busride: snapshot

I can't believe he's actually reading that, I said to myself.

A tall man with a scraggly, dark gray beard, his features made me believe he's one of the many Native Americans who live in Seattle. Besides the shape of his face, he had a couple of silver and beaded bracelets, earrings, and necklaces. I thought I noticed an embroidered pattern on the back of his leather vest, but I can't be sure. He actually reminded me of a regular at a bar I used to frequent, who would have 10 or 12 pints of Bud and then say he was going home to get drunk.

I watched him get on the bus and sit down right in front of me. I watched as, with only a little difficulty, he steadied his crutches against the pole in front of him, while holding a container of granola in his left hand. Once he steadied the crutches, he slipped his backpack off and onto the seat next to him.

Some may consider it impolite to stare at a man on crutches as he hobbles onto the bus. I don't, only because I hide my eyes comfortably behind my mirrored shades, confident no one knows where I'm actually looking.

Once situated, he reached into his backpack and pulled out a book: The Flame and the Flower, by Kathleen Woodiwiss. The cover is pink, and has a picture of a very muscular man with his shirt half off, about to kiss a dark haired woman, wind blowing their hair and billowing their clothing. Not only is this a romance novel, The Flame and the Flower is typically credited for being thee romance novel, setting the trend for paperback romances. Harlequin may hold the current distinction, but back in the 70's it was Avon who pushed the trashy paperback tales of lust and love into drugstores everywhere.

I drifted off a bit, hypnotized by the rhythms of the bus and crunching granola.

What's this dude reading a trashy romance novel for, I wondered, all-too-cognizant of the atrocious grammar of my thought-life. I did admire him, though; not for his taste in literature, but for the fact that he flaunted his atypical reading choice for the entire world to see. "Yea, that's right," this simple act says, "I'm a guy, I ain't gay (not that there's anything wrong with that), and I read romance novels because I like them."

Something hits my ankle and brings me back to reality. "Here you go," I say, as I hand the guy the half-empty water bottle that fell out of his backpack. He starts digging around in his bag for something, and not two seconds after I hand him the bottle, he lifts the pack up just enough so the container of granola falls out, opens, and spills all over the seats and the floor.

I'm torn: I'm typically more than happy to help someone out if they drop something, but this… I don't know. What do you do, offer to scoop handfuls of granola off the worn vinyl seats? What do you do with it after you pick it up? He already closed the container to keep the rest of the granola safe. The guy is on crutches, too, which makes me even more sympathetic. I mean – if he had dropped a bottle of medicine, or a folder of papers, or a bag of apples, I'd have no problem helping him gather it up. Somehow, granola is in a different category. There are about five of us in the front of the bus who watched this happen, and we're all doing our best to pretend we didn't see anything.

He turns and looks at the girl sitting next to me, and asks, "How long 'till we get to downtown?"

"We actually just came from downtown," she says.

"Oh. Where does this one go?"

"This goes through the U-District and up towards Lake City. If you wanna get downtown you should get off at the next stop, cross the street and catch one of those buses." She says this in such a kind, helpful way. I'm glad he didn't ask me, because I was still stuck on the romance novel and how this guy didn't know we weren't headed downtown, that I probably would have sounded condescending.

As he puts on his backpack, he twists in the side-facing seat so that he's almost facing front. His left arm misses the strap a couple times, but he gets it on the fourth try. As he's grabbing his crutches with his right arm, his left hand is pushing the granola in between the cracks of the seat, like a child trying to hide the cookie crumbs he spilled all over the sofa.

I watch him hop off the bus and shuffle towards the crosswalk. I turned towards the girl sitting next to me and ask, "Didn't he get on when we were downtown?"

"Yea," she says, "I was kinda confused by that too."