“Nathaniel!” Marlon called out from midway back on my E Line.
“Heyyy,” I replied. Must be someone I’ve chatted with in the past.
“When you get up to 100th, can you hug the curb real tight so I can kick these boxes out?”
“Hug the curb at 100th, yeah sounds good!”

As Marlon stepped out I called out, as I often do, “stay safe!”

After I did so I heard an echo from the back of the bus, speaking the words in exactly the same tone I had: “stay safe!”

I figured it was a youngster mocking me. Youngsters do that sometimes. As I’d just told two sex workers about an hour earlier: “you can’t control what other people say about you.” The ladies were telling me about how “one of our own was talking shit about us to the other guys.” The three of us had agreed that you simply can’t control if others make fun of you, what slander they come up with, how they may try to smear your character… but you can control how you respond. You can control your character. If they want to play nice and talk, that’s another thing, but otherwise… “If you just keep doin’ you,” I’d said, “nevermind what they say, eventually people will realize what’s true and what isn’t. Holdin’ your head high, right?”

So I ignored the boy in the back. It had to have been him who’d spoken; he was also talking to himself, half-singing and half-talking, energetically gesticulating to the empty back lounge. He had on a standard-issue university alum sweatshirt and beanie, no hood, curly hair like me and a similar complexion, and pajama pants. A dozen blocks later he began walking forcefully toward me while we were stopped at a zone, not jumping out the back door, not going out the middle, continuing up to me, closer– this is when bus drivers always take a deep breath, preparing for the worst–

Which is when he said, breathlessly, “hey man I just really love how you roll I just wanted to come hang out with talk to you for a second while I ride into town, bro.”
I couldn’t hide my enthusiastic surprise. “Yeah man, absolutely! How’s it going?”
“It’s been pretty dope, just riding around in my scooter all day I’m new in Seattle just checking out everything looking around, it’s really cool!”
“Aw sweet, welcome to Seattle! Where you comin’ from?”
“Phoenix Arizona.”
“I’m from LA–”
“Oh that’s hella cool, but also like hella crazy, ‘cause every bus driver I’ve met so far has been from LA.”
“That’s so wild!”
He said, “what do you like about Seattle?”

I thought for a moment as I looked at the Amazon towers far in the distance. This city used to be so easy to praise. I said, “the fresh air.”
“Me too. I’m going downtown because it seems like a hella lit place to ride your scooter around at night, man! I just don’t like the drug use, though. Hey I hear there’s this new thing called fentanyl they’re smoking it on buses.”
“Yeah,” I sighed, “it happens sometimes.”
“What is fentanyl?”
“It’s… it’s kind of like morphine, except it’s way more intense. It’s so– get this, it’s so potent that two milligrams is enough to kill an average-size person. No joke.”
“Daaayumn.”
“Yeah and two milligrams is like four grains of salt.”
“Oh wow that’s really crazy.”
“Yeah it’s super intense, and it’s really easy to OD on. It’s so easy to OD on. And it makes me sad because fentanyl is mostly used by younger people, right–”
“Right–”
“–and I’m like that’s my generation, man! It’s not good!”
“Yeah I don’t do that. I don’t like drugs. I just smoke cigarettes, which I know they’re bad for you too.”
“Well. It’s not the worst vice.”
“For sure I just do it for stress.” We were discussing the worst news in the city and he remained unflappably himself. Isn't this the ultimate skill? To remember the muscle of joy, of goodness, through thick and thin? In a tone of exultant curiosity he said, “hey so there’s a couple questions I always ask bus drivers ‘cause I wanted to be a bus driver I just turned twenty-three–”
“Oh cool! I started when I was twenty-one–”
“Really?” he continued, in his apparently customary breathless excitement. It was contagious. “Awesome I always ask bus drivers what do they like most about driving a bus and so far they’ve always every one has said they like giving people a good safe ride so people can get where they’re going.”
“That’s really cool to hear that’s what they say. For me I like helping people. It makes me feel good, you know? Like talking to them, helping, connecting helping them feel connected, like they belong and stuff.”
“Yeah you give a really chill ride. Hella smooth, bro. like I was back there just chilling out.”
“Yeah I try to keep it really smooth.”
“Yeah I’m never gonna report you!”

