Green Tortoise Part 1 of 2
Green Tortoise week: one of the best of my, or any, life. Where to begin?

After about a year-and-a-half abroad, I leave Madrid and fly into New York City. I can barely describe the burbly, twitterpating elation as I watch the Massachusetts coastline out the window. There’s Nantucket, home of a thousand stupid limericks! Yes, America is a fucked up place, but it’s my fucked up place. Let every homecoming cliché ring out!

Getting in the cab from the airport, I sense that my whole 'tude has transformed. All I am is appreciative. I’m like one of these godforsaken always-smiling immigrants. I can’t say “thank you” and “that’s wonderful” enough times. I’m loving every notion, every manifestation of American excess, from the outrageous accents to the dried up pieces of gum. We pass Shea. I see the Statue of Liberty, the World Trade Center, the beacons of my culture, and am almost delirious. If they could bottle my feeling and pass it out as a drug, world’s problems solved.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to get all my shit across the country. It’s funny what you can learn about just by expressing random concerns to people. As by an oracle in a dream, I was somehow told of the Green Tortoise, a sort of would-be hippie travel bus for will-be yuppies who can afford it. I signed up for a package that would take ten days to go from New York to San Francisco, with a few choice stops along the way. Someone told me I’d have no problem stowing all my shit in their compartment, and that they wouldn’t care. Not true. The Green Tortoise people take a look at me and my four or five uber-bags and make a face like they’ve tasted sour milk. I’m careful to let them know I’m a “nice guy” (right), that I would more than carry my share, and not ask for any other special treatment. It’s remarkable what kind of special treatment a guy can get after that. It might also help that I’m with a gorgeous woman.

My partner in crime is an American recent college grad named Amy, who I’d met in Poland a year before. The first night we hung out, we were at this Polish bar where these two guys started shoving each other, and Amy jumped away from our table and stood between these two motherfuckers. They tried to get around her, and she just kept moving. She doesn’t speak Polish and didn’t say a word – she didn’t have to! She’s tall, dirty blonde, honey-tanned, and crazy cute, and these guys could not do a damn thing. Amy defused that fight all by her lonesome. The damnedest thing I ever saw. I fell in love with Amy that night and nothing changed.

Amy emailed me in Spain and confirmed that she still wanted to move to San Francisco with me. Next thing you know, we’re in New York’s Chinatown, jumping on board the Green Tortoise – yes it’s green. The next 48 hours are a blur. Amy and I immediately connect with two Brits, Andrew and Sally. Andrew has a Pan face and untameable curly black hair, Sally more like a tennis-player face adorned by badly bleached blonde curls. Like us, they’re traveling together but not together. I “take the piss out of them” and call them “guv’nah” as much as possible. We sleep near them, not really sure how to approach the other twenty or so twenty-somethings on the bus. Sleeping is peculiar. I don’t want to slow the whole story down by giving the schematic of the beds, but let’s say that the upper level stays that way during the day, and the lower level folds out at night. Amy and I were some of the last to actually board the bus (what with all the bags), so we lose out on any but the lamest beds, near the front, with our personal items always in danger of floating away with the tide.

The Green Tortoise people don’t seem too fond of America east of the Mississippi, and who can blame them? The first day-and-a-half is a haze of rapid motion, like the first hour aboard a space shuttle. Our shuttle doesn’t reach a placid orbit until we arrive in Minnesota. We get out of the bus and blink our bleary eyes at this pleasant, wooded, unspectacular picnic area situated next to one of the shallowest parts of the Mississippi River. Our de facto camp counselor, a British chap named Sid with hair like Sideshow Bob, tells us that we better bathe now. As a matter of fact, Sid insists on it. There’s no bathroom on the bus. This means baths in exotic locations and, yes, a large plastic funnel near the front of the bus for emergency #1s. I recall Sally’s initial reaction to the funnel: “I will never get me bum near that thing.” By Day Nine, she couldn’t use it often enough.

In Minnesota, this skinny guy with red scraggly hair and a big red beard comes up to me and asks me if I went to Berkeley High. Oh my God, it’s Stefan! There are maybe five Americans on this bad boy, and of all the gin joints in all the world, Stefan walks into mine. Turns out Stefan is quite the Green Tortoise veteran. He’s got this look in his eye when he talks to Amy – like he’s always trying to turn any situation with a female into sex. I mean, I think that way too, but I hope I hide my perv look a little better than the Stefanmeister. Turns out Stefan’s serial Tortoiseing has a lot to do with trying to hook up with “easy” foreigner chicks. Well, that doesn’t seem to affect me, so I choose to enjoy the presence of the Debaser. Not that I was ever Stefan’s best friend, but we were fellow nerds, and it’s nice to have him around. He’s a little piece of home.

Amy is the woman that pervs and even regular piggy guys want, because even though she’s breathtaking, she’s shy and awkward around men. Amy takes an immediate dislike to Stefan, and starts circulating around the other travelers, which I like, because I now have the same chance. We meet several fun Germans and Norwegians. I always get props for having just returned for more than a year in Europe. It’s not hard to hear the American accent from a distance, and we meet this one woman named Kerri. She’s got ivory skin, ice blue eyes, phone-black hair, a skinny waist, lovely boobs, and a funky beautiful face, like Ileana Douglas or a young Angelica Huston.

I keep talking to Kerri as we hit the road out of Minnesota.

“What happened to your hair?” she asks.

