2005-01-19 - 5:00 p.m.
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"Unnecessary Conversation With Operator is Prohibited by Law"
The palm trees keep coming. There are no palm trees where I came from. No 50-foot behemoths that leap from the ground with afros like Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons. Just plain old oak trees. Maples. Even Pine.
I feel like an outsider mostly because I still am. Everything is still new to me despite how old it's getting. The 12 rides on 12th - the street of course. The aveneue has it's own line I think. The man at the front, he mumbles into the microphone dangling into his face, the same microphone every goddamn day of his life. Every single day of his life - circles. Circuits. A vagabond in a mesh grid of shit. You can catch just about anything in a net that big.
I look up at the sign and say nothing, obeying the law.
I'm going past names that don't do anything for me like the ones at home do. Spencer. Merrick. Sunrise. Central even has a different meaning here than at home. Or is it Center? It's ok - I've got one of each in a different time zone, in a different time.
Belmont. There's one in just about every city you've been to. I know because I always look for it. Belmont here is a small side street, full of expanses of dilapitated apartment complexes oozing with old age and battered by the sun. They melt so slowly you'd never know they were dying until it was too late or too much.
I get off at Indian School. The sun greets me. Here, the sun is a very pushy sun, ready to thrust the handshake of sunrays into your eyes and shake intensely. The sun gets eaten up by exhaust and the moan of a man driving to the next stop for the 12th time today. On the 12. On 12.
It's not 12 but rather 4. I walk across the street, stepping around the man lying out in the shade of a small tree. When I returned later, I'd find that this man was dead. Why he died, what he died of, where he came from to die and whatnot will always ring in the back of my head, ignored under the buzz of every single day after it drowning out their cries. Homeless people will die.
People with homes will die too.
After meeting a prospective boss, I realize my ticket for the bus is dead like the man in the shade and that I need another buckan'aquarter or I'll be walking 20 or so miles home. In this heat, I wouldn't last a hobo's chance in the shade.
I walk across the street and head into a store to get money, finding out that a ride home fell through and that I'd still have to find a way home. It doesn't matter. I am determined to get home at this point. To my new home. To the home away from... well is it really away from home if it is home? It's not really important what you call it. All I know is that she will be there when I get there and she'll be even more tired than I am.
I pull out $20 from an already close to empty bank account and buy a 99 cent Arizona ice tea. In Arizona. I pay no attention to this coincidence, however small it may be, and just hand the man my bill. Two Spanish brothers come walking up to the counter behind me and from what I understand of Spanish, the younger one (shorter than my knee) has to be quiet or they will get in trouble with the man at the counter. The older one (a little higher than my waist) holds the younger one by the shoulders as if he is buying him from the store. A sagged backpack sits between them. I may not be any good at math, but I know what this adds up to. I'll never know if they got away with any of the candy or whatever they took. They probably do. Or not. Who knows.
I crack the can open with a healthy supply of singles and change in my pocket and tilt my head and the can back, flushing the thirst from my body with terrible iced tea. I never really liked Arizona that much.
The iced tea. Of course.
The 12 goes right past me across the street. My other savior, the 41, stops with enough time for me to watch on the other shore as the torrential metalic waters keep me from riding it to safety at home. It speeds off as the light goes green the other way and my face goes as red as the lights that stop the traffic.
I'm truly fucked.
I flip through my guide. Another 20 minutes or so, this same occurance will happen again. But instead of waiting like a good puppet, I begin to walk west and hope for good things. I find 7th. 7th has a limited run. Less stops equal faster time back home. That works. And luckily for me, it runs here in 4 minutes. I sit down and read Michael Moore. What an idiot. Me, of course. For reading such a narrow minded fool. He truly believes in things that...well, I don't really care enough to talk about them here. I sit appalled at what he has to say when some kid in a Misfits t-shirt that is younger than the band itself asks me about the 7. On 7th. I finally get to put the idiotically small knowledge I have to use.
I tell him there it is, because it's right behind him. I put the book away and the kid hurries to get on, afraid that the bus driver would leave him and the other 10 people trying to get on behind. I walk over and drop the money in the slots, one of my favorite things to watch. The bill slides down a series of bars and rollers and the change just falls into a plastic bin as the computer counts it all up. Everything in order, the man doesn't even look at me as he rips off a yellow stub and hands it to me. I want to ask him about the weather. I want to ask him about how long he's been here for, why he's here, what brought him here, why does he drive in endless circles day in day out, why would this be his solution to doing something with himself - a million other questions I couldn't even answer myself if asked. But I look at the sign and just take my seat.
I scribble it down on the back of the slip so I won't forget next time.
We all ride and speed through the stops, only hitting select places. First an old Mexican woman complains because the driver 'missed' her stop, not realizing that on the Limited, it's only every mile or so that they stop. She wasn't on a mile. The driver lets her out at the next light. The entire bus discusses this, saying "oh if only she could read." then "well maybe not English." and some chuckle and some, like the woman behind him that the man didn't see, that he never bothered to recognize was sitting right behind him, a foot behind him, scowled at him with disdain and bitter disgust. His ignorance would later be put into check as well when he complained loudly about the "stupid bus driver could just stop at his stop - didn't this thing stop at Alice?"
Above his head, there's an ad in Spanish to learn English. If only he could speak Spanish...
The rest of the bus either gets off happily or bitches about having to walk back 2 blocks or so to the place they really wanted to get off. Funny enough, the regular 7 is right behind us, only 3 or so block back. It breezes past me as I cross Dunlap, my one true love in this city so far. I've ridden it up and down, from the front to back, fron Cottage Cove all the way until Dunlap dies and is reborn like a Phoenix into Olive.
In Phoenix.
My pockets shake and she lets me know she left work early, that instead of riding home on the bus, she'll come get me. I know how much of a task this is. She slept 3 hours less than I did, worked 8 more hours than I did and by now the traffic is rabid and angry, as well as disoriented.
I stand on the corner with a Jack in the Box behind me, reading more Moore and waiting. The words go by and I just get credit for looking at them at this point. My mind is really thinking of her.
She pulls in and the day is slowly melting on the rooftops and skyline.
I talk to the operator of this vehicle all the way home.
BMC
What did you just say? - What's he gonna say next?