Every time I announced an upcoming zone over the microphone, he’d exclaim, “niiiice!” He looked out at the Aurora Bridge with such enthusiastic verve the landscape had to work to keep up. “Yeah I love Seattle,” he breathed. “I just don’t like all the drugs though.”
“Yeah me neither. And the thing is it hasn’t always been like this. Fentanyl’s super new. It’s only been around a few months now.” This was last winter.
“Yeah three four months–“
“It’d be cool if it wasn’t around too long.”
“That’d be hella awesome. I love riding around on my scooter and looking at all the people who have jobs working. It’s just crazy to think each of them did all the stuff you gotta do to get ready and apply and get a job and keep a job. I rap and I ride my scooter. I just got this house, man, it’s just me and my girl for now but I wanna find people who wanna just come live with us for free you know, ‘cause I got a PS4 I think and a PS5 and hella video games, and it’d be cool to just find some people who’d wanna live with us without paying anything and just hang out together with me and my girl, you know?”
“Oh you’re not gonna have any problem finding people who wanna come live with you for free and play video games!”

He was finagling his scooter now, trying to get it through the front door to deboard while also stepping over it. An older man was outside waiting to enter and after a few seconds of waiting began to curse the boy out. “Goddamn shit! Come on!”

While I can’t say our youngster didn’t notice the man berating him, I can unequivocally say that it didn’t have the slightest impact on his psyche.
“Right on,” he said in amiable distraction as he scooted out.
The man’s hate was an inconsequential puff of smoke, an almost pathetic attempt that had nothing on our friend’s breezy goodness. He was riding a wave of his own making. Already flying away on his scooter now, there he is, singing, waving his arm in some way that makes sense to him, gestures for an audience of one as the stars and clouds smiled from up on high. He looked up at them as he rode and somehow didn’t fall down.

Keep doin’ you, I said to myself.

--

P.S.– I'll have artwork on display in this month's Pioneer Square artwalk! More here.

My film, Men I Trust, has won itself another laurel: Best Editing, at Tokyo International Short Film Festival! We spent over a year editing this picture, which is long for a short film (33 minutes) and involves multiple time periods, memories and flash-forwards. Thank you, Tokyo, for recognizing our efforts! More on the film here.

Click here for the festival's interview with me. Hope you enjoy!

I can still see fairly well without my glasses, but I can’t make out faces at a distance. I stepped onto the light rail after a full evening of driving, surveying the interior; in the late night hours you have to do that. I didn’t think I needed glasses anymore tonight, living in the antisocial city of Seattle as I do… but wait, I was forgetting that my Seattle isn’t antisocial. It’s vivacious and welcoming. I shouldn’t have been surprised to hear enthusiastic voices.

I. Matt

“Hey, is that your buddy?” someone asked someone else.
“Heyyyy!” said the other, standing to face me.
I could recognize him now. What was his name? It’d been a while. “Is it… Matt?”
“Man, you’re good! What’s up, you just gettin’ offa work?”
“Yup, just got done doin’ some E line. How ‘bout you?”

He was the same person who’d scramble onto my 7 and spend the entire ride carefully putting on lipstick and eyeliner. That takes courage, especially in the excessively heteronormative space the 7 can sometimes be. But Matt is Matt, fully, scruffy and effeminate no matter who’s around, and there’s something impressive about his committed enthusiasm and confidence of self. I never saw any of the neighborhood brothers bother him. Tonight he shared about his day with characteristic fast-talking speed, the words tumbling over each other as he mentioned an Issaquah-Sammamish bike ride, “then went south to see a friend now my buddy and I we’re on our way home.”

I nodded at the other man, a considerably shier fellow slightly younger than me.

“Issaquah, that seems like a nice place to ride bike,” I said.
“Yeah, but…" Matt paused. "It’s their world, you know? All those rich folks out there.”
“I know what you mean. Didn’t used to be like that.” I spent much of my childhood on the Eastside, and could relate. The image of the old Bellevue Square flashed in my mind– a welcoming space of brick and green trim and natural light, the kind of middle-class suburban haunt you went to during adolescence. Now it’s an impenetrable fortress of glass and gleaming marble, no longer Orange Julius and World Wrapps but Ben Bridge and Burberry. Those of us who remember the old Eastside can still find our special corners, the hidden parks and open lots, hints of a time before the suburbs became so class-specific. Matt would’ve liked the old mall.

