On a long enough timeline, all clothes worn in the elements turn brown. It's a muted shade of that hue which cloaks these two men now, but that's not to say they're lacking in personality.

"Do you go as far as Broadway?" says the first, before stepping in. I couldn't place his age– twenty-five? Forty-five?– but he had overgrown stubble and curly locks mangy enough to be fashionable. Imagine Raiders in a baseball cap. His friend is wobbling on the sidewalk with drunken sea legs, holding a bicycle, doing the dance where you and your partner (or bike, as the case may be) try to keep from falling.

It occurs to me while listening to Friend Number One that asking such questions takes a little courage. Riding a bus network you're unfamiliar with, especially in a new city, can be intimidating. Trains are easy, what with the lack of deviation and standardized propensity for copious maps and signage. Planes even moreso, because of the focus on (cough– revenue– whoops) customer service. 

But buses, with their reroutes, detours, schedule changes, unpredictable running times… then there's the whole matter of personal interaction, which you know I love, but which I know can be stressful for people. There's a stereotype of what bus drivers are like which only exacerbates this. I'm thrilled so many people are willing and able to take that leap, to just walk outside and put their faith in the universe. It's worked out so far, I suppose. I try to reward that intrepid vulnerability with focused and helpful kindness, that it might grow further. Who knows what great doors their knocking will one day open. Never mind that at the time of this story, every single route at this stop did go to Broadway. But we have way bigger concerns than how intelligent the questions are.

"I do. Come on in." We're a 49, eastbound at 8th Avenue.

Friend Two puts his bike on the rack. 
"You're an awesome bus driver," Friend One, the sober half of this crew, tells me. "You're really awesome. I have to say that though, 'cause I don't have any fare!"
"Ha! I'm gonna choose to believe you! I'll take it!" I quip, as I jump outside to help the other guy with the rack. Those new yellow bike rack handles may be tricky, but they work. It's impossible to get the handle onto the front tire, but you want that. It means it's also impossible for the bike to fly off.
"You really are awesome, though," Friend One says as Friend Two and myself reenter the bus. "You know, you're savin' this guy's life by giving him a ride. 'Cause if he tried to ride home in the state that he's in…!"
"Bike riding drunk, oh no! What'll the people say!" 

Friend Two, having finished thanking me profusely, feels a memory stir. "You drove the 358, and the 5," he shouts.
"You've got a killer memory!" I yell in reply. "The 5, wow. That was years ago!"
"I know you remember my sorry ass!" Half-laughing, half rueful.

I take another look at his face. Lively brown eyes, storyteller's eyes, gazing out from hollow sockets; thin, tan frame, wearing clothes two sizes too large, maybe from an earlier lifetime. There's something immensely charismatic about him, though. Some people, by virtue of their quality, the sheer magnetism of their character, manage to overwhelm even their own appearance. You've gotta love these guys. "I know I've seen you, but the question is from where?"

"Well, I used to always be at Denny and Aurora…."
I look at him, comprehending. Then I practically scream his name: "SHADOW!"
"Yeah!"
A hundred scattered memories coming together: "Shadow! Oh, my goodness! At Denny and Aurora!"
"Yeah!"
It's the middle of the night, but it may as well be noon. "Third most photographed sign in all of Seattle!" I howl. That's what he would always say. There was Pike Place Market, the Pink Elephant sign, and then there were Shadow's cardboard signs with the jokes.
"Haha, yeah, you remember!"
"Shadow! This is huge. 'Cause I've been wondering what happened to you, man! I haven't seen you in years!"

I can hardly conceal my joy that this man is still alive. When faces on the street disappear, you fear the worst. First they're gone for a day or a fortnight, and you think nothing of it. But as the months go by you remember there's something odd about this street corner. Something's missing. They may have hardly registered when you first passed through, but their absence, over time, gets louder and louder. A void has made itself known. Longtime readers will remember Andy After Death, or my take on the late Gaylen.

