"Well, you win the award for Mr. Conviviality," an elderly woman said to me as she deboarded on the tail end of the 10. It was the conclusion of an overloaded, chatty, energetic journey.
"Aw! You're so kind!"

As I drove away I was flattered by something besides her sentiment. She was making the assumption, bus driver or no bus driver, that I in my blue collar knew what the word conviviality meant. That benefit of the doubt felt good.

A day later, I was a northbound 14 at Third and Columbia. As per my usual, I plowed up to the head of the zone, the better to make room for other coaches behind me. Some passengers wait at the head of the zone. Others wait in a less populated part of the bus stop, ambling forward when the time is right. I opened the doors and looked through my mirror down the length of the zone. In the evening dimness I could discern a shape-shifting beast rollicking up the sidewalk. This man is best summed up as a lithe, agile swagger of a shadow, half of him seemingly comprised of swinging black back-length dreads, the other half made of handfuls of slack, billowing black fabric. 

"AAAAYYY!" he wailed into the night. Translated, that means, "driver, please wait a moment; I'm nearly at the doors." 

"Hey, there he is," I said as he swam up the staircase.
"Wha's goin' on,"
"Not a lot. How're you?"
"Just gimme a, gimme a second,"
"Oh yeah, we gotchu."

Sometimes people seem as if they need three hands, to carry everything they're holding. This fellow needed at least ten. From every pocket and fold of fabric it seemed as if scraps of life were escaping. In Underworld (my vote for the great twentieth-century novel), Don Delillo writes of garbage as the tactile evidence of all human activity, proof of a million impulses and longings, passions, kindness, selfishness and generosity- the totality of our experience in the form of clues and remnants. 

Our man on the 14 reaches in every direction. Debris falls from him continuously, like a cloud system dispersing rain, receipts and kleenex, wrappers and more, and he's trying to gather every escaping shred, all the while doing his best to hold up his expansively sagging pants. He's in no condition to find his transfer, and I hand him a new one. He thanks me profusely.

At the end of his ride a doctor's prescription falls to the floor. A passenger and myself simultaneously point it out, and he's loudly grateful, snatching it up. After he ricochets out of the bus he darts back up, holding his transfer, saying:

"Hey! Will this shit suffice?"
I respond with, "Yup yup, good 'til the end of the night!" 

Internally I was thinking, suffice??? Seattle really is the most educated city in the country!* How lucky I am to be in real life, and not trapped inside a stereotype-laden movie. I grinned in the darkness, thinking of the Mark Twain quote wherein he expresses that the difference between truth and fiction is that fiction needs to be plausible.

---

Read more from Fast Company, The Washington Post and Brookings Institution, and CNN.

People often ask me what "the most craziest thing" I've ever experienced on the bus is. Naturally there are far too many such incidents to single out as an answer. Also, frankly speaking, such incidents are not as interesting to me as the moments of positivity and human interaction I recount here. A man pulling down his pants in an attempt to defecate in the articulated section of the bus but having his feces accidentally miss their aim and end up inside his pants is definitely unusual, but is it thought-provoking? Such stories also run the risk of exoticizing their subjects as the incomprehensible "other," which is not at all the thought pathway I'd like to travel on. More like the opposite. I do enjoy reveling in the bizarro atmospheres that live out here every day, but I search for the common ground. 

I recall a man once approaching me on the 3/4. He was tall and thin, dressed in a conglomeration of undershirts and jackets, the sort of garb that becomes colorless when you spend enough time outside. He looked me and said, "Hey, driver. What state are we in?"
"This is Washington State," I said, in a neutral and helpful tone.
"Oh. Thanks," he replied, returning to his seat.

Of course it was tempting to make some sort of play on "state of mind," or laughing, or in some other way acknowledging the complete absurdity of the question. However, there was a very, very small but still possible chance that he actually needed that information, and it's the sort of query which is strangely hard to get an answer for. Beyond that, what could be more awesome- is there another word for it?- then the rare, golden, one-in-a-lifetime opportunity to answer such a question with a straight face! What a luxurious thrill! He appeared to genuinely unclear as to which of the contiguous states he was in. "I love this job," I thought to myself as I drove ahead.

