Into the Blue

When I disappeared, California was singing. California was as California always is: bright and smiling. She was dancing; she was clicking her heels mid-air. She was La La Land. I’d seen that film in Venice just a month or two before I left. It was nice; nice in a kind of disconcerting way. By the time you all saw it, everything had changed.

The bus-stop I left from still lingers in my mind. It was shored up against the Pacific on one of those roads built only for cars. Those long ones dotted with palms; the kind of road they write songs about in vague bands in the seventies. It was simple, and deserted. No cameras in sight. I took another bus, from Beverly Hills all the way to the coast, just to get to that stop.

This Trump nut sat down next to me - this was before the election - and he reeked of stale beer and caked-in filth. It was the strangest thing. I would have thought he was homeless if not for the bright red MAGA cap balanced on his half-bald head. He had this ancient leather duster jacket on, with an eagle blazoned on the shoulder, pushed right up against my side.

“What do you think, then,” he croaked, “who’s winning?”

I didn’t give two craps. I just wanted him gone.

“I… don’t know,“ I said.

He grumbled, and rolled in his seat like an upset stomach.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“I don’t… really... have an opinion - about politics, I mean…”

“America is winning, kid.”

As he said it, he sounded like a disappointed father - just for a glint of a moment. He made me feel sick; sick in my throat, and in my chest - down in my guts as well. You have to understand: back then, these people were a joke. They were not even real. They were imaginary people living in a made-up world. They didn’t matter at all. You remember; two months before the election there was nothing, there was no-one who didn’t think Trump was just a loudmouth idiot who would hand it to Hillary.

“You think Trump is going to win the election?,” I pushed.

“The Donald has already won, because The Donald is a winner.”

He made a shuffling movement in his seat and turned his eagle-shoulder up towards me in a way that said ‘we are finished talking’. Thank God for that. I didn’t know what to say.

It’s perfect, really. Looking back, you see how things were always laid out just to happen the way they were meant to happen. You see the fullness of it all. There’s no sickness when you’re looking at things from that position. Everything just washes right through you. Back then, I still felt sick. He was everything I needed to get away from. As he sat there next to me, tense and brooding, I could only tell myself it was funny. We rode two full stops in ridiculous silence before he moved across the aisle and sat, turned, glaring at me. I did my best to just ignore him.

That bus stop. You know what was funny? It was grey - it was totally grey, even under that open blue sky. I loved it for that. It was like it had some invisible cloud that it kept above it all the time just to ward off all the sunshine. I don’t know why it sticks in my mind, but it does. Maybe it’s a departure point. I guess it’s where I disappeared - even though I didn’t really disappear.

You know what the funniest thing about it was, though? I couldn’t believe it - I just had to laugh - it had that damn poster on it. That advert - it had been following me around for months. My face had been plastered all over America. It was just a little too much to bear. I thought this bus stop would be the last time I’d see it; thought it wouldn’t be able to follow me to Crater Lake, or beyond. I was wrong, of course; and it wasn’t the only thing that followed me.

That poster turned into something mythological, I’m told. You’ll have seen it, so you know the one I’m talking about. Jake Jones looks out at you with this totally inscrutable expression - is that sadness in his eyes, or fear? Is there a smile on those lips; in the corners, just creeping round the edge of that mouth? The hair: tousled the way only film-set cowboys can tousle. The denim: pure Americana.

All of this is burned in my memory like a double exposure. Visualise this: Jake Jones stands at a bus stop, waiting for the Greyhound to take him out of California, up to Portland, Oregon. He has plans to go south, then, from Portland, into the national park, into Crater Lake, formerly known as Deep Blue Lake; the deepest lake in America. Jake Jones stares intently at his own face looking back at him. He cannot see himself, no matter how hard he squints. He has not yet remembered his name. His eyes cloud over, and he turns to face the camera. It’s a long shot: he is alone at the stop. The sea is peaceful behind him. A palm leaf floats to the ground to the left of the frame. For a few moments, there is stillness. The Greyhound rolls in, obscuring our tousled American hero. It lingers for thirty seconds or so, and when it rolls away, Jake Jones has vanished, straight out of the blue.