But Shadow, both in physical form and in my memory, is far from dead. He's standing right beside me, saying, "I got an apartment now!"
"What! And a haircut!"
"My real name's Russ."
"Russ, my real name's Nathan."
"Good to meetcha."
"Likewise. Oh my goodness, you're alive!" The cortisol and epinephrine are running high as we choose to keep our dialogue at shouting level for no real reason. I'm feeling great. "Buddy a mine is a filmmaker! Said he was making some kind of something, documentary about you!"
"Yeah!" 
"Yeah, I don't know him too well, but we were wondering where the heck you went,"
"His name's Michael."
"Oh man, he's gonna blow up when he finds out you're still alive. We were talking about you not more than a month ago! This is fantastic! An apartment, holy cow!"
"Oh lemme pull the bell," Friend One says.
"Dude, he knows where we're goin'," Shadow says.
"Hey, I do pirate impersonations," Friend One continues. 

In the remaining blocks our conversation went into overdrive, as we, three men from different walks, yelled with glee about everything and nothing, about apartments, pirates, bicycles, bus routes, signs, haircuts, about all the great and terrible things in this turning globe, about life, and death, and life.

---

"Hope we didn't take away to much from your music there, screamin'," I said to the girl with earphones seated at the front, after they'd left. She'd been there for everything. 
"Oh, I turned my music off to listen to you guys!"
"Excellent! Yeah, I'm just so overjoyed to see him again, because you see these faces, and then you don't see them for years, and you wonder if they've died, and then sometimes you'll hear that they did die, but he, but, Shadow's not dead! He's completely alive!"
"And doing very well it sounds like!"
"So incredible. What were you listening to?"
"Gorillaz."
"Oh great. You know, I like Demon Days more than the first one that's more popular. Demon Days is hard to find on vinyl though…"
"Really?"

My trolley bus may have not have a transmission, but bus driving is all about switching gears. I dive into a completely different headspace as she and I continue discussing music. But as a part of me always remains focused on driving, so another part of me remained on Cloud Nine, smiling long after it made sense. I can hear the joyous echoes of his living voice now, and now, and now still.

"Wait, what kinda music?"

There'd been a long pause lasting several stops. With some folks you can comfortably switch in and out of silence during such circumstances when you know you'll be together for a while– plane flights being the prime example. With others there's this odd pressure to fill the dead air or else. The gentleman here on the 70, in the chat seat now, falls in the former category. An African-American fellow, my generation, who greeted me with more verve than anyone else on the route this morning: the kind of hello you give not out of obligation but because you want to, because the connection feels too life-affirming to pass up. The Amazon crowd has just abandoned us at Harrison, and the bus is thinning out as Pioneer Square approaches. We'd been talking about activities besides work, and he'd said something about music. It felt entirely natural to lapse into silence and then blurt out the above question minutes later. 

"Anything I coul' get my hands on," he replies, "but I play piano."
"That's AWESOME!" I exclaim, without irony. Stephen Pinker once wrote about the extremization of language, in the sense that words formerly used to described things like hurricanes and fear of God are now used to define items like toothpaste and cupcakes. The downside to this is that when something truly astonishing actually occurs, we really are speechless, having no vocabulary left over to describe it. 

For me that's just not the case. I really do think certain toothpaste is awe-inspiring. I'm so grateful for whoever ingrained this perspective, whatever chemical imbalance, who knows, that exists in me which allows me to be so thankful– and therefore so easily excited– about so many things in life. My dear friends are kind. They patiently listen as I continually express astonishment at things like cars letting me in or sunlight filtering through trees. 

"I'm easily thrilled," I'll say, by way of explanation. 
"I know," they'll say.

