Gate 74

Disclaimer: This is in no way a finished product. Just a direction I want to go in. And, yes, I know I shouldn't end sentences in prepositions.

There is a specific sort of full-body shudder I get when I see children lick the floor of the Port Authority, Gate 74 to be exact. Gate 74, service to Wilmington and Baltimore, is on the bottom floor of the terminal, the very bowels of the Earth. This is where I go to get out of New York, a place I banked on loving but now escape from whenever possible.
My parents, also assuming that I would be enamored of city life, were not prepared for my weekly trips home, so I am forced to take the Greyhound bus instead of the more civilized and expensive train. I learned quickly that, in the world of the bus terminal, there are all sorts of rules that don't apply to other forms of transportation. Trains leave at the scheduled departure time, never before, and, if you arrive ten minutes early, you can leisurely walk from platform to train, find a compartment for your luggage, perhaps get some sort of drink in the cafe car, and settle in to your ample seat, all with minutes to spare. This is not so in bus travel.
When taking a bus, it is necessary to be at the gate 30 minutes early. I cannot emphasize this enough. The bus may leave ten minutes before or an hour after it is scheduled. These so-called departure times are nothing more than flimsy estimates, and should not be taken seriously. Add in the time it takes to get to Midtown West from my NYU dorm in the East Village with this sort of time allowance, and this becomes a pretty major operation.
This is my first year at NYU, Tisch School of the Arts specifically, but I hate it when people just say they go to Tisch and then accompany it with this smug smile, as if you should suddenly act grateful to be in their general vicinity. I'm here to study acting. I should feel really lucky to be at such a good school for drama, but it seems like the only thing people go to Tisch for is musical theater. I am surrounded daily by people who have deep, undying love for musical theater, and who are just bursting to talk, sing, and gesticulate wildly about it to anyone who will listen. I have little to no interest in or patience for this.
Sure, there are some basic, resume-caliber details about me that might make it seem like I belong here. Studying drama is an obvious one. I wear a lot of black, like the Smiths and Vampire Weekend in equal measure, and my name is Ingrid, which, I guess is artsy and quirky enough to make sense. I just don't think I can envision myself at a school where people sing showtunes to each other before taking shots of cheap vodka at apartment parties.
So, instead, I spend my Friday nights at Gate 74 waiting for the bus back to my parents' house in Wilmington, Delaware, a place people never seem to tire of mocking. I see it as the last hurdle I have to clear before my weekends of escape, although it would be a lot easier to take if I didn't have to watch that man in the corner cough blood into a cup in between bites of fried chicken.