[This story is now featured in my latest book. More here!]

"Hey, Bashi."

He tells me I'm his favorite, the best. He asks if I remember him.

"Of course I remember you!" I was just about to ask after his young son when he beat me to the punch with–
"My son, he asks about you!"
"He asks about me? I was just about to wow, he remembers me! That's so nice. Seems like a cool guy, smart guy. I remember he always knows all the street names." I couldn't stop grinning the first time this little kid got on and began quickly rattling off with, "the next stop is Holden after that is Othello after that Frontenac after that Holly then Graham then Kenny then…."

"Every single one," Bashi laughs in reply. "He is genius!"
"Smart guy!"
"Yeah, he asks, 'where is my bus driver?'"
"Yeah, I was gone for a while, working early morning on different routes. But I'm happy to be back here in the nighttime!"
"And I say 'your friend, he works at night!'"
"Yes!"
"You were doing school?"
"Yes."
"Let me give you some advice." He started telling me how good I am at my job. Curiously, this is the only part of the conversation I couldn't remember well enough in the minutes afterwards to write down with accuracy; I think I block rhapsodic praise out sometimes. Too much to let into the head! I recall instead the small glimmer of metallic tooth fittings in his smile, glinting in response to the dim fluorescents.
"Some drivers make it really hard," he continued. "You make it easy."
"I like the people!"

Bashi formerly worked in Metro Customer Service. He's extremely knowledgeable on the rules, the official language, the complaint system, and so on. He's aware of the type of driver who tends to get a disproportionate amount of complaints, but he's also cognizant of the sort of passenger who complains often. Bashi has a point he's working toward, but he's circling around it for the moment.

I'm thinking about liking the people and making it easy. I say, "when I was on the Eastside–"
He beats me to the punch again, correctly anticipating my thought: "they are totally different over there! Did you know, I used to work for Metro."
"Yes, I remember you said customer service,"
"They have a different attitude."
"Attitude, yes!"
"They complain!" he exclaims, and we laugh. It's true. The societal norms are different enough to warrant contrasting results on either side of the lake: in South Seattle, unhappy passengers will simply curse you out in person, offering a 'verbal complaint,' as it were. In the 'burbs, they'll remain silent for now but strike hard later, using official channels. I'll refrain from using terms like passive-aggressive or schadenfreude to describe the behavior of this latter category.

"One little thing wrong, and they type up a big long letter!"
"It's so true," I say. "There's a different feeling sometimes too, the attitude, where they're looking down on me. I am the service worker, they are the rich, whatever, I don't know anything…"
"They are bothered very easily."
"The 7 is the best route. Here, they just get angry and yell at you right here." I can recall more than once watching drivers on Eastside routes abusing their riders in ways my 7 passengers simply wouldn't tolerate. Would they file little electronic complaints? No, they would physically intervene.

Bashi: "You know what I'm talking about!"
"I drove on the Eastside for two years."
"They don't say nothing at the time, but later when they go home to the computer… still they don't say anything, just a lot of big words. Vocabulary. They say 'thank you,' then on their expensive phone they complain to your boss."
"It's more simple here, more clear. Here they just say the F word."
"More simple, yeah. Here they say 'fuck you.' 'Shut the fuck up.' Then they forget about it!"
"Bashi, I'm glad you got on my bus!"

This conversation is an older story which happened some time ago, and had I posted it then it would have ended differently than it will now. I've been mulling over the ideas discussed above since. Something's been rubbing me the wrong way. What didn't feel right?

Our own attitude, his and mine, that's what. The gleeful criticism that of others. 

A few years ago I would have been entirely on board with this skewering of the passive-aggressive upper class. That's really what we were talking about, not geographical disparities but classist ones. The story would have ended with something along the lines of Bashi's clear-eyed discernment cutting through the gauze of classism masquerading as educated grievances. His remarks above are certainly accurate, but I feel a bit differently now. I agree with Bashi's comments, but not their sentiment, nor especially their all-inclusiveness. 

The fact of the matter is, I know a few too many wealthy people of impeccable quality of character, who because of their experiences or observation are unimpeachable in their compassion, perceptiveness, and lack of entitlement. These same folks might be the first to point out that their perspectives are pretty unusual within their status group (what is it about cloistered lifestyles that breed apathy so?), but regardless, I cannot comfortably make generalizations which cast entire swaths as caricatures, any more than I cannot tolerate the same being done against the homeless and low-income whom I know so well. 