Our friend on the 70 smiles. I continue. "I'm learnin' that now from my Mom. She tried to teach me when I was little, and I hated it at the time. That was a mistake!"
"Well," he says. "You, just. You bleed enthusiasm, man. About life in general."
What a great turn of phrase, I thought. Bleed. That's one of the nicest things I've heard in weeks. "Thanks, man!"
"I can see it. Like I said 'piano,' and you were like, 'awesome!'"
We fall apart cackling.
He says, "'cause a lot a people live real extravagant lives on the outside, but,"
"There's something missing on the inside,"
"On the inside, yeah." 
"Oh that's painful. To see. And the thing is, I don't know where it comes from. I be driving the bus in the middle of the night and somebody will ask me, why are you so happy? And I'll be like–" hands in the air– "I don't know!"
His laugh, colored with joy and vigor, making all things new.
I say, "and maybe it's good I don't know."
"Yeah, no need to find out what it is, or bottle it up. Just keep pumpin' it out, man, cause it's rubbin' off on me!"
"Tha's why I'm here!"

I wish I could've been outside at Third and James as he got off there, if only to see his effervescent grin totally out of context, the last sort of expression you expect to see on that block. I hope some stranger on the sidewalk was able to witness it, catch some of its edge and then maybe, however briefly, look out at the world with wonder. 

"Wow, I've never been so close to a bus driver before! Or seen one so friendly! This bus is so crowded!" 

This youngster is bubbly with energy, like I am. I love when field trips get on my bus. A group of thirty-plus eight and nine year-olds is piling on through the back door at Virginia, on our way to Seattle Center. They're filling up from the rear, and are now oozing up to the front. Closest to me is the aforementioned youngster, leaning in with enthusiasm, a young African-American boy with close-cropped hair and reading glasses. Everyone's wearing the same blue print T-shirt and some manner of shorts. 

"I've never seen a bus this full!" he exclaims.
"Yeah, it's kind of exciting!" 

We ask each other how our days are. We're both doing really great. I'm driving the 1, and they're going to the new park at the Center. What could be better? I ask how he likes his school. 

"It's okay."
"Seven out of ten?"
"More like six out of ten."
"Oh, no! I hope you've got good people around you there, good friends."

He asks about bus driving, and I expound briefly on my love for it. Because I'm on the second of three shifts on this particular day, I find myself talking both to him and myself about the value of keeping things positive, keeping the stress down– "keepin' it light," as one driver told me. That stuff doesn't register with him. What does register is tech talk. He drinks up the dials, speedometers and tachometers and more, talk of the wire and deadspots, which he intuitively understands. I'm explaining why intersecting lanes of wire need to be dead in one direction, sometimes a hard concept to convey, but he just gets it. "Otherwise the electricity would go everywhere," he says.
"Exactly!"

I talk with a lot of people about kindness, humanity, film, why I take pictures. All that is great. Those are meaningful conversations, but they're founded on generalities. It's not every day I get to bounce back and forth with someone about dynamic versus regenerative braking, or the changing concepts of perfection in pre-Gothic and Gothic art. These things just don't come up that often. Recently a fellow film photographer rode my 70 and we instantly dived into a discussion of film stock and paper that was probably– okay, definitely– unintelligible to everyone around us, but as for ourselves, well, we were wallowing around in high hog heaven. We all have minutiae we carry around, but which doesn't often get to crawl out of its hiding places. Static and accelerated fatigue testing. Nicomachean ethics. Fake nails in gel versus acrylic. How best to reinforce the top lift and counter. What resides in the hallways of the mind sitting next to you?

We're having a great time, in other words, this pre-teen boy and I, throwing three-syllable words around. He asks, "so tell me, what do all the dials mean?"

Before I can continue our joyous technical discourse a man sitting in the chat seat interrupts. He was on my morning shift, hours ago.
"Can we like, get going here?" he snorts.
"Oh, we are," I say. "Just gotta keep it safe."
"Well. I've got a schedule to keep!"
"You and me both!"

As he lapses into disappointed silence, I make sure to answer the boy's question. I want this kid to feel comfortable talking to strangers, to have a good experience doing so, not be cowed into conforming to a wash of tiresome pessimism.

"So that's the speedometer of course, and even though it says eighty trolleys can only actually go forty, and over there is the voltmeter, which has to stay in that green area…."

When they all leave, after he's lined up on the sidewalk with his classmates and their anxious chaperones, he waves at me and waves again, eyes bright and full of promise, the energy you have before you get hurt.

