My eyes strained, the scene playing out around me was grey and distorted as I walked the street looking for my bus. 

For the first time since I arrived in New York I didn’t feel the ZAPPING ENERGY pulsing through my veins, that injection of 30% more life administered to everyone when they cross the border from the United States and into NEW YORK FUCKING CITY. 

The feeling was worse than that stretch in the mental asylum hostel. Then the drug was in me, it was just taking some time to get working. Now, the drug was wearing off and the comedown was a real bitch. 

A storm was passing over. 

ENERGYyyy levels falling. 

BUZZzzz non-existent. 

I was going to Boston. I didn’t dislike Boston, during my first trip to the city several years earlier I found it a fine place with a British/Irish feel to it. I was leaving New York though and leaving New York was a fucking downer. 

I had made the decision I had to go, it was already done, the decision was made. I was leaving New York and moving on with my journey. 

I had a loose plan in my head which featured a lineup of Boston, maybe Philadelphia after that, then Chicago and a train across America to California and I needed to leave New York if I was going to make all of that happen. 

I lined up with my fellow deserters and thought of all the chaos and possibility I’d miss out on by getting on the bus. I had a feeling whatever was waiting for me in Boston would pale in comparison. 

I stepped out of the line for the bus, opened my pack of Marlboro Lights and debated walking off downtown and throwing my plans away to make a new life as an illegal immigrant, a visa overstayer in the sanctuary of Gotham. 

I didn’t do that though, I got on the bus. I showed my ticket, climbed the steps, walked the aisle, chose a seat, threw my bag to the floor and sat down. I got on the bus. 

Although the next few stops of the journey were producing no great excitement inside me, I knew further down the road Chicago was waiting, California was waiting and the rest of the world was waiting too. 

If I stayed much longer I would still be there today and the rest of this book would never have happened. 

As the bus pulled away, the New York high drained with it, escaping me to stay behind where it belonged. It was gone and I was gone. 

After a long, dreary ride I tried to cheer myself up as I got off the bus and made my way into the centre of Boston, but as usual the world outside was complimenting my low mood. 

Boston felt jaded and dark in the freeze of late February compared to the brighter, more aesthetically pleasing October version in my memory. 

The feedback loop of negative thoughts interacted with the gloomy looking streets and a host of strange encounters. 

My first strange encounter and welcome back to Boston came from a drunken hobo. 

“Dooo youuu HAVE a cigrett?” he gargled, falling towards me. 

Sometimes I gave them, sometimes I didn’t, if I was running low I’d deal with the dejected look until the sad fuck walked away. 

“It’s my last one.” I said, staring at the sad fuck. 

I could sense a little more than dejection in the look on his face and the gargling sound coming from his mouth as he made a zig zagged exit. 

I could see more hobos coming at me, so I kept my cigarette break to one and took the subway to near the Celtics and Bruins arena. 

My hostel was a short walk from the arena, in what looked like a rough part of town. Home to group after group of street livers, the kind of homeless who seemed to enjoy the life of being tucked into boarded up doorways and side streets. 

The homeless ghouls made a trip to 7-Eleven at night a mission, “Princess!” one would shout, a chorus of, “Ga ge, ge, give us a cigret!” would follow. 

“Princess!” at least they had some imagination, not a typical insult but a given nickname by the forgotten souls of Boston. 

There were a lot of those souls around. 

I was standing in the street in front of the hostel an hour after checking in. Smoking a cigarette and thinking about how to spend the rest of the day. 

I knew she was going to approach me as soon as I spotted her far off down the long street. 

‘Great!’ I thought, ‘Another annoying hobo experience incoming.’ 

As she got closer I was surprised by her appearance. She was obviously a street dweller, but a gorgeous one. 

She had a few obvious rips and tears in her black clothing, all a result of her life circumstance, not a fashion statement. 

Her dirty blonde hair reached her waist and gently danced in the cold breeze as she walked towards me. 

I smiled as she closed in to make the ask. 

“Hi there, can I have a cigarette?” 

She had pretty, light blue eyes and naturally pink lips. 

“Yeah, sure.” I took out my pack and lighter, lifted the box’s lid and slipped one out. 

I handed her the cigarette and my lighter and she lit up. 

She took a deep inhale, held it in her lungs for a loooooooooooooooooooooong time, then released the excess smoke into the sky. 

I stood there thinking about what to do.