Quebecois filmmaking wunderkind Xavier Dolan was speaking recently about some editing decisions he made during the completion of his 2012 magnum opus, Laurence Anyways. The film is a three-hour intimate epic following ten years in the life of a man who becomes a woman, and the enormous havoc that wreaks on his relationship with his girlfriend. Among other things, Dolan endeavored the film to be a piece which didn't judge its marginalized protagonists, but simply regarded them. He shot a scene which ridiculed the snobby elite who so disapproved of the film's central union, but couldn't in good conscience include it in the final picture. Why?

If Dolan's aim, he said, was to celebrate the uncelebrated without judging them, it would be hypocritical for him to ask the audience to simultaneously judge others whose views he found backward. To be ideologically sound, the film needed to espouse a worldview in which no group is maligned. The solution is not to snark the snarkers, as it were, and return the same contempt we ourselves can hardly stand; but rather to venture out on higher roads. Trust others to be malleable, capable of expanding their views, whether or not they are. Nothing's more disappointing then being the receiver of an unbelieving gaze, the stare which sees nothing in you beyond your presentation.

Stirrings of these thoughts were galvanized out of latency one morning this past summer while driving a trip on the 3, inbound from Queen Anne. At each zone, silent commuters came aboard. Today they were particularly unresponsive, and I was reminded of my days on the 545, where lack of interaction is chronic. I was thinking of Tom Wolfe's description of maids who feel like furniture, taken for granted and ignored into nothingness until they do something wrong. At Prospect Street a gentleman in a crisp coat tapped his Orca card glancingly, such that it did not scan. He tried again. 

"Come on in, don't worry about it." That sounds fine in print, but I said it in a pejorative tone. Why did I do that? I added, "We'll get it next time," which I never say, especially never in this clipped, grossly unacceptable condescending attitude I was wearing. I was grouping him as one of those, another one of them, and falling into the trap of returning the disregard I assumed he had for me. 

Isn't them just about the worst word in the world?

He looked up and noticed me for the first time.
"Are you Nathan?"
Totally nonplussed: "I am!"
"I love the blog. I really love the blog. I love the attitude of it."
"Thank you! So much!"

I felt utterly shamed. I spent the rest of the ride reeling with chagrin, reflecting. This was the best moment of the entire week. His bearing in the face of mine was the stronger, and it was exactly the correction I needed. I greeted the remaining Queen Anne residents with what he had reminded me: that, like my more boisterous riders on the other side of town, we all have more in common than we don't.

Thank you, friend, for opening my eyes a bit further.

"Can I request a night stop?"
"Sure!" 

She specified a block in between stops along the Prentice loop.* She was a demure east Asian woman I've seen before but never spoken with. Now that we were alone on the bus, she said, "You're probably the most nice driver I've ever seen. You are so nice to everyone. It is really great to see. We run into some crappiness out here."

Her voice was reedy and small. She explained further, in a voice that knew the awkwardness of her words but needed to quietly say them anyway, because they were true. Sometimes a phrase will sound trite, but where else do you turn when you have no recourse but the truth? Haltingly, she said, "I have brain cancer. What I'm saying is, seeing you being so nice makes life seem worth living."

My thanks to her hardly seemed adequate. It was important for her to share, and it's all she wanted to say. We may receive many compliments or affirmations in our lives, but sometimes it's the most spare, unaffected, and passing of them which still us to the bone.

---

A young man named Ghost was on my 7 last night, also making use of the Prentice routing. In a different way he said something similar. We were having a wide-ranging conversation, making use of the expansive time from Capitol Hill to the bottom of the Valley.

At one point in Pioneer Square he said, "you know why I smile at people now?" 
We'd been discussing the value, and rarity, of doing such. He was sprawled out over the first two chat seats, a gangly octopus dressed in oversized swaths of black cotton and polyester.

I said, "how come?"
"'Cause I read this article once. It said,"
"What'd it say?"
"It said, it was talkin' about this guy, this guy who was gonna kill himself but he didn't commit suicide 'cause somebody smiled at him."
"Oh wow. Oh wow." I looked at Ghost, processing. "That's, talk about making a difference in someone's life."
"Yeah. Just because somebody took a second to smile, made him feel human again."
"Acknowledgement."
"Yeah."
"Wow."

---

*The Prentice loop is at the tail end of the 7 route, and although the 7 is very frequent (every 10 minutes all day with frequent service til midnight, plus 24-hour service) only a few trips continue on to do the loop. The Prentice Street (upper Rainier Beach) neighborhood is served every 30 minutes until about 10:30pm, and sometimes less often than that. That may sound like pretty good service, but for this transit-dependent part of town, it isn't. Elsewhere, mediocre bus service is an inconvenience. In places like this, it shapes lives. People who don't ride the 7 will tell you the Prentice service, which used to be more frequent, is underutilized and therefore not as many buses are needed up there. Actual passengers will tell you the only reason the service is underused is because of how infrequent it is. 

