"I been on your bus once before. You were hella cool for some reason," he mused, fingering in a few more coins at the farebox. The confusion in his second sentence made me laugh. He frowned, trying to figure it out: what on earth had made this driver so "hella cool" last time, after all? 

"Aw thanks man," I said. "I try to keep it light, keep it positive." I was sticking to boilerplate lines because I couldn't tell if he was stable. Keep it on an even keel. His dress sense was harmless enough, following the dictates of low-income stomping grounds all across America: basically, wear what the cool kids had on twenty years ago. The nineties urban youth look, oversized clothing with a touch of jailhouse sag, chain necklace and untied skaters that only stay on if you swagger. 

On certain streets, you dress so you're taken seriously by those with no sense of fashion upkeep whatsoever. They won't warm to an Andre 3000 straw boater, Kanye West's tight jeans, or A$ap Rocky's tailored white suit and black turtleneck just because People magazine does. When there are guys standing on both sides of an alley entrance, it doesn't matter what color you are: you don't want to look like you're waiting to hear back from Exeter College. The better to go with your older brother's unwashed jeans and something with a Sonics logo on it.

Which is what our friend had down to a tee, and that's fine by me. But there was something besides, an erraticism in his movements, a sudden jolt in his step, not to mention his hidden eyes; sunglasses after midnight aren't exactly the reassurance of sound mind I'm looking for. Nevertheless, he responded to my comment above with an amicable "das wassup."

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it's better to engage. One time out of a hundred, it's better to say nothing at all, and as a bus driver you've got about a fourth of a second to make that call. I made the call, and the call I made was, ignore the sunglasses. This guy's okay.

I said, "helps everyone, you know? Not gonna hurt to put some love out there."
"True dat," he replied. "There's a lot of happiness out here."
"Some of these guys got one arm, one leg… if they can be happy, I got no excuse!"
"Preach! I feel tha same. Ah try to pay attention to all the happiness, think of the things that keep me goin'. In this crazy worl', we got to stay happy. We got to."
"Yeah," I said, sighing, thinking on all my own stresses, those of others, the politics, the tightening purses, the property tax and rent rates… have you noticed how real estate has surpassed weather as Seattle's dominant city-wide conversation? "Thank you," I breathed, adding after noticing his puzzled look: "for the reminder!" 
"Ha!"
"I need that sometimes!"
"Aw, come on," he exclaimed. "You don't look like you got evil in you!"
"I hope not!"
"Ha! Like, 'I'm not a killer, but don't push me?' "
"We all got a dark side, right?"
"Yup yup you know it! Jus' keepin' a leash on it, like me! You have a good night!"

He was more than okay. He was you and me. He was unwittingly echoing Austrian auteur Michael Haneke, who maintains any person is capable of the worst evil, given the circumstances. Our passenger was another man doing his best to focus on his better angels and cast aside the others. I'm glad I chatted with him. What awful suspicions I might have if I never chatted with the guys out here, and made all my assumptions from the descriptions in the police calls we're forwarded. The suspect is always a "twenty-year old black male wearing all black…", and I chuckle to myself every time. That describes forty percent of my ridership. They don't all rob banks. I've got twenty black twenty-somethings wearing black here, and none of them are out of breath or dragging duffel bags. They're too busy riding my bus!* 

An operator once asked me, "how do you deal with these guys?" He was referring to homeless people at large. I pondered for a moment before saying, "you know actually, what really ends up helping me is just talking to them. Go back there on your break, and hear their story. It gives me context."

Which is why so many stories on this blog are accounts, specifically, of African-American men being civil, friendly, funny, responsible, vulnerable and kind.** In my daily exposure to diversity these moments are not exceptional; they're pretty ordinary. Actually, they're downright unremarkable, in that they happen so much more often on my bus than I'm able to put on the blog, and I hold back here simply for fear of the stories becoming woefully repetitive. 

But in the face of centuries of– not just mistreatment but more particularly misrepresentation– these ordinary moments still feel fresh, and I can tell my responses to the participants remain resonant. These glimmers of good treatment going both ways are still not celebrated enough. There is an opportunity to try, ever so slightly, to tip the grossly misaligned scales of perception back towards balance. For every time a call goes out saying "twenty-year old black male," I want there to be five other places people can turn to that showcase disadvantaged young men of color being nice, or maybe just boring, or even plain rude… but not criminals. I'm not the person best suited for this work, but I'm not sure that matters. It'd be a crime not to take up the opportunity, given how utterly critical it is. I have to do it. I want to do it. And it's so easy.

