Glasgow

My experience in Scotland began with a janky (though not greyhound standard) overnight bus to Glasgow, where I arrived in the dark, and passed an hour curled on a metal bench at the coach station. It seemed people were staring at my gigantic backpack with the peacock feather sticking out and my boots hanging off the armrest. Tired and cold, if anyone cared to bother me I would have told them to fuck off. 

          At 7am I hit the street, and with uncharacteristic gratitude, found an open Starbucks. While drinking some weak filter coffee I met a guy named James. He looked to be in his thirties, and was wearing coral pink trousers with matching collared shirt, a red knit hat with an enormous ball bobbing at the top, and toting a plastic bag stuffed with Friskies cat food (which I noticed because the boxes were a complementary bright purple). He had an odd way of saying something and then staring straight ahead, whilst I struggled to comprehend his Glaswegian. Apparently, he came to Starbucks every morning. A regular, as we would say in the restaurant business, all the baristas knew his name. Between incomprehensible guidance, I gleaned that to walk to my friend's house I would simply need to go down Sauchiehall (saow-kii-hall) for half an hour till I saw the Kelvingrove Museum. Fortunately I didn't need ask directions, because I would have pronounced everything wrong.

          No matter how hard one tries to sleep, night buses mess a person up. My first afternoon in Glasgow was tinged with exhaustion, and a feeling of displacement (cities do this to me anywhere). Despite staying with my friend Essi and her sweet flatmates, it took awhile for me to regain my balance. After several weeks in rural Wales it was a ridiculous contrast to go from staying with 4 guys to staying with 4 aesthetic Scandanavian girls in a high-ceilinged, urban apartment. I felt rather bucolic. 

           Getting dressed to go out dancing that night: make-up, hair, dresses, tights, red wine, lipstick, necklaces, mirrors, chatting about birth control and periods, and singing. I used to do this every weekend, when Essi and I lived in Lisbon. Going out at 11:30pm. Two am at the retro dance club, I finally ran out of steam, had danced myself out. My friends wanted to stay another half hour and I thought, Fuck, and stood outside with the smokers wondering how long the walk would be. Was questioned by a drunk ginger who had some odd opinion that Americans dislike Scots. I told him I liked Scotland, I just didn't like him.

         When I went back into the bar, Paul Simon's You Can Call Me Al came blasting on the sound system in all its random eighties South African glory. Everyone was singing and starting to dance. I entered the fray, belting the well-known lines with the rest. Yes, I thought, isn't this strangely perfect and right? 

A man walks down the street

It's a street in a strange world

Maybe it's the third world

Maybe it's his first time around

Doesn't speak the language

He holds no currency

He is a foreign man

...

He looks around, around

Sees angels in the architecture

Spinning in infinity

he says

Amen! and Hallelujah!