Recently I had an interaction which, in its own special way, is for me one of the all-time unfathomables for me. 

I pull into Third and Virginia northbound. Standing in the crosswalk on Virginia is an arguing couple. Rows of T-shirts and other items are on display, hanging off the top of the chain-link fence and arrayed on the cement below. A trio on both sides of the roadway engage in conversation, using their sixty-foot voices. Afternoon light glances across the scene at an angle. It is a tableaux of reds, blues, and blacks, clothing cuts of every manner, filthy and refined, set against the pale gray of newly finished concrete. I'm reminded of the benevolent chaos in Carracci's 1602 painting The Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, or maybe the background of Perugino's 1482 fresco Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter-  unrelated clumps of characters populating the same space, mingling in and out of each other. 

There, in the RapidRide bus stop, directly in front of my open doors, a seated figure speaks to me.
"Hey!" 
"Hi!"
"Remember me?" she asks.
"Of course! How's it goin'?"
"You don't drive the 3 and 4 no more!"
"Oh yeah, I do somethin' different every day now! I kinda like to get around."
"Oh," she says. Friendly.
"Well, good to see you again. Have a good one!"
"Okay!"

What's so bizarre about that, you might ask. Let me tell you. The woman speaking was- was- does anything other than italicized all caps with exclamation points suffice?- yes, she was the one, and the only, LIGHT SKINNED BLACK WOMAN!

Where were the disparaging racial epithets and songs about abortion? Why no mention of miscarriages and masturbation? Were my ears deceiving me? Don't let me down here, my friend! 

I closed the doors and drove away in awe. I had seen the Niagara Falls. I had heard evidence of extraterrestrial life, and made it to the jungle retreats of northern Laos. She was simply the better side of herself, chomping down on fried chicken, catching up with an acquaintance one sunny Friday afternoon. How incomprehensibly abstruse, and how terrific. I didn't understand any of it, but I was happy to be that acquaintance.

---
Newer readers: read a primer on the great LSB-Dub, everyone's favorite passenger, here. Watch a speech of mine recounting her adventures here.

Jim is waiting at Walker Street, the first stop on the route 4. Normally he prefers to walk off his workday by strolling over to the light rail station, but today's been a day of days. He's exhausted. The last ten minutes of his day as a Seattle Housing Authority property manager ramped into overdrive, dealing with a pysochotic ward release. He needs the peace and relaxation of a nice ride into town. Jim has an excellent sense of humor. We chat about his day, which sounds like a tough one. The ward release lost her keys; Jim had new ones prepared; but she shows up just after he's clocked out, there's a problem, and he's not supposed to work overtime but she's already asking questions, she's asking and answering in a nonsensical, patternless back and forth, something about the keys, something's not working, Jim's trying to figure out what the issue is... ah, but he made it out alive. Time to relax. 

It's all over, for now. We talk about the book he's going to read. From my library years I always zero in on what people are reading, and today Jim has a copy of J.D. Robb, the pseudonym Nora Roberts uses when she's not writing those fluffy romance bestsellers.

"What's it called?"
"This one's called Conspiracy in Death," he says, holding back a smile. He'd be the first to admit this isn't first-rate literature.
"That's outstanding," I say.
He laughs. "There's this whole series. It's all about death. Everything's in death. Naked in Death. Rapture in Death. Vengeance in Death. Betrayal in Death, Judgment in Death, Indulgence in Death,"
"Wow. He's really into,"
"Death!"
"Yeah he is. Did you say Indulgence in Death?"
His short salt-and-pepper beard spreads into laughter. "You better believe it! Holiday in Death!"
"There we go!"
"It gets me by."
"Oh, yeah. Some good death books. Passes the time."

Jim sits back to enjoy some good Conspiracy in Death, but peace and relaxation are not forthcoming. Julie's here today, sitting at the front as always, bless her heart, and she's making business calls on her phone ("Now if I remember correctly, we agreed on..."). Jim and I are talking over her (Creation in Death, Divided in Death, and the best yet: New York to Dallas (In Death)), Julie's talking over us, and he and I laugh at the building hum. A family ambles on in at Jackson which small children, and they raise a racket- Jim moving a little further back to accomodate their massive stroller. I see him in the mirror, amused. What can you do but throw up your hands and smile? 