‘What’s the move here?’ I asked myself. 

How do you flirt with a beautiful hobo? 

I came up with a few possibilities but something inside held me back from making a move. 

Sometimes the best move is no move. 

So instead we just engaged in small talk. 

“Okayyy,” she stretched both arms above her head, revealing more of her slim yet curvy figure, “thanks.” 

Beautiful Hobo Lady disappeared back into Boston.

Fuck. She was hot. Fuck. She was cool. 

The hostel had some very dumb and very strict rules. The most infuriating of a long silly list was the no guests in the common area past a certain time rule. These rules were enforced too. It was as if the walls of the hostel were covered floor to ceiling in cameras. Everytime I happily defied the law of the shitty hostel, out jumped a lowly hostel police officer to cry about it. 

I would sit there unwilling to move. They would cry. The air full of mutual hate. 

With no WIFI in the rooms I had no choice but to make some friends and spend most of my time outside. Well I did have a choice, I could have just left but I was kind of enjoying the nightly fights with the hostel staff. 

My options for escaping the hostel were limited. 

They weren’t bad people, they were nice and unassuming. Long conversations of small talk kinda people. It was a mammoth task to breach that and transform it into something more interesting. Shitty hostels turn people into shells of themselves. This was a shitty hostel. There were a lot of shells. 

We were an awkward group of friends, the few times we went out together were filled with stunted conversation and an agreed sense that the quicker we were all alone again the better. Each social outing was a blur even while it was happening. I knew I wouldn’t retain much memory of them.

My prophecy of a dull time in Boston was proving true. The only lively night came towards the end of a dreary week. 

A new group formed of two English girls, an English guy and an American guy. We forced ourselves out of the hostel towards the action of downtown Boston. 

The dynamic proved similar to the previous grouping. 

The first bar of the night was a quiet drinking hole off a cobbled side street. 

Me and the American went to the bar to order while the English trio grabbed a table by the window. After getting his beer the American gripped it close to his chest and gave a look over at the table in the corner, “Do you think we should go over there?’’ he asked me, sounding serious. 

I had no idea what the fuck he meant. 

“Would it be weird, if we just walked over and joined them?” he went on, sipping his beer. 

“Why not?” I said, still confused by the sudden shift into paranoia. 

“Yeah, I guess you’re right, just play it casual.” he said and took a deep gulp of his pint. 

Social Anxiety, I’ll call him. Social Anxiety was an interesting character. 

Moving on to a nightclub near Fenway Park, it didn’t feel like the Boston I had been drowning in for most of the week. This Boston was actually energetic and full of hot women. 

Nightclubs and Boston coexisting was a nice surprise. Somehow they went well together. I could have never imagined the combination until I was inside one. 

“This guy’s an expert pickup coach.” Social Anxiety shouted above the music to an Indian guy he had just met. 

Was I? Probably not, but Social Anxiety had for some reason clocked me as one. 

The Indian guy’s face was now deeply serious. Brain surgeon with a brain on the table serious.

“How do I talk to the bartender?” he said. 

‘Oh for fucksake!’ I thought. 

I played along, it was an ego boost, to be known as the pickup guy. I began a pretty decent speech about getting women in bed as I slowly sipped my cocktail. 

I was a minute and a half into my bullshit seminar when two girls approached me and struck up a flirty conversation. They saved me from a long night of teaching. I was, however, starting to believe my own bullshit. 

Despite that one exciting outing, the best memory I have of this time in Boston was buying some new socks and underwear in a fancy department store. It was a solid decision. I always found myself without clean ones. You really take for granted those unwanted Birthday and Christmas presents, but when you’re living on the road, you hunger to wake up to a day without having to worry about stuff like clean socks and underwear. 

The day Social Anxiety was leaving he had a great farewell pitch. A free tour of a brewery with free beer tasting at the end of it. I was still perplexed by him, he made no sense as a person, sometimes seeming confident and almost arrogant and other times a serious over-thinker of social norms. 

I decided to like him if the free brewery tour wasn’t a hoax. 

It wasn’t. 

I downed a glass of beer and felt nice and warm. I didn’t even really like beer but I decided free beer was good beer and continued to taste all the different varieties on offer. 

Later in the afternoon me and Social Anxiety who I now liked went for a meal in a pub and awkwardly conversed over pub meal food. 

A day later I’d had enough of Beantown and escaped by bus through thick snow to Philadelphia.