Now it's time to be present with the grumpy guy.

"Okay," I say, "let's get you where you're goin'!"
"I'm sorry," he says. "I didn't mean to sound like a, you know." 
"Oh, it's all right. You probably wanna get where you're going, I can understand that."
"Yeah, but you know. He sounded like a good kid. Real bright."
"Real bright yeah, he was sharp. Don't see that all the time. Or I don't. How's your day been so far? I remember I saw you this morning on the 2."

We're both working split shifts today, as it turns out. I'm doing an unusual three-shift marathon, for reasons too boring to elucidate here (read: bought too much film!), and he's on his long break now, with just enough time to go home for lunch before racing back for his second shift. We talk about long days and lunch breaks, ways of getting by. He shares about a recent injury– a gash in his foot too large to sew up. The only way for him to address the wound was to tape it up. The whole affair makes walking difficult.

"I can imagine!"
"Yeah, the first few steps are the worst, but after that it gets easier."
A sentence which holds true for many things in life. "Oh good," I say aloud. "Now I hope it's a temporary thing, this, not a permanent thing,"
"Oh god no yeah, it's temporary."
"Good good."

He left me feeling better. He had a severely curved spine, and a somewhat disfigured face, possibly Bell's palsy, but I think I detected a smile. 
Soon after, a third person came forward. Elderly Caucasian female, smartly dressed. 
"Whats your name?"
"Nathan. And yours?"
"Patti. I just want to say thank you for being so good at your job, and handling all the crazy people the way you do. You're so good at it." 
"Oh, thank you! For saying that. You don't always get the feedback, you know?"

We were just about at her stop. I could tell she wanted to tarry, stick around a little in this strange friendly environment. I did too and would have, were I not driving the 1. What's more beautiful than that sensation, when society dictates this should be a short interaction because of class or time or status, but they don't really want to leave, because of how good they feel around you? Are there higher compliments, stronger statements of equality? The girl at the cash register, the man making your gyros. You want to break the rules and just keep talking, learn something about their life and yours, and get to that space where we're not afraid anymore, where conforming to silence is so last month....

I feel a sense of comfort when low-income or working class people get on. Maybe it's because I come from a similar background. It might have to do with our often sharing in the outsider status of being non-white. Or perhaps it's simply because these folks are generally nicer to me than their upper-class counterparts. I don't know. In any event, I'm comforted by the sight of this black American man stepping onto an otherwise thoroughly silent 13, populated at this early morning hour by commuters boarding from their homes in upper Queen Anne. 

Unlike the rest of the bus, this gentleman's wide awake, sipping demurely from his tall boy at six AM already. Different strokes, I guess. I'm a water man myself. I don't press the issue. There are times on the 7 when you pray for a drunk this friendly. We greet each other loudly and with gusto.

He's telling me what happened just prior to the bus arriving. A woman out for a stroll with her dog had reacted with alarm upon seeing him. "She was like, 'oh, get away from me!'" he recounts. "Done ran across the street and everything."

My mind flashes to Obama's Trayvon Martin speech, wherein the President described what a lifetime of people moving to the other sidewalk or locking their car doors when you approach feels like. 

"She was up outta there. Dog was happy to see me though, tail waggin' and everything."
"Dogs don't lie," I say with a smile.
"Dogs don't lie, that's right. Animals are cool wit' me."
"Well, maybe he'll teach his owner a thing or two."
"Le's hope so. She was beautiful, drop dead gorgeous at six o'clock in the mornin'."
"Well now, looks ain't everything, you know,"
"Looks ain't everything, that's fa sho! You need the outside and the inside."
"Gotta have a little somethin' upstairs, right?"
"I said, 'hey, don't need to be scared o' the only black person in Queen Anne!'" 