I hear Julie explaining over her phone, clearly responding to a query along the lines of, where on earth are you? Certainly no bus is this loud! There's the screaming kids, there's me blabbing about the upcoming stops ("Let's make a stop at 12th, by the Youth Detention Center..."), there's Julie discussing matters of pressing importance, and there's Jim and I talking about J.D. Robb, Janet Evanovich, and others (Delusion in Death; Calculated in Death)...

I'm lovin' it. This bus is a back porch, an office, and a preschool playground all rolled into one, and we haven't even hit Cherry Hill. 

At 17th we have a mob of hospital workers- larger than usual, since we're late. This particular run, a piece I picked repeatedly for years, is one that gets slightly more mobbed than the trip before or after it, coming in at the perfect time for those folks who get off at five sharp. I'm thankful for the extra attention. If you're jonesing for excitement, it'll be here. Many of my 3/4 stories come from this piece of work, which sadly no longer exists (or I'd be driving it!).

One of the nurses offers me strawberries with cream and streusel- "how wonderful!" I exclaim. Despite my minimal-sugar proclivity, I can't turn it down. Streusel on a strawberry- who knew? My ebullience reaches new heights. Harborview is usually where we fill up, but today we're already brimming as Harborview looms in the nearing distance. I try not to laugh as I announce the stop, because I see yet another mob- a much larger one. The giddiness surfaces in my tone, bubbling through the cracks of the microphone. Chaos makes me smile. I feel in my element. 

The toddlers are doing something I don't understand, just barely managing to keep out of the aisles, the nurses are commiserating, Julie arranging a conference for later this week, Jim silent now, I think he's chuckling, watching me surf the center of the maelstrom. I'm greeting the onslaught, eye contact, eye contact, a sentence for each person incoming, the tear of transfers and maneuvering on the steps becoming a blur. I look at the masses outside, marveling at how this is all going to work. Thankfully a 3 pulls up behind me. Together we inch down the hill, a convivial, bubbling cauldron of tongues and attitudes. 
"Alright, friends," I say as the bus begins to move. "Hang on tight."
"I don't think we need to today, man!" Somebody quips. "It's so many of us in here, there ain't nowhere to fall!"
"This is the safest bus in town!"

Later, Julie ends her business call and says, "wow, Nathan! What a ride!"
She's blind, and I can only imagine the multitudinous details her ears were picking up.
"I know! Hope that wasn't too loud for your call there!"
"No, of course. They were like, where are you?" 
"You shoulda told 'em you were at an amusement park! That's pretty much what this is!"
 
The sun is shining. I find Jim in the mirror and we share a huge grin. This is no time for Conspiracy in Death! He's given up on reading. Peace will find him at home. For now there is the jubilant, howling merriment known as the 3/4, and there is nowhere else to be but the present.

I was riding the 7 one night, going out to Orcas to meet a friend. Rain peeled down from all corners of the globe and splashed against the laminated glass windows. Outside, cars of all stripes and nations roared by in the dimming evening light, streaks of illuminated red and white, railing past in defiance of the wet blue darkness all around. I sat just in front of the back lounge area, on those high-seats above the rear wheel. Looking out the window to see the front half of the bus make turns, that great behemoth with its angled front wheel, negotiating the dotted lines and wet pavement. I shivered with pleasure inside my jacket, smiling to myself at the cozy thrill of being indoors. 

I've sat in the back of a lot 7s, but this one felt different. What was it? I looked around. The bus was maybe three-fourths full, a population whose figure bubbled and eddied with each stop. A laundry list of languages permeated the air, lively, stories gleaming out from under hoods, veils, caps and more, bright eyes of every shade peering out. Here were most of the world's continents, relaxing for a time, just hanging out together in a sixty-by-eight foot rec room. 

Something linked all this disparity though, made it feel united. I couldn't put my finger on it. Was it the rain? The fading thrill of the last light of day? I looked down the aisle at the grooved non-slip flooring, stained and starched from decades of use. I marveled at all the noise- traffic, conversations, the occasional clink of the poles hitting the switches, the patter of raindrops hitting the fabric of the articulated section....