This is one of the great catch-22's in transit planning: if the service isn't used, the company will reduce the amount of service. If the service is reduced, nobody will use the service because it isn't good. An example of the opposite would be the 545 which, upon being introduced as a frequent, all-day express route between Redmond and Seattle that ran every 15 minutes or less and covered its distance in speeds comparable to driving a car, many thought was actually too good, and believed there was no ridership to justify its existence. But people came. They materialized, because the option was so attractive. Now it's one of Sound Transit's busiest routes.

Last year there was a sixteen-car accident that shut down Rainier Avenue in such a way that a shuttle bus had to be devised that night to ferry passengers from Rainier & Rose to the end of the route up on Prentice. For convenience the shuttle driver (a friend of mine!) drove every single one of his shuttle trips up through the Prentice neighborhood. Despite the fact that Prentice service ends at 10:30, he kept going up there until his shift ended at 3am. People used the service on every trip, all night. Not only did many people ride up there, there were people waiting for the bus up there at 2am, long after bus service would normally stop. Though I don't feel every 7 needs to go to Prentice, it's undeniable that if the service was improved, people would use it.

The least Metro could do is address the (in)famous 60-90-minute gaps in Prentice service during both weekday rush hours, when there is no service to or from Prentice exactly when it is most needed. There was a time when folks thought running 10-minute service south of Othello was extravagant, but now we're accustomed to the glut of people traveling between the Henderson loop and Rose, who would definitely be walking if the service wasn't as frequent as it is. No 7 driver hasn't heard the familiar "I'm just goin' to Rose" less than a thousand times.

Planners! Feedback from a neighborhood that doesn't email in quite as much: the peak-hour Prentice gaps, plus the early quit time for bus service to that neighborhood, are the complaints I hear about the most. The consistent positive feedback I get refers to the evening through-routing with the 49, and the direct service to downtown (if the community ever finds out how the RapidRide+ corridors will split the route up, they'll riot!). The suggestion I hear most that isn't a complaint is the idea of dividing the tail into 2 terminals: every other 7 should serve Prentice, with remaining trips serving Rainer Beach Station. Or better yet, have outbound 7s turn right on Cloverdale, L on MLK, L on Henderson to either the Henderson layover or Prentice, for better connectivity and a single route from downtown that hits all three "hubs" of Rainier Beach: the light rail station, the high school, and restaurant row.

His hair wasn't always gray, but it still grows, and now it's long enough to register a breeze. With that and the tuft of a beard he keeps nestled in the small of his chin, he could be a martial arts instructor from a seventies-era kung-fu picture, the sort of look you didn't know existed in real life. He staggers in on sea legs, alcohol swilling around in there somewhere, wearing the vacant gaze you find in drunks and tired toddlers. Some drunks are loud, or angry; this man, another on the list of those I've never seen sober, is a quiet drunk. A Native American man of about forty, who keep to himself and drinks, and drinks, and drinks some more. He reminds me that heartbreaking Johnny Cash tune, The Ballad of Ira Hayes. There was a different personality in this body once.
Tonight he steps on carefully, giving me a light fistpound and a wan, glacial smile, lips spreading slowly over empty teeth sockets as he recognizes me.

Nothing but a whisper: "So how's business?"
"Business is good," I reply amiably, keeping the mood up. I think he just wants the comfort of small talk, the connection. "Nothin' too major, not too many folks out here on a Monday night you know, keepin' it pretty mellow tonight."
Nearly under his breath: "That's good."
"How 'bout you, how you been?
"I been, I been."
"I'm glad you're still around! I was startin' to wonder where you were."
"Yeah."
"You been doin' okay?"
"Well, no."
"I'm sorry!"
"Yeah, my dad and my mom and my brother been kinda gangin' up on me."
"Uh oh."
"Yeah, my dad's yellin' at me, then my mom, then my,"
"Oh no, all a them all at the same time! That's some drama! Soap opera drama!"

He listens and laughs, a gentle but full-throated chuckle. "Yeah, that's what it is!"
"That can be a lot. What they say?"
"They say. They say I gotta stop drinkin' so much the bottle."
"Uh oh."
"Yeah."