He's saying it in a joking voice. We waver, hovering between gravity and the cure of levity.
"This ain't the 1700s!" I say, declaratively. "S'pposed to be the twenty-first century!"
"Yeah!"
"I thought this was Seattle! We're not in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. We're not in, Pawtucket–"
"Oh, this ain't Seattle! I don't know what they did with Seattle, but this sho ain't it!"
"Aw, now you're gonna start breakin' my heart. We got one or two good people here!"
"Yeah, but then we got these other folks still stuck on Jim Crow."
"Workin' offa stereotype."
"I'm supposed to have jobs, and smarts, and stuff." 

He was joking up until the last line. You can hear the child in his voice, frustrated and confused. How to keep up when the same is expected of you, but odds and circumstance sway so far from favor? Punishing ourselves with blame seems as bad as projecting our problems on everyone else. But here he is now, finding the humor again. Who was it who said the only way through life is with laughter?

He's saying, "I'm tellin' you, don't be gettin' no tan, man! You be in for it! I see you gettin' a little dark around the arms, watch out!"
"You tellin' me I gotta get some sunscreen?"
"Fa sho!"
"Some of that 30 SPV?"
"Yeeeah! Hey, let's have a seat for the lady!" Referring to the senior now getting on.
"Thanks for bein' a gentleman! This is the polite bus." Into the mic I let them know we're switching routes. "Folks, we're gonna continue as a 2; this'll be the 2 route today, goin' out to First Hill and then the Central Area..."
"We'll be goin' out to the ghetto this morning, ladies and gentlemen," our friend says in mock tour-guide tone. I don't know what the rest of the bus is thinking, but we're sure enjoying ourselves, riffing off of each other. "Gonna see how the other half lives on this fine Wednesday," he continues.
"Go somewhere a little more interesting!"
"Little bit of excitement comin' up this morning–"
"Gonna wake these folks up a little!"
"Roll them windows up a little but don't be scared, everyone!" Theatrical sigh. "It's tough, bein' spokesman for the ghetto."
"It's a tough job!"
"Standin' on top o' the Columbia Tower,  batman cape on,"
"Wind blowin–"
"Wind blowin' through my hair,"
"Well thanks for pullin' this tough gig, walkin' the walk! Keepin' me company!"

We alternate between our energetic nothings and real conversation. I ask him what he's been up to. He's just returned from Phoenix, where he has family, along with a few other cities.

"You got people everywhere!"
"Hey, Abraham Lincoln said it was all right!"
"Oh well hey, if he gave the go-ahead,"
"I checked it out with old Abe."
"Nice guy,"
"Real nice!"
I fare well to some deboarding passengers. The nurses are leaving us at Virginia Mason. "You guys are hilarious," one says. "You made my morning!"
"Aw thanks! That's why we're here! Have a good one."
"Change the world!" he calls out after her. 
"Oh I like that," I say. "Change the world. I'm gonna use that. That's way better than 'have a good one!'"

Later on he'll tell me I made his morning too, repeatedly, and he won't take my "aw, shucks" deflections for an answer. He's leaning in with intention. Our gabbing had accomplished something beyond mere jest. "No, really," he said, searching for the words, thanking me for being myself but also something else, too: there are those who don't always get to live in the equitable, uncritical glow of egalitarian spaces. For fifteen minutes he didn't feel judged, evaluated, or avoided. We'd simply sat and stretched the old talking muscle like, to borrow a phrase from both Michael Mann and W. Somerset Maugham, "a couple of regular fellows." I could see how it had impacted him, and was thankful to have taken part.

Did you miss my show over the weekend? Never fear! Come by during the excitement of First Thursday (the 6th), where it will still be showing. I'll be there from 4pm to 8. Information here.

I'm talking with somebody about how Rainier and Kenyon, where he lives, is like Watts. We're both from South Central LA. We're talking about South Gate, talking about how if you really think about it–

"Well, I don't believe it!!! To what do I owe this GREAT HONOR!"

It's Carlos, stepping on and into the conversation like a jolt of energy never before seen at 0700 hours.