“They’re doin’ it even out there now though,” he was saying. “The pills.”
I was incredulous. “On the Eastside?!”
“Yeah and then on the train earlier we saw like fifty pieces of foil all over. It’s bad, dude," he said, breathlessly. "I was talkin’ to this cop outside my house, I live on the bottom floor and I have a window and right outside the window in the alley there’s guys there doin’ the, you know, and I was like 'if they’re in the alley can I ask them to leave.' He said it’s better just to tell him. Don’t want ‘em to…”
I understood. “Right you don’t wanna antagonize them, and then they know you live there. Are there bars on the window?”
“Naw, but it’s, the panes are too small for a person to squeeze–"
“Okay good good–"
“Yeah they’d have to be really desperate!”
“That’s the thing now,” I said. “You used to be able to talk to anybody. But if they’re, if all they’re thinking about is getting a fix, you can’t talk to them, can’t reason with them.”
“Right. Their brain has no room for anything else.”

II. David

I looked over, noticing a commotion by the nearest train doors at Westlake. A familiar Dostoyevskyan figure was trying to get on. In June 2013 I described him as "an underweight man in the massive black jacket, with rotting teeth and dirty fingers,“ a description still accurate tonight. I say points for consistency! He thrust his cane forcefully into the train doors to get them to reopen.

“This guy’s cool,” Matt said to me, reassuringly.
“Yeah, I know him. One of the twins!” After the fellow had made it onboard, to the chagrin of everyone around, I called out happily to him. “Heyy! David or Daniel?”
“David!”

They’re identical twins, but David’s always had it a little more together. He uses a cane now. I can barely understand him, but we’re fluent in the language of smiles, having grinned at each other for over a decade. Matt and his partner left us at Capitol Hill and I went over to David, grabbing the seat pair in front of his. I tend to run into more of my friends in the last train car, but it’s also often the dirtiest. I gestured at the floor around us, which was swamped in a viscous pink and brown liquid I had to laugh at as stepped around.

“What happened here?”
“It wasn’t me, I just got here!”
“Ha! I know.”
“I no see you on 7 for long time.”
“I’m doing the E Line now, every night! I’m gonna get back to that 7 though. I miss it.”

He said something unintelligible, I think pertaining to how the streets have changed. Something about 12th and Jackson, the telltale Target shopping bags and blue pills changing hands. That’s the subject of conversation nowadays among us street denizens; I mostly know old-timers, and fentanyl is by and large a young person’s game. The new crowd on the street may be obsessed with it, but the time has come for that generational divide which always comes, where the older set can’t believe the new drugs the kids are into. “I thought I was gettin’ high,” a mid-aged man told me one night, incredulous at the amazing foolishness of his youthful compatriots. It wasn’t always the case that street people were repelled by other street people. A voice across the aisle spoke up in agreement to David’s musings and my last comment.

III. Tommy

“That E Line is da worst fuckin’ bus route of all da buses in this whole city. Every single one they fighting, they putting needles in theyselves, they something goin’ on in da back. I no take that route unless I absolutely have to.”

Like Matt and David, he was in his forties, and as uniquely himself as they. Whereas Matt marched to his own drumbeat no matter who was around, and David was an ebullient propulsive force with an enthusiasm not even canes, train doors or a decade of street living could diminish, this new fellow had the discerning eyes of a thinker. You got the impression he did a lot more observing than speaking; a lonesome face that hadn't always frowned, with a lot on his mind and not enough people to share it with. His accent and deep olive skin hailed from warmer climes, and the scissor-cut of his salt-and-pepper beard told you, along with the angular lines of his prematurely aging face, that this was a state he’d grown accustomed to surviving, and that there had been other, different states before.

David left us at the next station, and I continued listening to this third fellow. I couldn’t argue with him. I’ve had a different experience of the E myself, but only slightly. I think I get away with a lot of good graces by respecting people. That helps you 90 times out of a 100, but there are still those remaining ten times where, as anyone alive long enough will tell you, the world explodes on you no matter who you are. He changed out his sock for a fresh one and expounded.

