Rule one of the Salvation Army: You can never baptize a cat...even if he joins your church.

I was suffering the tortures of the truly afflicted as I boarded the bus leaving the pearl of the pacific coast. They never put the bus station in the wonderful, kitschy part of town, but where people like me hang out. Outside small beer and liquor stores, blood banks, adult bookstores and gotta love 'em, the Salvation Army.

I always wanted to put that on a resume-under military experience- Special Forces, Salvation Army. I could kill you with a spork and a rolled up sermonette, while bashing your brains in with a tambourine, and do it all...silently.

"Just a closer...WHACK...walk with...WHACK...thee....Sing, DAMN IT, sing."

We were the usual bus passengers...garbage bag luggage, pockets filled with crap food, and all smelling ethnically divergent. God, I felt like hell. As the bus pulled out I leaned my head against the window in the flow of the cold, air conditioning.

It would be some time before I felt like living. As we cleared the south part of the city, I knew I was done with this part of my life, with no knowledge of any kind of future.

So I slept, fitfully, as best one can on a Greyhound, waking as we pulled through some little California desert town, stopping briefly, then rolling out again, the miles stacking up.

We had stopped outside Modesto when she got on. My age, carrying a rolled up copy of Penthouse Letters. She sat across from me and smiled.

Whoever was in charge of irony was laughing their ass off. "Dear Penthouse, we had stopped outside of Modesto, when she got on the bus..."

You had to be freaking kidding me. I watched her read, look up, catch me, and smile.

Oh my.