My job generally exposes me to only the negative effects of alcohol consumption. The ugliness of some of the violence I've seen staggers the mind, and for that and other reasons I keep my own counsel on the subject, but those are opinions I try not to share. I only know what's right for me and besides, who would I be to tell Ira Hayes what to do? I'm more interested in what our kung-fu-looking friend thinks. I ask him, "what do you say?"

"I say. Well, the drinkin' and the spice. My brother from smokin' the spice, he got really fucked up in the head."
"Oh, that's bad, man. That can't be changed. It's scary stuff!" Keep it neutral, I remind myself. Don't try to change people. Just be truthful….   
"Yeah. So, smokin…."
"Plus, that stuff's expensive."
"Well I don't know about the spice, but."
"Yeah."
"They're all just yellin' at me. My mom,"

This isn't about drinking or not drinking, I realize. Is it ever? Problems have deeper roots. His soft voice is calling out for a family who loves him.

I said, "well, maybe they're just tryna look out for you."
"Hmm."
"You know, where it's comin' from a place of love. They're trying to give you a tough love type a thing, but it's probably just comin' on too strong."

He heard my words at a profound register. You could almost hear him thinking, the silent face ticking toward a better place, eyes relaxing now, lines on his forehead giving way.

"Oh wow," he said. "Yeah. I think you're right, that's probably what it is."
"Yeah."
"Okay," he nodded, parts of him waking from slumber, daring to believe. The headspace of believing you are loved is a different planet from the opposite.

The rest of the city was going on about its business, and only the two of us, in our small corner, got to live in this elusive moment. Times like this are why I come to work.

She's repeating. We had this exact same exchange five minutes ago. "I'm a little tipsy," she'd said upon boarding, a woeful understatement.
"Yeah you are," I'd said. 

"Happy New Year, Mister Bus driver," she saying again now.
"Happy New Year to you too!"
"How was your New Year's?"
"It was pretty good, how was yours?"
"Quiet."
"That sounds nice."
"Yup!"

"Aaaa," yells a staggering runner. There is much intoxication happening tonight, New Year's Day. It's one giant dorm room out here. Just last trip at this very intersection a man was bodily dragging another (large) man out of the street, struggling to haul his unconscious carcass over the curb. Now there's a guy saying, "aaaa," and trying not to run into the side of the bus. After a mental coin flip I open the doors.

"Hey! Uuggh."
"Hey, how you doin'? You feelin' alright?"
"Yeah." 
Calm him down, in case he isn't. "Happy New Year."
He looks up at me. "Oh, hey! My brother! You remember me?"
"Yeah, how you been?" He looks familiar but gaunt today, wild eyed, man as hyena.
"Good, how you been."
"Happy New Year!"
"I'm twenty-nine," he says.
"You're twenty-nine? Did you say you're twenty-nine? I'm twenty-nine!" This is excellent. He's wildly unstable, and we need to make friends. Steer them toward their good side.

"I'm twenty-nine!"
"Me too!"
"When you were born?"
"1986," I reply.
"When?"
"March. And you?"
"January!" he says, still standing up front.
"Nice."
"Siddown," says Repeating Lady to him.
"Fuck you!" he replies sharply. So much for gentle steering and similar birthdays!
"Shut up," she slurs.
"Fuck you, fucking bitch!" 

Fights are never about anything important. She's a heavyset black American woman in her fifties, eyes half-closed and speaking in slow motion. He's a rail-thin black African man in a flannel and knit cap, much older than he looks. Neither one is particularly intimidating; in their verbal parrying they seem to be just going through the motions. As in, it's late at night in Pioneer Square, and we're supposed to be drunk and fighting. All right. Let's get on with it. 

"Oh she's alright, she's nice," I inform him.
"Fuck you," he says to her again.
"Stay away from me, stranger."
"Get the fuck away from me, lady. I know you?"

Her lines are the type generally used to repel unwanted and scary advances; his are normally reserved for intense hate felt personally. Instead they sound like bad actors, sighing after being asked to say the same lines again a hundredth time. Maybe that's why I find it so amusing. She's practically falling asleep, definitely not afraid, and slurring out the dialogue as if it's because there's nothing else to say. He seems to be searching for a reason to be as angry as his lines require, and failing. 