“Dey beat each udder up, dey shoot themselves up and drop their needle, drop their foil, and there are decent people around!”
“Exactly!” I said. “Old-timers, kids, sitting right next to them!”
“And nobody do nothing. At McDonalds Third and Pike they do this with their hands on the wall, [unintelligible] red meat, dealing, shooting, and cops on the other side don’t do nutting! Dey know what’s goin' on. You try to tell them what’s goin' on and they, they just–"
“‘Oh, we can’t do anything–'"
“Exactly! They blame it on someone else. Always it’s someone else. No responsibility. So: who is it who is responsible for what is going on the streets?”
“I don’t even know, man. I can’t, as a driver I cannot call for help, because they won’t come!”
“I know,” he said ruefully (more on that can of worms here). “No one does any-ting, for real.” His accent and greying beard combined to suggest wisdom, some Central American prophet deep in the mountains. He also had a habit of avoiding eye contact, as though he had access to some vague and distant dimension I could only imagine. “Dey can’t arrest me 'cause I only speak da truth. People just walk past, or dey sit there, broad day-light–" he spaced out the syllables of the phrase– “like nothing is wrong, looking at their phone. I’m like are they crazy? Do they see what is happening right next to them? Do they see anyting, any reality good or bad?”
“They only see their phone! Or their earbuds, like this. Totally closed off.”
“Totally.”
“They used to talk!” Our voices rose in fervor and enthusiasm. He was looking at me now.
“For real!” he exclaimed. “I would walk through Pike Place at the park by the water up above and say to the families, the people walking around, ‘look! It’s a beautiful day! Look at the sunshine!’ And they don’t say nutting. Dey pretend I’m not even there. Now, I don’t say anyting because they all think I’m crazy. Like da world has turned into some new planet where nobody talks to nobody anymore. Sometimes I think to myself am I da one who’s crazy, cause I feel like I be the only one.”

IV. Togetherness

I was grinning. We both were, alive to each other’s solitude, finally able to share. He was a waterfall held back, and now the floodgates were opening. Do you know the freedom of finding one of your own, at long last?

I said, “no man, it’s not you. They used to talk to people! Now, it’s totally different.”
“Totally different."
"They’re better at talking to computers than they are at talking to people.”
“Ha! Yes!”
“And I don’t think they’re happier! You look at them, how they look at their phones... they don’t look happy! They look depressed!”
“They are depressed!" he exclaimed. "You can tell! It’s easy to tell!”
“I’m like have they forgotten, it feels good to talk? It feels good to look around? Okay there’ll be a sunset, everything very beautiful the sky the clouds you know–“
“Uh huh.”
“–and they’re all looking down like this!”
“Hahahahaha!”
“They don’t even notice!!”

We were screaming. We were by far the loudest people on the bus. Two men in the back of the last car, straddle-sitting over what was probably a pile of melted ice cream, roar-laughing in joyful communion… and no one gave any sign of noticing.

“Ever since this coronavirus everyone has become so scared,” he said. “They block out the world, they block out people. They do phones, they do drugs, whatever.”
I heard the sentence and heard it again, doing a mental double-take. He'd put it together in a way I hadn’t. I’d never thought to associate the two before. But of course. “It’s all addiction,” I said by way of paraphrase, sitting in new understanding. “It’s all the same.” I could hear an echo, a line from one my favorite films: “no one cares about reality anymore.”
He said, “they all turn away.”

We went on like that because we had to. We needed to burst out laughing, to name the absurdity of new urban living, because no one else would. And yet in that absurdity, I found myself recoiling from the sensation of deriding these others. It is not for me to judge the age we find ourselves in. What’s wrong with retreating, hiding, being safe, being wary and careful?

In my own way I do those things too. I lack the resilience to scroll through news of our globe’s atrocities. I also turn away, but in the opposite direction: I take refuge in the present. In the prismatic glow of sunset light reflected between our skyscrapers. In the precision dexterity of piloting a trolley bus through a switch. The small realities, the ones we can reach out and feel. In the flash-hot silence of a recognized soul, the glimmering echo of a stranger’s eyes. Can you feel it? It was there, in between Matt’s glitter-punk eyeliner. It was there, in David’s ease with me, his comfort in being around someone who respects him.

I saw it too in this man’s eyes, a personality caught between condemnation and laughter, encouraged now by our togetherness. We were rebelling mightily against the pandemic-reborn ethos of “every (wo)man for himself,” because it was our nature to do so. Yes, that makes me outcast from the norm, a better fit socially with these misfit old-timers than everyone else on this train. But being the best version of yourself usually involves going against the crowd, and often– necessarily– means being lonely.

But who cares? That was always true. Who cares, when it also means the connections you do make will resonate that much more? When you're at peace with your own company, the one person who won't let you down? Because I was who I was, I was talking to him, and versa vice. I could hardly want it any other way.

