#11 Saoirse Bertram
"Any bottle or can looks ten thousand times better when set before the gold and white lines of an American freeway."
At a glance…
Name: Saoirse
Age: 29yrs
Location: On the road but Vienna for now
Zodiac: 12th house Leo
Are you alone?
It’s lonely to be an American once you’ve seen too much of the country. Essentially, I feel alone around eighty-five or ninety percent of the time, regardless of whether I am the presence of company or great or small crowds. Now, I could be anywhere in the world, and it would be the same; for me, that’s just life.
This loneliness can’t be killed. It just has to be tolerated until I get a little reprieve here or there. There are salves. The accompaniment of my dreams, I will say, is a pretty fine way to reduce the severity of the lonesome feeling of the American coyote condition. When I say dreams, I’m talking about in the sense of reveries rather than designs, and it is true that sometimes a dream will make itself apparent on the bus, and these dreams can be really fantastic.
But I’ll say that their arrival is not something to be counted on, as the conditions have to be weighted enough towards a certain weave of factors; i.e., in the context of bus-travel, it’s preferable to be moving north-south rather than east-west, to have low saturation in the lighting of the day, etc., if the dream is to come true. It’s never certain.
I believe that most of my friends are prejudiced against the bus, especially in the cities. It’s sometimes seen as a signifier of poverty, and sometimes they incorrectly claim that it is louder, dirtier, or generally less pleasant than traveling by underground metro. Interestingly, I’ve had female friends claim that girls don’t ride the bus, while I’ve had male friends comment that riding the bus is an inherently womanish act.
I find it very charming when someone likes the bus. It doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a woman, once I hear that someone really enjoys riding the bus I find my measure of them increasing.
Of course, if I could choose anyone to ride the bus with, it would certainly be a beautiful girl, as beautiful as possible. They say Helen of Troy was the most beautiful, but I think we can do better than that.
Did you pay the bus fare?
My thoughts are basically that if entering through the front to say hello to the driver, which I like to do, dropping in the coins or what-have-you is the proper etiquette. I don’t think there’s any problem with not paying if you’re slipping through the back, especially if it’s rush hour and everyone just wants to move on.
Young people, which you can define as you will, really don’t need to pay for the bus. They shouldn’t have to pay for most things, maybe anything. I don’t know that they should be governed by laws whatsoever, as long as they’re brave and free and living with love in their hearts.
It’s funny when someone older than me brags about not paying for the bus or tells me that I don’t have to as if it’s some fabulous secret technique, especially if I hear them talk about these things more than once. It’s not attractive or respectable, but I have to laugh a little. You get the sense that these people are not going to be lucky in marriage.
Where are you sitting? ( Single seat right behind the driver / in the backseats / aisle / window / on the floor… )
The window is a must. If I can’t find an open window, I’d almost prefer to stand. I actually have a very complex and mostly instinctual ranking of all the various sectors of the bus that would be far too gratuitous to get into, even for me.
The double-decker busses I was riding recently in London and Dublin were really terrific. The upstairs front seat, that was really something. You don’t get those in America, as far as I know, except on certain inter-city coaches. When it comes to long- or long-er-distance movements, I’m more inclined towards rail for the most part, but there have been a few times where I’ve done a coach leg out of New York or Los Angeles and landed behind the windshield in one of those upstairs seats and found myself well-pleased as anyone.
It’s a wonderful position to drink an alcoholic beverage. Any bottle or can looks ten thousand times better when set before the gold and white lines of an American freeway.
What time of the day is it and what are you looking at? ( Your phone is not an option. No, you can’t reply you looking at someone else’s )
In my great fantasy it could be just about any time of day, or an indeterminate time of day, rather; let it be not too early and not too late and let it be summertime. I would be so happy to see lines of palm trees twisting in heavy wind and rain while traffic lights paint the wet streets with colour and people shelter in place under awnings or cover their heads with newspaper or thin jackets for want of umbrellas. I’d have a magnificent smile on my face.
I wouldn't want to ride this bus for longer than thirty minutes or so but I hope that when this dream comes true that it rains for three days without cessation. A real classic ever-loving summer deluge that changes life in the magical way. It’s true that many people will complain, but not me.
Are you listening to anything? If yes, what are you listening to?
The environment a bus of lends itself well to playing the same song or handful of songs on repeat without anyone in proximity being any the wiser and thinking I’m crazy. These tend to change mood by mood and week by week. While onboard the last bus I rode at length, a coach from Derry to Sligo, I was mostly just listening to the song Love Somebody by Morgan Wallen over and over again for the first portion of the trip. It’s a pretty emotional track with a fun little instrumental break.
I remember when Diet Pepsi came out I wouldn’t stop listening to it anywhere because I loved it so much but I always thought it was especially hilarious to listen to it on the bus. Addison Rae is a true pop genius and this is a great showcase of that fact because not many people could write such an iconic song about being a hot girl in a car that a strange guy on a bus could listen to over and over and over again for hours and never stop feeling heroic or romantic or special.
The one constant throughout the years on the bus and in life is Lana del Rey who I listen to over and over and over and over. I listen to Lana del Rey ad infinitum. When I think back to my happiest memories on the bus I’m listening to her music almost without exception. In 2019 when she dropped Fuck it i love you / The greatest that was such a terrific time to ride the bus. I feel very similarly of the world built up by the three singles she dropped ahead of Blue Banisters in the late spring of 2021. I get shivers down my spine as I remember. Ocean Blvd was great to listen to on the bus, both the single and the album, although some of the tracks on there, such as my beloved Taco Truck x VB, somehow lend themselves to walking more than I would’ve expected. Perhaps this is because I am too polite to vape on the bus.
