August 17th, 10:04 a.m.
Tampa Bus Station

Holy crap, Aleah. I can’t believe what just happened!

On the trip just now between Orlando and Tampa, I was a few rows behind this guy with a mullet. I noticed his shirt when he got on. It was a tank top with a Budweiser can emblem, except instead of Budweiser, the can had “Go Gators” written on it. And I could smell him from my seat. Cigarettes and armpits and dirty shorts, and he was all jumpy, so I couldn’t stop staring at him.

He kept asking people around him their names. “What’s yer name?” and they’d all have to answer, because if they didn’t, he’d keep asking them (in a meaner and meaner voice) until they did. “What’s yer name, I said.” (Scary.)

Then he tried to light up a cigarette! On the bus! But the bus driver, who was obviously staring at him in this mirror because the dude was so weird and scary, shouted, “No smoking in here, son.” And the mullet guy shouted the f-bomb back at the driver and then, as we pulled into Tampa, a couple of cop cars started driving next to us, which made the mullet dude just freaky.

“They following us, man? You see them cars?”

“Don’t know,” the lady next to him said.

“Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear,” mullet man said. “Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear.” He said it like twenty-five times.

When we pulled into the station, the dude jumped into the aisle (said, “Excuse me,” to people he bumped) and went barreling to the door and out, and then two cops tackled him on the sidewalk!

The woman in front of me said, “Thank God.”

By the time I got out there to go into the station to use the bathroom, the dude was in handcuffs and he was crying. I mean totally sobbing. And there was a German shepherd dog sticking its nose in his bag and barking.

He was trafficking meth! I heard one of the cops say that! What the hell?

Now I can’t stop hearing his sobbing, Aleah. It was terrible. It was like Jerri in her bedroom last summer, when she was totally out of control.

COPS isn’t that funny.

Is the whole wide world filled with all this craziness and broken crap and crying?

Yikes. Jesus.

That guy was way worse off than Renee.

I’m going to swim in the gulf when I get there, even though there are stingrays and other terrifying fish in the water. I like the water. It’s cleaner there than out here.

Beach.

Okay, okay, okay…

Everything is weird, Aleah.