“Thank you,” he said. “It makes me feel good I’m not the only one. I am happy we had this conversation ‘cause I was worried! Like I am the only person in the world who feels this way and there is something terrible wrong with me!”
“Naw man, it’s two of us at least! What’s your name?”
“I was just going to ask you. I’m Tommy from Jamaica.”
“Tommy from Jamaica, I’m Nathan. I’ll see you around.”
"Nice to meet you."
"You too!"

Today marks ten years to the day since this blog first began.

As you might recall, I decided to "retire" this blog in early 2020, for reasons explained here. For eight years I posted a new story about once every three days, and to give the blog an appropriate climax I shared a walloping 55 stories all at once to celebrate the blog's "end," and give readers something to chew on for a while. In case you missed it, here's a video of yours truly telling the blog's "final" story, in video form:

The problem is, though, that artists never retire. How could you ever stop having things to say, ideas to express? Life is too interesting. What I suspect in the above video has turned out to be true: the blog has continued alongside my other endeavors, as there are simply too many good stories happening out there, and I just can't resist sharing them with you. I've settled into a pattern of posting new content here at the start of every month– check back in, and tell a friend! (You can also use the "Subscribe" button on the upper right of this page (desktop format; scroll down if on a phone) for automatic updates!)

For myself, I've been hard at work on a second book, promoting the first one (including two wonderful talks for the folks in Carnation and Northgate, plus a great show at the Wing Luke), and working on a new film project. I'll have some cinema-related material for you soon.

Although I don't post stories as often now, the ones I do post come not from obligation but from a deep, compelled desire to do share. They're often longer and more substantive. Here are a few highlights from the blog's "post-retirement" phase:

Bus Stories:

• It's About Who's Around: This is the story that got me to break the retirement. I couldn't not write it. It was too meaningful to me.

A few reflections on how our current hard times shape how we see others, and what we can keep in mind on that score:

• State of the (Seattle) Union
  
• Do Not Hide From This Awful Sensation
  
• Not Because it is Easy
• Better to Suffer Injustice Than to Do It
• The Antidote

More generally–

• Release: Some thoughts on embarrassment, shame, and growing up.
• Raskolnikov in a Beanie: two passengers argue over mask-wearing and reveal much on race.
• Something Early: An E Line story both hard-edged and soft.

...and three deep dives:

1. Cigarettes and Fentanyl: All Aboard: You've been wondering about all the drugs on buses now. Here's the skinny.
2. It's Complicated: Why Rainier RapidRide seems like a good idea, but isn't.
3. The Gift & the Question: A piece on returning to the 7 (again) and how good it feels to be among people who still talk to each other.

On Films by Others:

• Trois Objects 1: on Michael Mann's Heat: An essay on the afternoon that got me into films.
• Stillwater: I do not require my friends to think like me. I share common ground with this film's protagonist as much as anyone else.
• Neither Here Nor There: My take on the Slap. Yes, that slap. Or more accurately, the more interesting fact that Chris Rock did not strike back.

On My Film:

• Grateful: A piece on my film's journey through the festival circuit;
• Reviews: Three reviews for my film, Men I Trust, by UK Film Review, Film Threat and more;
• Anya Patel interviews me at London's Dreamers of Dreams festival (video).

Press:

• Why I Wrote the Book (video, 6 mins): For Redmond Library's Summer Reading Program: a video intro on why the book exists:

• A favorite of the interviews I've given, an in-depth piece for PLU's student journal Saxifrage;
  
• A largely non-political essay I wrote for Democratic Socialist's of America's newspaper, Democratic Left.
• Seattle Met selects me as one of their 100 Power Players for 2021;
• International Examiner interview, plus a rare essay on race and being Asian-American;
• Two more pieces in Seattle Met: on driving during the pandemic, and a panel discussion transcript about fare enforcement.

Photography
New work and accompanying essays on place and feeling within the following cities:

• Shenzhen
• Taipei
• Milan

On Art

• On Seattle's Waterfront: Before and After: two favorite essays of mine, the first of which appears in local treasure Laura Hamje's book Concrete Ghosts, discussed by me here. There was a Seattle before the Seattle we see today.
• Reflections from Workin' On It: Another essay diptych, for Hart Boyd's zine, this one about artmaking in childhood vs. adulthood.
• Trois Objets 2: Antonello da Messina: I keep coming back to this painting, and not just because it's finally getting its due for containing "the greatest hand in the Italian Renaissance!" Everything I love about it and why.

