'm not so tough. Tom is cool as hell and sees me wigging, comes and takes me outside. We have some tea even though he still has to take urine tests. Risking all that just to have tea with Jo. I feel a strange difficulty breathing and my stomach burns. He tells me the car we're waiting for hasn't been driven in years. He's getting it ready just for me. I can't thank him properly cause I don't know how. I mean, I'm just not used to all these people who think I'm so great. In greatness begins paranoia. So the most noble Jo tells him stories. Makes him laugh. He starts telling me things he never tells anyone. Even though he knows I'm a writer. I feel honored and wildly overvalued which is a strange kind of wigdom. The car's finally ready. As we start driving, hot leaves and dirt blast through the vents. The tires are four different sizes. I feel like I'm in a Shriner's car. With Dean Moriarity driving. The brakes are so bad the car stutters to a halt a few hundred feet after our turn. He backs up, dumps it in "drive" zoom! *wigdom* and yeah, yeah, I ask him to slow down. But there were no seatbelts and we were flying up and down dirt mountain roads and I have a little son, you know? We stop at his office. It's dark so it doesn't matter that the carpeting hasn't always been solid brown. I think I just need to lay down. On the way up to his house, he says it's a shit hole. Well, it's pretty spent. And I never expected to find his daughter in there. Or a dog I had to keep talking to so it wouldn't attack me. But the room they prepared for me was immaculate. Cute little bed with a patchwork design on the sheet. He leaves so I can rest. Dogs sniff and scratch at my door. The 106 degree heat mutates everything the room's closing in on me, again, the walls a suffocating blue. I try closing my eyes. Sit straight up. My breathing's shallow, heart palpitations, profuse sweating, total wigdom. I can only handle it knowing I can leave. Spineless Jo. Splat. He trusted me to handle how he lived, to accept him and the kindness and respect behind his invitation. But there was no phone. I was in the middle of no where. My luggage was too heavy to carry. And that heat. I hadn't felt like that since I was in jail -- that much loss of control. Which isn't right because I wasn't trapped there, he'd do anything for me, but I never pictured him or anyone living like that. Like he'd given up on everything. I felt like a lost child who opened the wrong door. I just had no idea. About so many things. On the long ride back to the bus, I asked him how he became the poorest lawyer who ever lived. He laughed and said: "Some guy's wife leaves, he gets drunk, totals his car, can't work, has all kinds of fines to pay. What? Am I supposed to charge him $200 to file a piece of paper?" An ethical lawyer -- it only made my failure seem more profound. I had to leave. Crack up on the InfoBahn. I needed a pit stop with familiar people. We were near Woodstock so I called a couple I knew there who were glad to come get me. But I couldn't keep going, the pain in my stomach was really intense. I had to get my head together. 26 more days to go. I couldn't even imagine how I was going to do it. Woodstock wasn't like, *totally* Fruitopian. I expected a bunch of snippidy, welfare-mother-hating pseudo-hippies like in Pittsburgh, but Mel and Paul just had a baby and even with him working, they need food stamps and no one even batted an eye when we used them. But just being able to relax around them, I wrote 30 pages of stuff and figured out what was wrong. I was so embarrassed being face-to-face with people who read my netposts. Well, with men who had. Cause I talk about sex in comic detail. Daily. Yikes. I just had no idea who I was writing to and kinda felt like I already had sex with them. Double yikes! More poor tumtum. How could they *not* be thinking about sex? Even expecting it? Imagine Jo-whore describing masturbating in the shower, soap-dropping, water-pelting -- just to tease and torture computer programmers (the majority of the Net). Pretty Jovenile. Then imagine showering in some guy's house while suddenly remembering what I wrote. Triple yikes! But teasing men on the Internet, the only place they can't touch me -- the only place I've ever done it -- is so funny, such sweet revenge for living in a world where everything I say and do is interpreted as a sexual advance. If you talk or joke about sex around a man, he thinks, "she wants it, needs it." If you bend over to pick up your purse, he thinks, "she wants it, needs it." No, and not *all* men are like this -- only the ones who want you. So I went out on my newsgroup and told them to slam it in a car door a few times and to forget about spank-spank. That gets 'em every time (wink). So no more sex worries. And everyone knows I'm going to marry Adam Duritz anyway. Even though people on the Counting Crows' group tell me I'm too good for him. Funny. Speaking of men I'm too good for, it was time to head into New York City. I ended up taking a train in. Casey Jo. The man there, Rob, was supposed to meet me at Grand Central Station, 10 p.m. I sat waiting on my luggage in front of Houlihans -- a New York City version of a kick-me sign. No one bothered me, but the place looked just like Pittsburgh with silicon shots. Anyway, he comes (this is my ex-virtual-boyfriend). He tries to figure out if I "like" him while pretending he doesn't care. The heat is unbearable. We get busses. I talk way too loud for a Sunday night. People glare at me through their eyebrows. He acts like he doesn't know me. In that instant, I figure out what he is about. Even the rain's too loud in Alphabet City. He opens the downstairs door. Madonna booms above our heads. A silk wedding bouquet is stuffed between bars on the window. In front of his apartment, he hears hinges screeching as a door opens upstairs. He scurries to get keys in locks to get inside before we're seen. He locks them again with paranoid precision and I swear, he collapsed against the door. It can't possibly be worth it. Okay, and I admit I went there to prove he was the knucklehead I thought he was. And I was wrong again. He was a bigger knucklehead than I ever imagined. I have got to learn to stop confusing pity with love. But how can you when you're dealing with men? * Woe, Jo.* It's not fair to rip on this poor fellow who was in Billy Squire's band. But if a man treats me like a chump, turn-about is fair play. He kept changing the rules. I was too loud. Or mumbling. I wasn't allowed to smoke in the apartment, had to go up a million stairs to the roof to stand in 100 degree heat to have my tea. Then back downstairs to the smallest room in the biggest city where everything I did was wrong. Then, knowing I had a column due, he wouldn't let me use his computer. Or phone. And all because he had to prove that he wasn't one of my desperate fans. He proved a lot more than that. I will not take petty grief from any man. I've done enough research into that sordid business. I called Jim, the school-teacher from New Haven, and he agreed to come get me. The next day, Rob threatened to sue me if I wrote about him. Well it was good for me, too, baby. NEXT... Ross Craig East Port Medway, South Shore, Nova Scotia,