My head was shaved, with maybe a week of growth. “I sold it.”

“How did you do that?”

“It helps to know a lot of Jews.”

“What do you mean?”

“I somehow learned a long time ago that some sect of Jewish women never wear their own hair – like it’s not allowed. I figured, okay, these yentas probably pay top dollar to wear real hair as opposed to horse hair or something synthetic. And where else could such a market exist, if not New York?”

“That’s amazing. Where did you do it?”

“Somewhere in Brooklyn, I don’t know, I took the D train. When I got off the platform and saw signs in Hebrew, I smiled.”

“How long was your hair?”

“Came down to here. 14 inches. The lady goes, oh, well, we usually don’t take less than 16 inches. I started to leave, kinda as a bluff, but she turned me around. I had a feeling the whole sun-bleached red hair wasn’t gonna be resisted.”

“Think a lot of yourself, do you?”

“The hair is genetic, what can I say?” I’m smiling now, because Kerri is hot shit on toast. “I walk through this room of all white women getting their nails done. I’m like, whoa, is someone gonna be naked? Or am I?”

“And then?”

“Then they took me to a back room, for the whole staff to admire my locks before the big cut. Just before the lady closed the scissors, she said, ‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ I pretended to be much more sure than I was. Hell yes, I said. And it only took a few more minutes to look like this.”

“How much money did you get?”

“Eighty bucks.” Some guy later told me that he sold his long red hair for ten times that. I hope that’s not true.

The bus stops in South Dakota, and we have a long day in the Badlands. In many ways, this is the real beginning, because instead of relying on the Green Tortoise fruits and dry sandwiches, we all work together to make lunch. That day we enjoy crepes, a delicacy theretofore unknown to Amy. We walk around the Badlands, a curiously captivating series of craggy hills. Amy and I are still mostly with Andrew and Sally, although we do drift into the orbits of some of the Germans. One of them is this little blonde spitfire named Lola, the type with the randy eyes and the tan legs bursting out of short shorts. Her darker friend is named Claudia, who looks like a young Pamela Reed (yes, from “Kindergarten Cop”) whom I fall in love with.

I forget to apply sunscreen until midway through the day, and when we get back on the bus, I’m practically having a sunstroke. I tell Amy that I merely need to nap before dinner. While sleeping, I dream that someone is massaging my face – it’s very odd. I wake up and the area is suffused with orange light; the bus has stopped in some picturesque locale for dinner. I get up and join Andrew and Sally with the food preparation. Andrew can’t stop snickering. He makes jokes about “splitting hairs” and “close shaves.” Finally Sally says, don’t you feel anything different? Damn. Andrew shaved a bit of my hair above my ear! Outwardly, I give him credit for being nutty. Inwardly, I’m thinking, great, will my hair grow in straight now, or will I squander the biggest advantage of shaving one’s head, that whole looks-nice-and-even thing?

The next day, we arrive in some part of the Rocky Mountain foothills. The lilting sensation of mountain air and spruce trees washes over me. Oh yeah, and washing washes over me. That is, we’re at a low-rent redneck version of a posh spa resort. There’s luxurious showers, Jacuzzis, hot box rooms, a waterslide, and indoor and outdoor pools. After we all get clean, I migrate toward the good-looking femininas in the outdoor pool. I’m chock full of an energy so good that it’s almost not sexual (note I say almost). I even suggest something I used to do with kids but have never tried with adults. Sally and I face each other standing in a pool about five feet deep. We put our arms around each other, holding our noses closed with those extended hands. One two three, and I just lunge forward, basically doing a somersault while she’s attached. We come back up, and Sally laughs. I manage to talk three other fairly hot foreign chicks into doing this, one by one. The other guys give me the look. The look that says We Know What You’re Doing. Wish We’d Have Thought Of It First.

That night, after the beds are put out, Kerri moves a little nearer to Amy and me. Kerri and I have a whispery, breathless, fabulous conversation. Kerri is traveling with a guy named Joel who looks like the lead singer of the Spin Doctors. Joel is next to us, acting like he’s asleep, but I don’t really think he is. Kerri assures me that Joel is not her boyfriend, but there’s something about her tone that suggests that he might not see it that way. Kerri is way too hot to be chasing me, so it's like I say, I'm positively radiating positivity, plus I have Amy, which gives me this bizarre credibility. Kerri says that she wants to know what it’s like to kiss me. I lean in and kiss her. She is one of the most sensuous kissers I have ever felt – my mouth feels like my ten-year-old body shooting down a waterslide – a plenitude of purism and pleasure.

The bus pulls into a rest stop. People are roused, so Kerri and I stop perhaps the most splendiferous make-out session of my life. To try to be considerate of the customers’ bathroom needs, the bus stops every three hours or so, even if it’s the middle of the night, which, in this case, it is. Kerri and Joel get out, go to the restrooms. I can’t hear them, but the body language says that he’s biting her head off, and not in the good way. He even follows her into the bathroom! I walk out into the cold Colorado air. Maybe I can pee in the men’s while Joel is in the women’s, thus avoiding him. But he comes right back out and passes me. He gives me the Look. My whole life I have never, ever gotten this Look. As I often say, I’m not down with O.P.P. Thus I have scrupulously avoided not only the Look but also the later consequences. But here is the Look, and you know what? Feels good. I don’t mean to be evil, but it sure is nice to see how the other half lives.

tomorrow: the other women, and a shocking twist ending