This list is incomplete. If you're on a desktop, check out the selections and archives on the right; if you're on a smartphone, scroll down for the same. Enjoy the links above, explore more, and don't forget to check in around the 1st of every month for new material!

Was there a soul leftover at the end of this, another nighttime trip on the E Line? I looked in my rear-view mirror. Yes, there was. There are canned announcements you can play to ask people to leave, or follow directions, but I never use them. Just tell the people yourself. You can achieve wonders with your tone: what words you use, and how.

But this guy wasn’t budging.The odd thing about it was that he looked awake. I spoke into the microphone again. “Alright my buddy, it's our last stop here. Thank you so much.”

No reaction. He simply looked up at me, but not with the evil eye; his was the neutral eye, altogether more beguiling. After a long enough span of time, nothing is more terrifying than a blank expression. I sauntered back, swigging from my glass Perrier bottle. I carry it not as a weapon but as a noisemaker, and have found it essential for waking people up. I was about to speak again when he preempted me.

“How you doing, my brother!”
My friend! I exclaimed inwardly. He was no stranger but a familiar face from the 7, smelling much better than he once did. “Hey, maaan,” I said excitedly.
He reached up for a fistpound, stretching in his seat. Don’t you wake up slowly too?

“It's good to see you,” I continued. “Long time!”
He was middle-aged rugged, with a few gold teeth, but not in the gangster sense of things; he was too friendly, too present to those around him. Look at his inquisitive, wide-alive eyes and the defined jaw, like an African Brad Pitt with five o’clock (make that nine-o’clock) stubble. Perhaps at a loss for how to express his gratitude, he suddenly said with amiable force, “I’ll clean the bus for you!”

I knew I couldn’t stop him. Reader, if you can believe it, this has happened more than once. A passenger will be so appreciative of my treatment of the people, my enthusiasm for them, that they'll manifest an energy of thankfulness they hardly know what to do with. In looking around at the ubiquitously filthy E Line interior, they'll declare something along the lines of, “you deserve better than this. Here, gimme one second, I’ll take care of it for you!” For myself I don’t at all mind the squalid innards of my chosen routes, but I’ve discovered you can’t stop such a gesture. It would be like refusing a meal from those countries where the sharing of food is an almost holy act. I laughed with gratitude and said, “aw, you don’t have to do that!”
He replied loudly, “I heard your voice,” pointing to the microphone speakers, as though that quite naturally explained his janitorial enthusiasm now. “I knew it was you!”

I was moved, because last year's stint on the E Line was such an impersonal experience for me. They all scurry on and off through the back doors, and you have no opportunity to establish community, to create a safe space (more here on why Rainier RapidRide is a bad idea). It’s why I’ve since returned to the 7, despite my love for the Aurora Avenue corridor going all the way back to my 358 days.

“You're the best driver,” he was saying. “Better than all these motherfuckers. Even the Africans!” He meant it companionably, as in: even more than my own people!
“Nooo. Thank you.”
“You are the best one!”
What can I say to such things? Of course I’m not the best one. But again, you can’t refuse a meal. “That's an honor. I'm honored, man. Thank you.” Then I added by some way of explanation, “I try to respect everyone.”
“We can tell!” He practically brayed the line, so deep was his elation. “You think people don't recognize you, way up there.” Wagging his finger, with a singsong grin you couldn't resist: "Weee recognize you!”

His name was Biniyam. He and I stepped off together just as the security crew at Aurora Village came walking over, asking if they could help me. I love having those guys at various terminals now, but tonight I didn't need them.
“Actually, that turned out to just be an old buddy saying hey!”
They were as pleasantly surprised as I was. A week or two later in the same place, I saw another E Line parked with all its doors open. I could see the driver was having trouble getting someone off the bus, and walked over.

“Hey, do you need help waking somebody up…” I said as I entered, and, turning, recognized Biniyam. He began beaming, and changed his tune completely. But of course: he was no longer being yelled at, but smiled at. Sometimes it’s all about the soft approach (more tips on sleepers here). We pounded fists yet again as he said: “if you ask me to get up, I get up!”

We walked out together again, waving at the relieved and entirely nonplussed operator. Biniyam exclaimed to me, “I love you man! You love the people!”
I resisted the praise, as I always do, and focused instead on congratulating his resilient spirit. If these guys out here are able to be happy, to find respite in life's momentary joys, I have no excuse.