Thanks for reading and sharing. Now more than ever, the goodwill in these stories is something that needs to be highlighted.

----

*On a more serious note, now's as good a time as any to link to these two stories if you haven't read them already:
Don't Be Scared of My Friends, Part I
Don't Be Scared of My Friends, Part II

**A few greatest hits, if you're in the mood; longtime readers will know these stories from the "On the Street" sidebar to the right:
More Than One Way Through Life: a dealer and a student clash over ideals.
Future, Present, Past: a new friend and I riff together on an all-white 2, first for laughs and then seriously.
Saddest Music in the World: a vet having a hard day, who probably deserved better.
Hip to be Joyful: a street comedian passes on some words from the kids in back.

…and a few of the deeper cuts:
Appreciation: one of only a few blog stories to be purchased as its own art piece. Two boys express gratitude.
It Used to Sound Like This: Devin the Man for President. 
Something Getting Through: the boys wave through the windows.
Highwire, Lowbrow explosions: I'll never win the Nobel Prize, but this shower of foul-mouthed, good-natured praise more than makes up for it.
All You Need Is: A street fellow gives me the reminder I need.
From a Healthier Slant: two boys wax profane on deterministic universes.
The Mighty Midnight Bus Barbecue: how the boys talk after the white folks have gone.
I Like Peanuts: gift exchange, and more.

I have this tendency to turn up my nose at flu shots. We all think we're unstoppable when we're younger, and while I long ago lost that claim to invincibility, vestiges of it remain, little crumbs of brash confidence that don't make sense. For me, that includes not getting flu shots. I have no memory of ever receiving one. I like to tell people that being a bus driver beefs up your immune system like nobody's business. I drove the 3/4, the main route serving the West Coast's #1 Trauma Center, for two years– and I didn't get sick. Flu shots? Who needs 'em? If I've made it this far, well....

Isn't it precisely when you're at your most confident, that the chips come tumbling down? I'm lying in bed, coughing like it's 1918. For me the flu is generally unpleasant, but not agonizing, not endless; this is different. After days in row of muscle-atrophied anguish you can start to understand how people used to die from this thing by the millions. I've never felt so weak.

However. I needed to go to work, in person, to call out sick. Naturally you can do that remotely. But we're talking about a Saturday-Sunday following a holiday week that was also a pay week, aaand immediately preceding a vacation week of my own. How bad would that look? Could my flu be more poorly timed? I wanted them to know this was for real. 

The only problem was I was way, way, way too ill to be going outside. Do you know the feeling, where even lying still is intolerable, where each position in your sweaty, unlaundered sheets brings you no closer to comfort? Every pointless toss and turn, your nose burned by overfamiliarity with Kleenex, the constricting throat, the sheer brute torment of something as simple as swallowing... no, going outside and commuting to work was ridiculous. Out of the question.

But I had to do it.

Trust is difficult to earn, and harder to keep. This question of integrity mattered to me, I explained to my confidante, who'd been caring for me. She listened, confounded, as I explained further: there's also the matter of picking up my car from the mechanic. His shop is small, and I don't want to inconvenience the guy. It's just on the other side of town.

Had I really outgrown the invincibility fallacy? 

Maybe not so much. Perhaps it's an unreasonable consideration for others' needs. I didn't want to make Tony T the Mechanic's life any harder than it needed to be. I wanted those Metro dispatchers and planners to know I wasn't burdening them for flippant reasons. Or perhaps it's more straightforward: I wasn't lying or being lazy, and resented the thought of being perceived as doing so.

My companion had my best interests at heart, which made justifying all this somewhat difficult, but we set out in any event. She could see how important it– specifically the Metro dispatcher issue– was to me. The car pick-up thing definitely didn't make any sense, but I think she figured we could discuss that later.

We hobbled forward. I'm usually the one who walks too quickly, but I was unable to move more than inches at a time. Eighty year-olds walk faster than this.

I held on to my companion's guiding figure with both arms, clinging to stay upright. On the bus I stared forward, vacantly, unable to focus, a silent voice inside remarking on how mechanical I must've looked, how brain-dead. 