"As I live and breathe! Carlos!" I reach out for a firm handshake. "Where you been all my life?"
"Nathan, shit, man! What's goin' on? You on this one now?" Referring to the route we're doing this morning, the 13.
"Naw, special guest appearance, one day only."
"Well, iss a honor for this route to have you, only the best."
I can see he means it. "Aw man, thank you!"
"Don't you work nights?" For some reason everybody remembers me from the 7. "Doin' what, 7's and 49's?"
"Exactly, that's my baby. Love that stuff. I'll be back soon enough! Now tell me 'bout you, where you been?"
"Well, actually, I got this injury."
"I'm sorry! on the job or off the job?"
"On."
"Good. I would hope it's on the job, I mean if you're gonna get injured. So they pay."
"Yeah. I slipped on this chain in the warehouse…" He explains the details. "I go in for an MRI on Monday."
"I hope it goes well. Shoot, Carlos. I'm sorry this happened, it's a bummer this happened."
"Yeah. But it's off-shore maritime, so I've had the last three months off,"
"Are they,"
"Yeah, still gettin' paid,"
"Oh great. There you go," I say.
"I still gotta show up every day though, you know how they do it, the rules and everything. Sit around for seven hours."
"Oh man. Bring a good book!"
"Or, bring some sleeping pills and sleep the whole time!"
"Ha!"
"I did that yesterday."

I offer to help a middle-aged woman with her suitcase down the stairs. "Oh, wow," she says.
"Yeah, it gets me outta the seat, gets the old blood flowing,"
"Your butt must be numb! What's your normal route?"
"The 7!"
"Oh! Oh." Her grin turns into a look of respect. "You got your work cut out for you!"

"Listen," Carlos is saying after she's left. "I wanted to tell you about this. So I'm on the 131 goin' home late at night, real late, midnight somethin'. I have two ones and a twenty, so I put in the two one-dollar bills."
"Okay yeah uh huh,"
"Yeah. I put in two ones, but I don't have–"
"The remaining fifty cents."
"Yeah– actually, I had $2.25. So it's just,"
"Just the twenty-five cents left,"
"Yeah. But the driver won't give me a transfer!"
"Oooh my gaash!"
"And it's midnight!"
"You gotta get home!"
"Yeah! I've gotta get this transfer. So the whole bus chips in, they all put in together like twenty-five pennies,"
"Oh cool. That's impressive. Sometimes it takes a village!"
"Yeah!"
"We gotta look out for each other!"
"And still he doesn't wanna give me a transfer!"
"What?"
"He says, it don't matter that everyone else–"

"That's ridiculous! Okay. That's ridiculous. And you know what, okay. People talk about you gotta pay the full fare because in McDonalds if you only pay partial they're not gonna give you a whole hamburger, but that analogy doesn't make sense here because at McDonalds they have the ability to return the money you've already given them! Here, that's not possible. He has to give you a ride. He has an obligation to give you a transfer, 'cause you've already put money down. Plus, it's the middle of the night! 
The 131 is hourly by that time."
"It's the middle of the night!"
"You gotta get home! We gotta look out for each other!"
"Maybe he hates his life." He says it in a sympathetic tone. "Or hates people." 
"This is a people person job!"
"Exactly. You know, you hear about these drivers gettin' skateboards thrown at 'em, and I hope you don't mind me sayin' this,"
"I think I know what you're about to say, and I agree."
"Half of 'em bring it on themselves! Course I'm not saying every situation,"
"Oh of course,"
"But honestly, when you're,"
"What are they exactly, how are they expecting people to react?"
"Exactly!"
I add, "'cause I gotta think about if I'm treating this person a certain way, I may see him again in an hour! Or maybe, he may have five brothers!"
"Haha, yeah! You're thinkin' ahead."
"Whatever energy I put out, I'm gonna get back in my face multiplied by ten."
"Totally. Totally. That's how it works. Man, lemme know what. Of all these bus drivers. You're my favorite, Nathan." 
"Man, Carlos, thank you. There's some good guys out there. Good drivers."
"Yeah, there's some good guys out there."

I don't think my way is the best way. There are many good ways to do this gig. But those "good guys out there," as we put it (and gals!), they can make one world of a difference.