The Bus

The Old Joke Goes Like This:

Men are like buses: miss one and another will come along in a few minutes.

My Equal Time Amendment Goes:

Women are more like drunk drivers: Every once in a while one comes from out of nowhere and mows you down without warning, only to speed off, uninjured, on the way to her next hit and run on the freeway des l'amour.

Bus passengers fall into two camps: active and passive -- Those who participate in the experience and those who tolerate the ordeal. I’m the latter.

Lunatics who scream at the top of their lungs, bratty teens who apparently haven’t learned to walk without banging into everything not even near their path, stinky bums and all others who feel compelled to intrude on the lives of everyone else on the bus are not interesting characters, are not amusing, are not to be pitied. They’re annoying.

Give me a bus full of people who know how to bathe, are not interested in destroying others’ property, and mind their own business and I’ll cheerfully take part in public transportation. Until then, give me back my car keys and leave me the hell alone.

I’m far from being the only one who feels this way. Just discreetly scan the faces of the passengers. You’ll find them: The ones who appear to be looking at nothing, the ones lost in a novel, the ones not invading everyone else’s personal space. These are the people I want on my bus. They’re happy to keep themselves to themselves -- at least until some idiot causes a stir. Even then, once they determine their life is not in immediate danger, they return to what they were doing quickly and calmly.

These are my people -- We who make the best of the worst; we who are merely putting in a little time in this hell on earth, without complaint or incident; we meek who shall inherit private transportation in the afterlife.

Once I successfully made the transfer at Wilshire, I generally picked a seat as close to the front as possible. On most buses I sat somewhere between the middle and the back, but the morning sun had a pleasing effect on the atmosphere in the front of this line.

I had been riding this bus for a month before I saw Bridget. She and I worked in the same department at the film company, though in separate offices. Apparently, she had recently been hired as someone’s temp assistant while she earned her teaching certificate at night. Most of my co-workers weren’t having much of an impact on me. I hadn’t noticed that Bridget got off the bus at the same stop, crossed the street in the same direction, entered the same building, and rode the same elevator to the same floor as me. Hmm.

Bridget also rode near the front of the bus, her face planted in a book. It was by chance we both looked up and spotted each other one morning. We exchanged smiles, but didn’t even say hello till we were crossing San Vicente on foot.

Once I spotted Bridget, I started watching for her. She had an interesting look to her. She was Puerto Rican but looked Irish -- go figure. For a week or so, we would exchange that pained smile of acceptance of our situation and she would abruptly return to her reading. I wondered about her and her books. Were these books she was genuinely interested in, or were they her shield from those special intrusions available only on this rolling rattrap? Then what about all the other people minding their own business? Were they really well behaved and polite, or did this river run deeper? Maybe their quiet demeanor was actually a wall they put up to isolate themselves from the rest of the world. What for? What were they hiding from? Me? I was harmless. This writing aside, I’m stable. I’m a people person. Too much time to myself and that’s when I get scary.

My opinions about the annoying people aside, I got concerned about the rest of us. Couldn’t there be a happy middle aisle, where normal people interact politely and cheerfully? Does it take someone who has already lost all sense of boundaries to cross over that thin line between isolation and inclusion? Does entering another person’s space have to be an unwelcome trespass?

I had to talk to someone about this, someone who shared my experience, someone who might understand my confusion.

Bridget.

She was the only person I remotely knew who also rode the bus, so I felt fairly secure in boldly breaking the bus riders’ silence between us.

“Hello.”

I guess I took her by surprise. She could hardly respond. Bus conditioning, I reckoned. Now I knew why the quiet ones don’t say anything to the rude ones. They didn’t know how to respond to a stranger. Bridget was barely able to eke out a “how do you do” at the sight of me, as if she couldn’t recognize me till such time as we had safely exited the bus. Once she got her wits about her and realized I wasn’t a threat, we got on just fine. I explained to her my concerns about the effect riding the bus has on society through the walls that we all put up around us, like so many hitchhikers on the information super highway. The world-wide-web, the home shopping network, and all the other conveniences of the new age were about to turn Americans into a race of sociopaths, unable to function in a situation that might require us to actually rub elbows.

