Worst... Thanksgiving... Ever!
November, 2010

I'm 19 years old, on a surprise visit northward to my then girlfriend's family home for Thanksgiving.

I arrive early on the afternoon of the holiday, and hitchhike from the bus station to her house. Her surprised and delighted mom let me in and, still fussing with complex and demanding meal prep for the large family, shooed me away in the direction of my girlfriend's bedroom.

I climb the stairs and tiptoe in on her, to find her... flailing about in bed with some strange guy I'd never seen before. She looked at me with what I can only describe as slightly annoyed disappointment-- like I'd just told her I didn't get that long-expected raise, or as if I'd downgraded our airline tickets from first class to coach. Not shock, embarrassment, anger, guilt-- just a sort of "Oh, crap..!" look. I just stood there, gawped at them, and finally turned and fled.

I roamed around the city, chain-smoking, weeping, grumbling, formulating and rehearsing angry but reasonable make-up conversations I knew I'd never actually have. I spent the night in a shitty motel room near the bus station. I found an open convenience store and made a couple of purchases.

I ate my lonely Thanksgiving dinner sitting on a wobbly chair, heating a Swanson Turkey TV Dinner over a can of Sterno. I held it gingerly by the edges and moved it back and forth as I tried to get enough heat into it to make it semi-palatable. The bulk of it was slightly soupy, kind of warm, with a few ice crystals here and there, but I managed to get about half of it down, sobbing and gagging as I did so. I cried myself to sleep on the strange, narrow and lumpy bed.

Friday morning I awoke to the grim realization that I was still in this grubby motel room in a city I now found hostile and alien. A few minute's reflection assured me that-- A.) It wasn't all just a bad dream, and-- B.) There was absolutely *nothing* to be gained by hanging around here or confronting them. I bought myself a bus ticket home-- and also a bottle of Boone's Farm Apple Wine, which I pounded down in record-breaking time, for my self-loathing, angry, post-holiday, punishment breakfast. Bad choice.

An hour later as the bus was rattling southward, the roiling mixture of the god-awful, cheap wine and last night's semi-thawed holiday feast combined to violently rouse me from my stupor. Gurgling and rumbling ominously, I made a beeline for the bus's toilet, only to find that the door didn't even latch properly-- never mind being able to lock it behind me. I kept a death grip on the handle.

It was cold and grimy in there and it reeked like... well, like a bus toilet. I half-sat, half-hovered over the bowl, hunched forward as we bounced and lurched and rumbled our way along the highway as I forcefully and spasmodically delivered myself of the cartoonishly inadequate dinner and breakfast from Hell
.

I have no idea exactly what happened then; perhaps another vehicle cut us off. All I knew was that the driver hit his brakes-- hard! I was violently catapulted off the toilet seat and out the door onto my hands and knees into the aisle, with my pants around my ankles. People screamed, shouted, hooted, yelped, pointed, gasped and swore. I did a grotesque impression of a large, pissed-off hermit crab and scrambled on all fours back toward the bathroom, as the driver accelerated again, hurling me backwards, so that I also careened off people's seats like some half-naked pinball.

I remained in there for some time, cleaning myself up as best I could manage, and trying desperately to figure out a way to escape the bus through the toilet, or hoping to hide from everyone until we came into D.C. again. Neither possibility was realistic, and I eventually-- and very quietly-- pushed the door open and tiptoed out... to the thunderous cheers and applause of my fellow passengers!

So, the trip wasn't a complete loss, after all. They do say that tragedy builds character, and show biz is my life, after all...! I'd like to think that there are several people from that Buffalo to D.C. run who, even today, may be telling a portion of this same bizarre story to their friends, all of them wondering what ever happened to that poor son of a bitch who was flung out of that toilet like he was shot from a cannon.

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