My mind called back a moment in junior high school, when, having ran around the entire length of Washington, D.C's Mall, from the obelisk to Lincoln and back, I collapsed on the ground, my lungs heaving with effort. A local walked past with her young son. She was a thirty-something African-American dressed in her Sunday best, and the boy was wearing a sweater and khakis. They had it together. They stopped to watch me writhe. 

"Now that's why you don't take drugs," she finally said. 

What did I look like now, to the dispatcher and nearby operators at the base? They stopped talking, let me tell you. They immediately asked after my welfare. Some of them even recognized me. 

Only the dispatcher didn't show surprise; maybe he's seen this sort of thing before. Me, famous for running excitedly through the base, now hobbling ten steps to a foot, touching the walls for balance, holding a plastic bag for vomit in one hand, dressed in absurd amounts of layers for once, despite this rainy day not being a cold one: jeans over sweats, coat over sweatshirt over tee over tee, with a scarf, ludicrously roomy women's coat jacket draped over my slight frame, with a massive hood entirely covering my face, and to top it all off– the ridiculous addition of polished dress shoes (hey, I didn't know I was going to get sick)!

Afterwards, Tony T's shop awaited. Once again, my gracious companion suggested the reasonable course of action. Once again, I politely insisted. This fresh air actually felt kind of nice. The train ride was quiet, and the third-mile residential stroll through old South Seattle did my mental state, if not my body, good. We got the car out of there and parked it nearby. 

I noticed something on the bus ride back. Here was a 124, fresh with the methadone morning release group. They chatted amiably about the price of cable, driving vs. busing to West Seattle, the job market. I leaned my hooded head against the rain-spattered window pane. Nostrils clogged, my mouth hung open, and in between inhales I breathed a memory to my friend: 

"There's a methadone rehab clinic. Right over here. I used to drive the 522. And the first stop was. Picking up these guys. It was my first. Experience with street people."
"Really."
"More or less. And I remember noticing. They were the nicest people. On the whole bus."
"And so it began," she laughed.
"I guess!"

To the extent I was able, I looked around at the surfeit of texture and weathered grit. They weren't as sick as I felt now, but you could tell they knew the grizzle on the short end of the stick. It is so much harder to be kind in a state like this, I now realized. I've never had to take a bus while half dead. There are probably people who feel like this all the time. How many ailing people have I transported, who took the Herculean effort to be decent? 

I look just like these tired, disenfranchised souls, I thought. Honestly, I looked worse. I'm still holding the vomit bag, for Pete's sake. I was a disaster. We were sitting in the back, but I knew I had to go up front as I exited, to thank the driver. I wanted her to feel that same gratitude I've received a thousand times over from folks much more down and out than I, whose efforts I so cherish and respect. My body began planning for the aptitude it would need to walk all the way up there. I saved up an extra breath to say it all in one go:

"Thank you have a really nice day." 

She may not even have heard me. I could barely speak above a whisper, and she bulldozed over me with a boisterous "thank you!–" but maybe she didn't need to hear me. I was really more of an actor, after all, doing my best to pay it forward. She seemed like the sort who was already in tune with such of life's nuances, and I was glad.

"We did it," I said to my caregiver, thanking her profusely. I was still clutching her frame for dear life. "I can't believe we actually did it." It won't sound like much of an achievement to anyone else: 

I called in sick and picked up my car on the way home. Great. 

But to us it was a massive, by-the-skin-of-our-teeth-successful accomplishment. How did we pull this thing off? Why did I think it was even a good idea? We gave it everything we had, for the possibly foolhardy notions of principle. It was important to me.

Just remember the next time you see someone moving at a dying snail's pace, the corollary may well be you, sprinting as fast as you can.

---

Also– this whole intermittent posting thing is all temporary, I promise! I'm still neck deep in film preproduction. I aim to be through it shortly, and look forward to returning to prioritizing the blog as usual. Keep checking in though, as there's always something here to chew on....

Again, my dearest apologies for the intolerably intermittent posts this holiday season. My lack of posts on the blog has been due to... feverishly working on the blog!

To wit:

You may know I've been searching and hustling away for an literary agent in New York to represent the book form of this blog. After years of writing, querying, revising, hoping, dreaming, and writing some more... I'm thrilled to finally announce I've just signed with one!!