It was the driver's voice. Every now and then she, a heavyset black woman in youthful middle age, would come on the microphone and say something. Sometimes she would go on for a while. I had absolutely no idea what she was trying to tell us, and nor did anyone else; what with the white hiss of rain and car wheels, people talking, the compressor, all on top of an ancient microphone, comprehending her words was impossible. 

We didn't need to, though, because she was getting across something more important than any literal communication about streets or transfer points: her voice was in a good mood. The only discernible element was that, way up there at the front, the woman heading this ship is happy to be here, and she cares about us because she's trying to tell us something. Her warm, kind tone came through clearly, and that energy, all at once gentle and strong, managed to eclipse the value of whatever the quantitative element of her announcements were. Hers was a motherly lullaby, subliminally taking part in every interaction on the bus, seeping its way into the goodness in ourselves. I was glad to be there.

"Thank you. I hope it's a pleasant rest of the evening for you," I say to someone at Third and Union, on a late-night inbound 13.
"I hope so for you too," she replies. It's been a quiet evening.

Then, from the sidewalk, out in the darkness, a face approaches with the familiar accompaniment, shrill and hoarse all at once: "AYYOUGOTHIRDUHJAMES?"
"Hi, Denise! I do!"
There's only one Denise. She plows onboard like the force of nature she is. 
"HIBUSDRIVERHAASITGOIN."

Abnormally thin and ever-moving, she comes from the cartoon tradition of relentless vocal and physical energy. You sense it rushing out untapped, barely controllable, an inertia with everywhere and nowhere to go. 

"Aw, pretty good," I reply in normal tones.
"I GO THIRD JAMES! YOU GO THIRD JAMES?"
"Oh yeah, Third and James!"
"THANK," she cries as she tosses in a few coins. Glistening yellow pustules cover the lined umber skin and charcoal bruises of her aging hand. Denise will always offer a token gesture as she storms the farebox. What more could one ask for?

She sits down and stands up. Then she sits down again, just behind me.
"How you doin' tonight?"
"GOOD," she wails. "MAH FAV'RITE DRIVER!"
"Aw!" It's often hard to tell how present she is. Typically every fiber of her wiry frame is focused on her next fix, but you get a glimmer every now and again. She loves candy, but doesn't have any tonight.

"AHM GOIN' THIRD JAMES," she announces to no one in particular. There's only one other passenger on the bus, a crisp silent man in a blazer from Queen Anne. "I WANNA GO THUHJEMS." The syntax was shaky to begin with, and it's beginning to
collapse. She experiments with subtly different alterations on an established theme. I'm listening to the Goldberg Variations here. "AH GUH THUJUMS," she offers.

At Marion a well-dressed African-American gentleman asks if I stop at Yesler. I do. He folds his umbrella, reaching inside his frock coat for an Orca Card. The glint of his oiled shoes catches in the dim light. The man's on his phone, attempting to have a conversation: "I might be able to get that to you by Tuesday-", but it's to no avail, what with Denise's variations in the background- or, perhaps more accurately, the foreground.

"I GOTTA GO THIR' JAMES," she howls to the high heavens, with wild abandon.
"That's what I'm talkin' about," I say. "We're definitely goin' to Third and James!" 
"THIRJAMES!"

Well-Dressed hangs up, giving up on his conversation. He looks at Denise, and then at me. "Dayumn," he declares after a moment. "Why's it so loud in here?"
"-THUJAMES-"
"Just another day in the life!" I laugh.
"-I WANNAGOTHUJEMS-"
I respond to her with, "I'm goin there too!"

Denise has dropped some change, a few pennies rolling out of her clenched fists like so many raindrops. One rolls toward Well-Dressed. Denise says, "you want tha' quarter?"
"That's a penny." He kicks it back disdainfully.  "There. Take your penny."
"Oh whuh oh iss okay," she replies, rocking back and forth, barely registering him.

I was thinking of commonalities I shared with Denise, or other ways of considering the scene. Moments of urgency I've felt. The Goldberg Variations. Well-Dressed seemed to be thinking about how different he was from her. Even a sigh can be elitist: "I want the next stop," he moaned. 

