Last night, I took a bus. I used to take them all the time to get back and forth across the city, but now that I both live and work in the same neighborhood and I have my own wheels, I rarely see the inside of a bus or streetcar.
I wasn’t particularly happy about riding the bus. I would have preferred to be in my car, but as vehicles made in 1987 tend to do after 13 years of service, it had broken down. I had it towed to a garage miles away because it’s the only reputable one I know.
[ Of course, I’m probably being too judgemental of the other garages I’ve tried. I’m a faggot and I don’t know much about cars–though I’m always willing to learn–and I feel intimidated by these painfully hetero working-class men covered in grease. It’s like I’m back in high school and although the meatheads aren’t really taunting me or anything, something in their eyes tells me they’re thinking, “Fucking pansy. What can I do to make his life miserable today?” But that kind of defensiveness, it’s just the way I am and since I don’t believe in psychotherapy, I’m probably not gonna change anytime soon. Whatever. ]
Anyway, the car’s not the important part. The bus ride is. I walked out of the garage and over to the bus stop, and there, for the first time in I don’t know how long, I stood around doing nothing. No meetings to attend, no speeding through traffic to get where I’m going, no hammering out grant applications at the last minute to meet deadlines. Just waiting. And waiting. And idly chatting to the other people waiting for the bus. And reading a great book. And getting frustrated when busses would pass on their way back to the station, not picking anyone up. And being relieved to see the right bus finally heading our way. And the smell of the ice-cold air conditioning inside (though the weather was bearable since it was dusk). It would have driven my boyfriend completely insane, but for me….
And on that ride back home, the quality of light in the trees, the color of the sky, the sounds of the bus hulking through early evening traffic–it brought back a flood of memories: back to when I first moved here, and I took the bus all the time, and everything was new and exciting, and I was making friends and living like a kid who’d just graduated from college, and it seemed so long ago and so beautiful I could have cried. It’s like revisiting your old high school or just trying to look at a very familiar place as though you were just seeing it again for the first time: the scents, the colors, everything new and crisp. I don’t get bogged down in the nostalgia; I just like to let that feeling, that buzz, flit around in my stomach for a while and I smile.
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