--

Not long after I would be helping David (whom I meet for the first time here) get settled in his wheelchair at northbound 85th. As we cruised up Aurora, he suddenly blared out in his customarily stentorian voice, “Yo, Nathan.”
“Hey!”
“You know what makes the world go round?”
“Tell me!”
“It ain’t love, bro.”

I had a reply of my own, but kept silent because I wanted hear his answer. I grinned when he voiced the very same word that was on my mind.
“It’s RESPECT.”
He roared the term like the monolith it was. The word was a landing. He hovered in between the end of the first syllable and the start of the second, the "–SP–," carefully holding the size of it, gifting the forceful second syllable the power of an airplane’s wheels on touchdown. ReSPect. He enunciated the final consonants like they were critical to the term, a denouement of sorts, a jet wing's trailing edge flaps deflecting downward, the comforting proof that you have made it home. He said the word, and the word was good. In life at large I continue to suspect that love is the answer, but in the world of The Street, in David’s world and mine, he was right.

It’s Respect.

It was respect that made the moment between Biniyam and I, sauntering up and out of the bus, exchanging a fistpound, his gold smile glittering under high black and grey clouds as he stalked off into another north end night. We carry such moments with us, or at least I do. They buoy me up when I'm alone. They remind me amidst all the hardship going on, of the good things I cannot forget are also true.

Thank you, World.

Although it has nothing to do with buses and almost nothing to do with cinema, I find myself drawn by "the Will Smith moment," because it has everything to do with human behavior, which we know is the only reason any of us are interested in the above two worlds in the first place.

1. A Different Stage

The uncensored video of the incident, which international audiences saw live, just plain fascinates me. It represents in microcosm a multitude of things, one of which is rarely to be found on television: I appreciated seeing a moment of actual true emotions, expressed with zero pretense. In watching the sort of exchange I'm rather more familiar with seeing on the nighttime street, I realized how much context can make a thing seem stranger than it is. We live in a world where the image of something seems to count more than the thing itself. But this was not the image of decorum. Here was The Thing itself, ugly and terrible but real, borne out of force and truth and shame and guilt and anger.

This was no performance; this was a man who always has to perform, and for thirty seconds decided not to. Do we decry him for this blip alongside decades of good behavior? By what standards do we measure a life with different problems than our own? In pointing fingers at others, are we trying to draw attention away from our own flaws?

Last night Will Smith responded to a perceived barb as many folks have on the 7, the E Line, or in Philly, where Mr. Smith comes from– except instead of those milieus it was in an elevated and rarefied atmosphere. The shock on people’s faces; the pregnant and confused silence as recorded by writers who were present; Rock’s shaken replies, making clear this is no stunt (as Smith’s manner in repeating his line also makes abundantly clear). We thirst for truth, and found it in an unexpected place last night. 

2. Personas

The most inexplicable part of it for me was watching Smith, who initially laughs– and not a little– at Chris Rock’s joke... and then watching him wallop Rock for precisely the same joke less than ten seconds later. I can’t help but wonder if being caught by his wife at laughing inflamed in him a desire to overreact against himself, against the shame of his own initial lackadaisical reaction.

What further intrigues me is that Smith has been very good at sustaining a nigh-universally likable public image that convincingly conveys being in control and being easy-going. While I have no expectation of someone being those things all the time, as a public figure one knows one has to moderate one’s responses disproportionately, especially in a live broadcast environment. The hitherto-unsullied degree of Smith’s reputation and his longevity in being well-liked in the industry suggest his amiable persona is probably  accurate.

He had to have known how long-lasting and ignominious the damage of such a rash action would be, to himself and those around him, and how messily it would complicate his career. I wonder if he felt a desire to rebel against an encroaching pressure of keeping a good face on at all times, as he has now so obediently done for decades. I’m reminded of Tom Cruise firing his publicist in 2005 and behaving in a way he likely found liberating and truthful, even if it cost him fans. As Sasha Stone, another journalist who was in attendance pointed out, Smith's smug confidence as he returned to his seat is entirely at odds with the Smith we think we know.

3. Damage Control

I’m also intrigued that Meredith O’Sullivan, Smith’s longtime publicist, and others (namely Denzel and Tyler Perry, as well as Nic Kidman, who stopped by to give him a hug) huddled with Smith during commercial breaks, with O’Sullivan consulting with him quietly but earnestly during every single commercial break between 'That Moment' and Best Actor. To me this implies resistance on Smith’s part to take O’Sullivan’s advice, which had to be some variation of what all celebrity apologies require to be effective:

1) taking responsibility for one’s actions,
2) acknowledging the hurt they’ve caused in a manner that suggests self-awareness, and
3) (though it’d be too soon after the event for this one) indicating a concrete plan for self-improvement.

