Lewiston

The ride back to Boston took longer than going up. I changed buses in Bangor, and then we stopped in Lewiston, Portland, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire before making it to Boston.

Lewiston is the second biggest town in Maine, but it isn’t all that big. Around 35,000 people, and kind of depressed with a kind of skuzzy adult bookstore kind of downtown. A bunch of Somali people were waiting at the bus stop, about six got on the bus. I guessed they were Somali—the women were wearing Muslim-style robes and veils, but in bright prints unlike those worn in the middle east. Later, I did some internet research and found that my guess had been correct. I read that about 2000 Somali immigrants had moved from Atlanta to Lewiston, and that the mayor and some other residents were not happy about it because they were a drain on city services. I found a vaguely white supremacist website that claimed that they had chosen Lewiston for the generous welfare benefits. And maybe they did. But how strange it must be to move from east Africa to Lewiston, Maine, where the sun is weak even in July. It seems like a recipe for depression and alienation to me. I guess it helps that they moved in a group.

The website reminded us that these are people who engage in female circumcision. And I have to admit that my lefty tolerance ends before you get to cutting off the wondrous and beloved clit. The practice is strong evidence of the connection between fundamentalism and the fear and hatred of women.

The women wear these costumes, which are beautiful yet also seem a kind of stigma. The men wear regular western clothes. A teenage boy sat next to me, behind his mother. He was trying for an African-American urban gangsta look, with the big baggy jeans and all, but it didn’t quite work. He was wearing a trucker hat with “Pueto Rico” (sic) spelled out across the front.

In Portland, the driver announced that we had time to go the bathroom or get something to eat, so I decided to get out. I asked the boy to excuse me. He didn’t get up out of his seat to make room for me, so I squeezed past him. Same thing when I was getting back in, except I tripped and fell into his lap.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, but with some annoyance at his apparent rudeness. Could he hear that? Probably not. Later it occurred to me that he had enjoyed having my ass in his lap. In Portsmouth, he asked me in accented English if I needed to get out. No, I told him.