I know that Lana del Rey records are best listened to in a car with the roof down or on a fast little boat in the sun. Regardless I will listen to her anywhere and I will love the experience and I won’t stop talking about it.
Today I’m listening to Earthquakes, from the Ultraviolence sessions.
Where on the map are you and where are you going?
It would be funny to take a bus to Canada.
If I could take a bus to anywhere in the world I would take it to the Gold Coast in Australia.
My favourite bus line in New York is probably the M1 or M2 which can get you from the Ukrainian Village to Café Sabarsky or Bemelmans at a decent enough pace up Madison Avenue. But if you don’t get too drunk or sleepy, I would recommend walking on the way back down. I forget why, but I know it’s the right thing to do.
Do you have any food or drink on you? If yes, what? ( Edibles aren’t food )
I am not too polite to drink alcoholic beverages on the bus and I don’t see this as problematic at all. I’m not sure what it is about imbibing in transit, in any form of transit, that gives the act an extra glow, but it really is one of life’s great pleasures.
On the bus specifically, and factoring in no other variables, regardless of whether I’m taking city transit or coach, I would rate this occupation somewhat below drinking on a proper train, equal or slightly above drinking on an aeroplane, and leagues above drinking on the metro.
With that said, it would be inappropriate to take the consumption of drinks as far as would be acceptable for plane or especially rail voyages, so I personally wouldn’t have more than a couple long pulls of Hennessy or absinthe. Cans are better suited for the bus; pre-mixed cocktails for the shorter trips across town, while three or four beers might do the trick for a typical half-day between cities. Because I’ve read Moscow—Petushki by Venedikt Yerofeyev, and because I’m awfully stupidly influenceable by these sorts of fiction, I’ll always think of wine, especially when it’s red and especially when it’s mixed with vodka, to be more of a train drink than a bus drink, but there are some exceptions.
If I was going to be on a bus with a beautiful girl for around an hour or longer, a bottle of wine might be the greatest decision of my life. I would go for a very lightly sparkling marigold-coloured pét-nat unless she really preferred something else. This is not to imply such wine as my favourite in every situation. It’s just rather effortless to drink on the go.
Well, if it was late enough in the day, a still-effervescent but darker-red-hued bottle wouldn’t be inappropriate.
After drinking this wine I would maybe drink some vodka with the beautiful girl but I probably wouldn’t mix it together in her presence: this blend of drinks is called a Kiss, and if she tried a sip, she would surely say something like “Sir, your Kiss tastes absolutely vile! I shall never find delight in one of your Kisses; I pray you never gift me even one Kiss ever again!” I would know that she was talking about the drink, of course; not an actual kiss; but hearing those words strike at me from such beautiful lips would violently injure my heart all the same. No, I would drink my share of the wine straight down, and only then the vodka; we would keep class together.
I wish there was a bus that served fresh blended piña coladas. If anyone ever finds one, please let me know.
What are you wearing? ( Free misinterpretation - beauty is in the eye of the beholder as malice is )
The only thing that I’m always wearing is a prayer bracelet that one of my best friends gave me last summer. I haven’t taken it off once.
I would like to be wearing cowboy boots, but I don’t currently own cowboy boots. Some other people said that they would send me a pair months ago, and somehow they never did. I guess they don’t care about me all that much. It’s okay, though; you can’t go through life expecting everyone to be fair and good to you. I certainly don’t.
How would you approach the stranger you are making eye contact with?
I don’t really enjoy approaching or being approached.
If a cute baby or small child smiles and waves of course I will smile and wave back, but that’s about it.
I would also like to note that I would never be drinking wine and vodka straight down if there were small children present. I think it’s best we present good examples of ourselves for the next generation and not behave too wildly before them. I suppose if you have your own child you can portray yourself to your liking but in general many children are quite sensitive and an awful lot of adults have forgotten the societal responsibility to not only act compassionately but also with dignity towards and before the children of the world.
And now I’ll take the opportunity forward say that I find it absolutely abhorrent when someone displays visible or audible anger towards, say, an infant in tears on a city bus. It’s far too common of an impulse in this modern world; commonly enacted, commonly accepted. Less and less people offer their seats to those who need them, for that matter; and I could continue listing these sins; its a shame how often people can be so selfish and cruel. I would cast these individuals far out of society if only I could; if only I could, perhaps I’d cast them from life itself.
What’s in your pockets?
I’ll never tell!
If the bus crashes, what would be written on your headstone? ( Or commemorative instagram post )
I have thought for a long time that it would be hilarious fun to have two headstones in two different places, one of which would say LOYAL while the other would say IT WAS MURDER.
But it would be even more of a delight if I survived and turned up later. It could happen. A lot of people thought at one point that they’d never see Odysseus again, and he still managed to turn up when he needed to, and then a lot of people were really surprised and some of them ended up being pretty sorry.
Many people have compared me to Odysseus, actually. I wouldn’t have come up with this myself. It would be presumptuous, perhaps, to liken myself to one of the cleverest, survivingest, and especially charming guys in European history; nevertheless, I hear it again and again. And I’ll tell you, some of these people are real scholars, the best in their field. They just might be onto something.