Now, the next stop is called James, but it's also the stop for Yesler. The zone is on the block bordered by the two streets. Well-Dressed asks, "is the next one Yesler?"
"It is."
"NO! NO! THE NEX' ONE THUHJUMS!" Denise's mouth extends out, flat sideways, almost in tears. She sounds like she's about to start crying.
Placating: "No worries, both of you guys want the next one, it's all good. It's the same one, Yesler and James."
"Oh."
"Here we are. At Third and James! Bye, Denise! I'll see you again!"
"AY!" she yells at someone in the shadows, already racing forward, on to the next thing.

Well-Dressed is gone, and the third man gets off as well, the silent witness from Queen Anne. "You have a good night," he says with untold volumes of emphasis and concern. It was the genuine concern you voice for your friend who's just been drafted. 
"I will," I say, laughing. He was kind, and I was grateful, but I felt fine. No draft was taking place. 

Some people think Denise is the bottom of the barrel. I don't agree. That would be elitist apathy, which we can always use less of. My heart breaks a little when I hear terms like "Lake City Trash" or "Garbage on Aurora" used to describe people. I happen to like the lady. She is exactly who she is determined to be, no more and no less. My first experience with her was in my early teens. She asked me for change (at Third and James!). After I gave her a handful, she walked away without a word, picking out the pennies and throwing them on the ground. I was offended by that for years, even recently. Now I can see her single-minded drive wasn't concerned with offending others; just hurting herself. 

That was around the time I stopped offering money to people, and the beginning of my time gladly offering help- gestures, food, a smile- and expecting nothing in return. She was doing her best to eliminate everything in her life unrelated to acquiring crack cocaine, in a way perversely similar to my great desire to purge from my life everything unrelated to being truly happy. Without knowing why, I must admit her unrelenting energy and focus brings me amusement. No other passenger knows with such confidence which stop they want! I imagine she would like simply to be acknowledged as a fellow member of the human community. I get the feeling that doesn't happen very often. 

"You're a foonie bus-drivin' horse master, y' know thaht?"
"Oh yeah?"

I'm strolling back to my bus one morning at Aurora Village Transit Center, after using the restroom. My job, among other things, is to take seriously people who call me the foonie bus-driving horsemaster. This gentleman, a passenger on my most recent trip, has just approached me. He's stockily built, but with the romantically scraggy locks of hair you expect to see on the front of pulpy romance novels. His terrific Scottish accent carries a tone ambiguous, a current of anger whose level I can't quite place.

"Yeah, calling' out THS. You might not wanna dew thaht." THS is the methadone clinic. The letters stand for Therapeutic Health Services ("we know what that means," some users and I joked when I once explained the acronym to a curious onlooker). 

"But that's where everyone's goin'!" I reply.
"But they're in treeetment, maybe they don't want everyone to know they're in treeetment," he growled darkly.
"Oh, but they may not be goin' there. Maybe they're goin' to the taco stand across the street...or hey, the smoke shop!"
He resigned himself to a chuckle. "You're a foonie horsemaster!" 
"Have a good one!"
He gave me the peace gesture, two fingers.

Later, he tells me again, under identical circumstances, a tinge of burly threat coloring his words: "I'm teeellin' you, you got to stop sayin' THS. I'm the only person got off there this morning and yew said THS, now everybody thinks I'm an ahddict!"

He sounded angry, but I pretended not to notice. "Oh man no, they don't think that! They're self-absorbed in their own stuff. You know I'm just callin' out the local attractions! Maybe they think you're goin to Aqua Quip, gonna buy a hot tub...." There, I got him to smile.

I knew I needed to pay a little more attention when he was next on board. Which is why the next time he rode, I glanced in the mirror before announcing, "this is 165th next, by THS. Also by the Credit Union and the auto shop, Shoreline Motel, there's a U-Haul, let's see...we got Dana Waterproofing right here..."

Never did 165th receive such a careful and studied series of announcements.  He indicated his approval by way of congenial silence. I imagine Dana and Sound Credit Union never dreamed they'd get announced as local attractions, but hey, everyone deserves a moment in the limelight.