"Get outta my face and outta my life, smelly old man!"
"Fuck smelly!"
"All right young lady," I say to her, though she's definitely pushing sixty. She'd asked for this stop earlier. "Here we are. You need to jump out?"
"Huh."
"You said you wanted the Mission, this is it."
"I wanna go downtown."
"Okay. I'll take you there. Gotta be nice though, alright?"
"You siddown like I told you," she continues to the twenty-nine year old.
"Fuck you, get the fuck out. This is the Mission," he replies, offering his own creative paraphrase of my comment.
"Get away from me."
"Fuck you. Stay away from me."
"I don't have to do anything you say!"
"Okay, okay," I said.
"Fucker fuck. Why you wanna go to the Mission, lady? That's a men's shelter. You some kind a lady?"
"Okay guys let's be nice." I'm using my Mom voice. I don't get to be a Mom very often. I'm enjoying this. "It's New Year's, we need to be friendly on the holidays. Everybody supposed to be friendly on New Year's!"
"Fuck."
"Okay."
"Fuck you," he tells her again.
"Everything's okay." A young man further back had taken off his headphones to observe. I caught him smiling. Furthering the holiday spirit, I lean into the mic and say in a friendly and exciting voice, "our next stop is! Columbia! Cherry! By the ferry terminal! Columbia Tower. Dexter Horton Building. Next stop after this is! Seneca!"

You know, balance it out a little, yin and yang. At Columbia my angry twin staggers up and out.

"Oh, you're getting off here?" That's fine with me. I'm not stopping the guy. "Okay, have a good night!"
"Okay!"

She chimes in once again, as if nothing at all had happened:
"Happy New Year, Mister Bus driver."
"Happy New Year to you too!"
"How was your New Year's?"
"It was pretty good, how was yours?"
"Quiet."
"That sounds nice."
"Yup!"

Ah, yes. Everything in its right place. 

Patricia and I were talking about something, at the end of the Prentice loop, out there at the end of the 7 line. She's a semi-regular. Tonight our conversation is interrupted by this gent, who other drivers and I have taken to calling "mista driva," since that's what he calls all of us. He's described here, and one day, I'll actually see him not drunk. Yes, I believe in miracles. But today is not that day. He's a new face on Rainier, and given how he runs his body he wont last too long– though there are those who, like Denise or the Rolling Stones, have a resilience that quite simply defies logic.

"Do you have eyes?" he says, stumbling into a seat next to Patricia. 
"What's that?" she says, politely, in her refined way. I don't think she has conversations like this very often. 
"I cannot see your eyes."
"Oh, no." She says, stepping out right when things are getting interesting, leaving just the two of us.

"Hey, mista bus driva."
"Hey! How are you?"
"I'm okay. But I cannot see the eyes."
"Uh oh."

There was a watershed moment I had on my first city route, the 70. I had come from two years of suburban work on the Eastside and didn't know how to talk to unstable people, or as I like to say, the mentally wandering. A man was monologuing about his job as a leprechaun bounty hunter. Joe Biden was in town, and the going rate for a leprechaun was higher than usual. Two hundred dollars. They're harder to catch these days, he explained. I listened but didn't engage, not knowing what to say.

"So that's why you can get more for them now, a hundred dollars."
"Hang on," I said, as something clicked inside me. "I thought it was two hundred!"

Talk to them as if what they're saying makes complete sense.

Why am I ignoring a chance to take part in a conversation about leprechaun head price fluctuation as affected by vice presidential visits? Am I going to have a more interesting conversation today? Um, no. In my then woefully undeveloped street sense, I had actually been considering asking him to stop talking. What was I thinking? Bend like tall grass in the wind. You'll last longer.

"Bus driva, I cannot see your eyes."
"That's a bummer, man. Are you feelin' all right?"
"I'm o-kay. I am sad that I cannot see your eyes."
"Shoot, that's too bad." I'd feel the same way!
"I can't see the eyes!"
"Aw, man,"
"Mista bus driva!"
"Hey!"
"I can't see your eyes!"

Let's really get down to business and solve this, I thought. Let's talk about it. "Well, I can see your eyes, so you must be able to see my eyes, right?" 

"The eyes!"
"Can you see my eyes?" 
He rises up and stands close to my face. After thinking about it for a while: "Bus Driva. I cannot see your eyes."
"I can see your eyes. Can you see my eyes?"
"Mista bus driva, where are your eyes? I can't see them."
"Oh, they're right over here. Can you see my eyes?"
"I am looking for your eyes."
"Can you see my eyes?"

He was maybe two feet away from me. The red light at 57th and Rainier is a very long one, and he needed every second. Finally, his glassy, completely dilated orbs blinked, and again slowly, and he said,

"Your eyes are. Brown."
"My eyes are brown! You can see my eyes!" 
"I can see your eyes! Bus driva, I can see your eyes!"
"Everything is okay! You can see my eyes!"