I'd met a girl online who lived in the Detroit area and had traveled to see her, but something went horribly awry and I ended up not only all alone in an unfamiliar place but under menacing circumstances, with nothing to my name except the clothes on my back and a few dollars in change in my pockets — and no ID!
After having barely escaped a perilous situation I found myself aimlessly wandering down streets lined with houses in an old peripheral suburb of one of Detroit's satellite cities, hoping to find an arterial before night waxed morning. After nearly an hour of walking I came across what I sought running along the depression of a small valley below me and lined with the fast-food restaurants, gas stations, convenience stores, and strip malls ubiquitous to the soulless and uniform materialistic American culture that always strikes me as bleakly alternate-universe Soviet. As I descended toward the busy avenue I saw a crowded bus stop on the other side of the intersection and decided to see if it would take me downtown, hopefully to where I could inquire about shelter for the night, a meal maybe, and certainly at least a blanket since I would most likely be spending the night outside. After we shuffled aboard and sat down a diminutive, stern-looking young black lady stood in the aisle near the front and prattled away in a martial tone about rules, privileges, and expectations of what I soon realized was a residential reintegration program for street people. "Very nice," I thought, "but I want to return home, not settle in this benighted burg."
I deboarded with the other passengers, partly out of curiosity and partly to try to bum a few drags off someone's cigarette, in a large parking lot surrounded by low cinder-block buildings that may have been barracks or an elementary school. Suddenly I found myself back on a bus, squinting through brilliant morning daylight occasionally occluded by freeway ramps threading their way above an industrial sprawl lining the river we traveled adjacent to, making out as my eyes adapted to the glare a massive conglomeration of skyscrapers I took to be downtown Detroit beyond the icy blue water. White clouds raced alongside us in a dark azure sky; a brisk but pleasant spring day seemed to be foretold. I was almost out of money and had gotten nowhere in search of meals, blankets, or even puffs of smoke and my eyes felt gritty like they do when sleep deprivation and undernourishment set in — to be honest, I hadn't tried very hard: the coldness and barely-bridled animosity in this city and its people scared the shit out of me and I avoided speaking to people for fear of advertising the presence of a flailing quail to hungry foxes lurking in the vicinity.
The bus stopped in a parking lot beneath a large freeway ramp and in front of a modern-looking square building in front of us. Most of us deboarded as it was clear this was a stop where drivers may take brief breaks in order to pollute their lungs or relieve their pothole-bludgeoned bladders and bowels. On looking at the building ahead of me I saw "Justice Center" spelled out in crisp brass letters above the glass double doors of its entrance and I cringed inwardly as I saw the miserable traffic in and out of that dismal and sinister institution. "No way in hell am I sleeping outside in this city!" I thought to myself as the patina of prevarication encasing me the past couple days cracked open and fell to the ground. "I'll sooner hazard the perils of the road before I let this awful place have its way with me." The driver returned and started up the engine and I made my way back to the bus with the other passengers.
