why is jim on this trip

“I lived in the city for a couple of years. I took the bus back and forth to work. I thought I would be elbow to elbow with the city’s young elite. The city’s young elite had better ways to get to work. On the bus I watched young mothers carry their babies bundled in blanket on top of blanket. Their faces were new to me. They weren’t the tense and narrow Anglo faces I knew. They were house painters with their spattered clothes carrying lunches of fruit, rice and meat in re-used containers of butter and yogurt tied up neat in plastic shopping bags.
Winter mornings were especially dreary. It was dark for way too long. By the time the bus crossed the river at the power plant, turbines billowing steam and smoke, barges moving on their way, the sun broke free; you could see it rising down the river, unobstructed by factories or towers.
On a morning like this, crossing the river, there was a man seated across from me transfixed on a small piece of paper in his hands. Every few moments he’d turn it over. He was content looking at this thing. He’d keep it in his hands the whole ride until he got off and had to put it away in his pocket. He was a laborer. His hands were rough and calloused leather. His clothes were thick canvas, there were small holes burnt through as if he were a welder and thick white paint stains; he might have been a painter.
The paper was a magazine insert. On either side of it were beautiful women smiling up at him. Bright, white happy smiles. Girls of summer. Sunny. Blonde. Inviting him to be happy and warm. Eager to please.
That piece of paper was enough for that sad man. I knew then I had to keep moving. My blonde would be real: out here in the woods, the ‘burbs, the city, wherever. Seeing the sun rise over that river, the smoke, the barges and that sad man hanging on to his sad existence by a piece of pretty paper made me realize I better keep on the move. Never settle.”
“That’s why you took off on this trip?”
“Yeah, pretty much. All that about the rats and the cat was bullshit. You should have checked in the kitchen. That ole Sal you were looking for was passed out on the floor, puke all over his cummerbund.”