It's an honor to be represented by Eric Myers of Myers Literary. Pardon me while I pinch myself! His esteemed career involves the Spieler Agency, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, and now his own Myers Literary, as well as being a feature film publicist and (and!) an author himself.

Mensch barely begins to cover it. 

Turning this book into a blog isn't a mere pet project of mine, but a dream readers have been bringing up for years. The feedback I get is about more than enjoying a piece of writing or a funny story. People will tell me the internet is an interesting place, an important place, a diverting place... but it tends not to be a happy place. You don't go online to feel better about people.

I can sense an urgency in the voices sometimes: there is a need now, in our post-2016 Trumpy world, to celebrate true stories of goodwill, human kindness, respect and love... especially amongst and toward the underserved. Things were different two years ago; we are no longer headed where we were. Today most of the country has been demoted to second-class citizenry, whether along gender, income or racial lines. There's a truth that needs to be kept alive through this period. We risk the very goodness of ourselves and our possibilities otherwise.

Please share this blog around. Doing so increases (dramatically!) its chances of being realized in book form. More importantly, it also might bring someone up at just the moment they need it– not because I'm in the stories, of course, but because they're a document of what people in the early 21st century sounded like, looked like, and talked like... when they were good to each other.

​Thanks for reading!

Traffic was crawling. Of course it was. From the moment the southbound express lanes close at 10:45 A.M. until the end of evening rush, I-5 south moves at a crawl. Michael Crichton once wrote that if aliens landed in Los Angeles, they'd think automobiles were the dominant life form; the cars here approach the city center slowly, as if a funerary procession, an act too reverential to speed up. We pay our respects to downtown, coming in from the outside with a sense of stately gravitas and wonder. 

Which means there's plenty of time to have a conversation. If driverless cars and predictable travel times ever really do take off, over-trafficked corridors like this one will become oddly attractive. You'll have that much more time to fix your makeup, Skype with the relatives, get a nap in….

For now, chatting with my fellow colleague will do. An energetic and strong-willed mother of two who radiates positivity, I benefit from listening to her.  

"I like your blog because you understand this," she was saying, referring to the impermanent nature of homelessness. Basically nobody's homeless their whole lives, after all. "Suffering as a phase."
"I like to share another angle of looking at these you know, 'tough subjects.' "
"Yeah," she replied. "Are they really tough subjects though?"
"True…"
" 'Cause if someone that people think is a drug addict, might just be going through a lot of pain,"
"And it's a short term solution,"
"Or, if they're in pain and they don't have food,"
"And they haven't slept, their mental ability…"
"Exactly. They're going to look like a drug–"
"Yeah. And in those conditions can we really expect them to be on their best behavior?"
"Totally. No way," she nodded, adding, "if they have that perfect storm of no food, no place to go, and no hope,"
"Oh I love how succinctly you phrase that. The perfect storm, those three."
"Yeah. Can we really expect them to…"
"Be nice?"
"Behave normally??"
"Of course not, gimme a break!"

I'm so grateful for reminders like this. I need them. Being positive in the realms of contemporary urban life is a decision I have to sign up for every single day. I've written about how compassion is disproportionately visible on the street, that respect has so much currency out here, that love reverberates and comes back in spades. All that is true, but it doesn't mean there's none of the opposite. The selfish apathy of survival can be galling, and the destruction– self-inflicted or otherwise– of what were once promising lives, the ugliness of despair manifest as hate, anger, fear… these are out here too, and sometimes I get disappointed by them. It's a duty to give love out to the world without expecting it back, but it can feel thankless. 

I need the reminder, that we generally see only what we're looking for. That the negative energy lobbed in our direction is never about us but instead a ripple of their own life problems; and that the positive energy shared, conversely, usually is about us, it being a reaction to something we've done. I need the reminder that we effect positive growth not sweepingly but one person at a time, through the incredible impact of a single, respectful exchange. You bring out the good in people when you make them feel human again, and loved. That's the importance of being nice to this face. And this one, and this one and this one….

In your mirror they remember their better angels.

Photo by Tim Willis.

In case you missed the NPR interview through KNKX, here it is! Just under ten minutes total:

Finding Humanity On A Public Bus, by Jennifer Wing. Interview by Gabriel Spitzer. Once again, an enormous thank you to both those fine luminaries for making this happen.

​And thank you for listening!