Status: Updates weekly
Ulysses, OH
Bloodbuzz Ohio / The National
The bus took sharp turn and I woke up with the vague dread of having missed my stop. Through the grime of the window I could see the Scioto river snaking along lazily in the warm light, framed by trees with heavy branches. The sun was sharp in my eyes and in my early afternoon daze I had no idea where I was. I forced my eyes open all the way, rubbing the dried sleep off the side of my face, and checked my watch, the one my mother had given me for my high school graduation, the glass surface still shiny and scratch-free, the strap vegan leather. There was still almost twenty minutes to go, and I tried to will my body into wakefulness as I clung to the passing landscape, inching along slowly as if suspended in that half-asleep state as well. I was trying to find something familiar to hang on to, but it had been so long since I’d been here, only once since the fire, the formative trauma of my childhood, for my grandmother's funeral when I was thirteen. That was also the last time I’d seen my father, who refused to come back to New York after the funeral but still insisted on sending overly cheery e-mails ever since, loaded with photos of the laundromat he'd turned his mother's house into, and photos of Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Rushmore, and a few of the other stereotypically touristy attractions he'd found the time to visit. The fact that I didn't reply to them never seemed to curb his enthusiasm, as if he knew I would cave in and come crawling after him. And now the prospect that I would see him in a mere half hour after five years of silence and then a month of awkwardly making arrangements filled me with an unexplainable and almost physically unbearable anxiety. I had no idea what I would find there - his impulsive euphoria that invaded your personal space in an almost welcome way or his distracted silence, aloof and detached and abstract in a way that was still miraculously practical, or his rare stable presence that I spent most of my childhood either longing for or clinging to.
My body recognized the outskirts of the town before my mind did, and I could finally feel a certain alertness, neurons reestablishing long-lost connections, as I saw the first boxy houses scattered along the riverbank, the metal skeleton of the car factory, the water tanks protruding into the horizon, the unassuming beige apartment looming in the strange place between background and foreground. The town of Ulysses, Ohio, population 19,346, was sprawling lazily, in a not quite efficient way, and the empty spaces between buildings, taken back by the tall, unhealthy-looking grass, were much larger than I’d remembered. The sudden familiarity of it all was unsettling mostly because I couldn't quite place it. Not like memories were flooding back - it was more a flux of sensations, the feel of that grass on my bare knees scraped raw, the smell of the city bus and the feel of its leather seat somehow imprinted in the memory of my pores, the sweet taste of a McDonald’s bun, and finally, as the bus took the curve and crossed the yellow bridge, the smell of burnt wood, fresh soot and ash, coating my nostrils on the inside again. By the time the bus pulled up in front of the station, a short, flat building with a its parking lot yellowed from the dust, I was positively dizzy. I swung my guitar on my shoulder first and then my backpack on the other, and followed the driver down so he could hand me my suitcase from the trunk.
My knees were shaky, but I was glad I could finally stand again, stretch a little, breathe in a lungful of air that didn't smell like rubber and gasoline. The station was nearly empty. My father wasn't there to pick me up, but then again, he never said he would and I never asked. The address he gave me as a reminder was a twelve-minute walk from the bus station, according to Google Maps. I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder, yanked the stuck handle of my suitcase and started along the avenue that was still nothing more than just a fairly wide street. As soon as I passed the cinema, black letters arranged carelessly on the marquee with blank spaces in the middle of the words, I started to remember the way. I soon passed the needlessly fancy charcuterie and then a sporting goods store that seemed to have recently gone out of business, I took a turn and then quickly another one, and there it was, the street where my grandmother's house stood, where I had spent my awkward but euphoric childhood summers, playing on abandoned lots with the older kids of the alcoholic neighbor, watching matinees while sipping warm, sticky Pepsi in the cold darkness of the cinema, tentatively plucking away on my very first guitar, bought second hand, with the strings put on the wrong way, the previous owner clearly left-handed. The years had stacked onto one another, hot dust and sharp rain, until I woke up one night not knowing where I was, choking on smoke so thick I couldn't see a thing, until my father lifted me onto his back and practically threw me out the front door, with my mother safely across the street trying hysterically to console my grandmother whom she hated. I was ten and that had been my last summer in Ohio for eight years.
My body recognized the outskirts of the town before my mind did, and I could finally feel a certain alertness, neurons reestablishing long-lost connections, as I saw the first boxy houses scattered along the riverbank, the metal skeleton of the car factory, the water tanks protruding into the horizon, the unassuming beige apartment looming in the strange place between background and foreground. The town of Ulysses, Ohio, population 19,346, was sprawling lazily, in a not quite efficient way, and the empty spaces between buildings, taken back by the tall, unhealthy-looking grass, were much larger than I’d remembered. The sudden familiarity of it all was unsettling mostly because I couldn't quite place it. Not like memories were flooding back - it was more a flux of sensations, the feel of that grass on my bare knees scraped raw, the smell of the city bus and the feel of its leather seat somehow imprinted in the memory of my pores, the sweet taste of a McDonald’s bun, and finally, as the bus took the curve and crossed the yellow bridge, the smell of burnt wood, fresh soot and ash, coating my nostrils on the inside again. By the time the bus pulled up in front of the station, a short, flat building with a its parking lot yellowed from the dust, I was positively dizzy. I swung my guitar on my shoulder first and then my backpack on the other, and followed the driver down so he could hand me my suitcase from the trunk.
My knees were shaky, but I was glad I could finally stand again, stretch a little, breathe in a lungful of air that didn't smell like rubber and gasoline. The station was nearly empty. My father wasn't there to pick me up, but then again, he never said he would and I never asked. The address he gave me as a reminder was a twelve-minute walk from the bus station, according to Google Maps. I adjusted my backpack on my shoulder, yanked the stuck handle of my suitcase and started along the avenue that was still nothing more than just a fairly wide street. As soon as I passed the cinema, black letters arranged carelessly on the marquee with blank spaces in the middle of the words, I started to remember the way. I soon passed the needlessly fancy charcuterie and then a sporting goods store that seemed to have recently gone out of business, I took a turn and then quickly another one, and there it was, the street where my grandmother's house stood, where I had spent my awkward but euphoric childhood summers, playing on abandoned lots with the older kids of the alcoholic neighbor, watching matinees while sipping warm, sticky Pepsi in the cold darkness of the cinema, tentatively plucking away on my very first guitar, bought second hand, with the strings put on the wrong way, the previous owner clearly left-handed. The years had stacked onto one another, hot dust and sharp rain, until I woke up one night not knowing where I was, choking on smoke so thick I couldn't see a thing, until my father lifted me onto his back and practically threw me out the front door, with my mother safely across the street trying hysterically to console my grandmother whom she hated. I was ten and that had been my last summer in Ohio for eight years.