Cars are bad enough. The false sense of security drivers in L.A. develop leads to some pretty aberrant behavior. Empowered by the walls of their car, people engage in a rolling fuck and run that would surely result their ass getting kicked if they weren’t able to speed away. But on the bus, people create their own car space, not to foster aggressive behavior -- that’s the domain of the loonies -- rather, for their own insular protection from the loonies. Isolation from everyone is the unfortunate consequence.

Bridget was entertained by my theories. Soon we started our own bus game. When I boarded, she would always have a seat available next to her that I could occupy. I have no idea how she did that. We would pick a face at random and create an entire life for the person, detailing their childhood, profession, sexual preference, relationships, and mental stability. This was much better than “Guess If She’s Wearing a Skirt” because it provided active interaction with at least one other player. Bridget provided me with some of the few precious moments of fun I had.

You think you know where this is going, don’t you? Guess again, smarty-pants. Wiener was still safely tucked away in the freezer. I was bound and determined to figure out my problems and had no time for that kind of complication. Bridget made the trip to work bearable, that’s all. Too bad she wasn’t on every bus.

•••

Getting to work was a no-brainer. Getting anywhere else was a different story altogether. L.A. has the worst public transportation system in America. It’s easier to get around in Mexico than Hollywood. I say fuck Chevron, fuck General Motors, fuck Firestone, fuck Mullholland, fuck Doheny, and furthermore, fuck all their corrupt bastard cronies who created this ass-backward city of the future that requires you to own a car if you are to get anywhere.

My grocery store, laundry, pharmacy, and a small shopping center lie within walking distance. Everything else was a pain in the ass to get to. Through trial and much error, I discovered there were parts of Los Angeles that are simply not serviced by the RTD and they knew it. If you call the RTD hotline for directions to certain addresses, the last of those directions will be to walk, followed by “Sorry, bitch. You’re on your own.”

And forget going out at night. Even if you get to a club unscathed, by the time you get out, the buses are only running every two hours, if at all. If that wasn’t bad enough, there were countless times that I was fortunate enough to be at a stop when a bus was approaching, only to have the bastard asleep at the wheel pass me by completely. So there I stood, drunk, with my dick in my hand and no ride home for another two hours.

There are no cabs in L.A., not like New York, San Francisco, or other real cities. The few cabs that do patrol know they’ve got you by the balls, so a $3.00 ride in Manhattan turns into $13.00 in Hollywood.

I walked and walked. I walked off so much alcohol I’d have been pissed at the waste, had I been paying for all of my own drinks.

Beyond going out to escape your irrational fear of being alone in one place too long, ever try to use the bus to shop for the things you need to replace the ones you left back in your hometown because your girlfriend had everything you’d ever need and now that you’ve split up you need all those things again? Oh my god, trying to carry a comforter home from the Stroud’s outlet on a crowded Number 4 was enough to make me drink.

Not that I needed the excuse. I made a nightly ritual of walking to the bar conveniently located at the Century City shopping center, where I had become a regular. For some reason, no one else had discovered the Really Hot Bar Maid (not yet -- Wiener still on ice) who worked nights, and I had the place to myself. Really Hot Bar Maid enjoyed my company and kept me around longer than I’d usually planned by pouring free drinks. The twist marks are still on my left arm. I really planned to have no more than one or two then get home to do some self-analysis (uh-huh).

Every once in a while some of Really Hot Bar Maid’s Really Hot Friends would show up. Invitations to parties that they and all the other Hot Friends populated were extended, but I never took the Really Hot Friends up on their kindness. I still had issues to figure out when I wasn’t trying desperately to avoid them. Also, I was a guy who rode the bus. Even if I was interested in one of the Really Hot Friends or Really Hot Bar Maid herself, eventually my transportation of choice would become public knowledge and that would be that.

People who ride the bus don’t get laid. Ever. Once I realized that, a lot of their crazy behavior seemed, well, reasonable. I wasn’t interested in sex, but I didn’t want to be the guy who didn’t have sex because he rides the bus. I needed a car, but I still had bills to pay off. I needed a raise, but I was in no immediate danger of getting one.

Thirty was falling down the mountain toward me, and I was going nowhere fast.

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