bus

i rode a different bus today than my usual.
i rode the NS instead of the J. it meant riding with expensive leather purses, and clean hair neatly parted over scrubbed pale scalps and everyone's reserved, polite quietness; it meant riding past imposing official buildings and collecting busy, official people. it made me miss the live and let live, mix and match of the j, all its riders like so many mateless, mismatched socks collecting in some drawer. so many of the J's passengers are missing teeth and so many others fill the bus with their scent--sweet and pungent, they still smell like work, or like beer and piss, and they're all congenial about their lot, laughing and sighing and worrying about getting relatives out of jail or paying for groceries, telling one another,"just tryin' to hold on," or "gotta make the money, it sure doesn't just come to you," and they don't mind all the students mixed in with them (though i suspect some of the students mind being mixed in, who knows). and the j rattles through the meaner parts of town, past day laborers and diabetics who can't afford to go to the doctor too often and bums with kidney problems wearing catheters taped inside their pant legs, past front porches where students doubtless gather to fervently discuss the impending Future and also the sorry Present State of Things; and that great smelly chattering mixture reminds me why i love fare-free buses, the egalitarian spirit of it all.

(not to romanticize or otherize the J riders. i'm sure they aren't PUMPED on being homeless, diabetic, or what have you, but as a writer, it is healthy and necessary to listen to the bus ride confessions/conversations of people who are different from you. it is probably just a good exercise for anyone--thinking about other people's lives.)