I imagine Smith said he was willing to apologize to everyone except Rock, since that’s exactly what he ended up doing. (To no one's surprise, Smith released a predictably thoughtfully worded piece hitting all the right marks today.)

I can’t help but wonder if his rambling if heartfelt six-minute speech, waffling as it did between defending himself and apologizing to secondary and tertiary parties, made things even worse. While imperfect messiness is to be expected when forced to comment without deliberation on such a recent mistake, his lack of apology to Rock is an omission that deafened in its silence, and subsequent notices of him dancing the night away at afterparties to his own previous musical hits don’t do him any favors. 

It was a highly imperfect speech. There was an opportunity to restage the event hypothetically ("here’s what I should’ve done"); there was an opportunity to transform the moment into a teachable one ("learn from my mistake"); there was an opportunity to emphasize that people act in ways they regret ("a person is more than their worst moment; I ask for your forgiveness"); and an opportunity for Smith, a father, to iterate to boys everywhere that violence is an inappropriate response to non-violence (“yell at comedians, don’t punch them”). As Ms. Stone notes regarding abusive relationships, what follows a physical altercation is the tearful apology. I find it strange to listen to Smith extolling the virtues of love mere minutes after punching someone out in front a global audience, with the expectation that we should take both moments seriously– but such is the nature of the contradictory human animal.

4. Matters of Principle

I find more curious his unquestioning advocacy for “protecting” women, and am reminded of the great writer Susan Faludi’s articulation of the “protection racket” in her monumental study of postwar emasculation, Stiffed: the Betrayal of the American Man. The "protection racket" is the long-standing practice where men seek to “protect” women from other men they deem worse than they, but in the course of doing so sometimes exhibit behavior just as oppressive. I can hardly think of a better example than last night. Does Jada Pinkett Smith need Will’s "protection?” Support, certainly, but… this? In 1963 Betty Friedan argued that women are adults who can take care of themselves. Conversely, Tiffany Haddish calls Smith's reaction “the most beautiful thing I've ever seen” and “what your husband is supposed to do, right?”

Clearly mileage varies...

Either way, I believe Smith’s motivations were entirely personal, and naught to do with Jada’s honor, but his own definition of himself as a man in relation to Jada, and in relation to Rock. He wasn't thinking; he was being. The host of factors and principles which impelled him out of his seat are too myriad to name. For me, the thought of Smith noticing his wife's hurt at his own laughter at a joke made at her expense, and finding reprehensible that part of himself, is touching. How human of him to try to stamp it out, to erase with vigor and conclusiveness the actions we most regret.

Who has not been at war with the lesser versions of their self?

How easy it is to make things worse. You learn in the Chinese board game Go that some mistakes just have to be moved on from, their losses accepted, because further intervention only worsens matters. You can't fix everything. We do our best.

5. The Thing No One is Talking About

Which brings us to Chris Rock. After doing what he often does– improvising and taking chances with jokes that push the envelope, often with cutting insight, though rather less so here– Rock shifted gears, realizing the mood of the person antagonizing him was not at all in jest. I find it riveting. Ridley Scott’s G.I. Jane is a positive portrayal of a strong (bald) female character, which is probably why Rock felt like chancing the joke, in poor taste though it is. Complicating the moment is Smith and Jada already being made fun of earlier in the same ceremony, as well as Rock poking fun at Jada’s expense at a previous Oscars in 2017. Will and Jada have also been having their own relationship difficulties, though I’ve made an effort not to read about that (not my business!). Basically, it’s never just the last straw. 

But the one thing no one is talking about is also the thing I find most impressive: 

The fact that Chris Rock did not strike back.

In America we think of the doer as the subject, whether in grammar or otherwise; that's why we speak of this as the "Will Smith" incident. But inaction is as powerful as action. Restraint can save the day; silence can speak louder than words.

Such non-action as Rock displayed in last night's heated moment takes guts and character, as we know from the world of the street. It is easier simply to act. Rock chooses to think first, refraining from responding physically– despite the mano-a-mano challenge in front of a massive audience of peers and strangers numbering in the millions. Susan Faludi would be impressed. A recent NYT profile of Rock detailing his newfound passion for therapy and emotional investigation now further serves to explain Rock’s reaction, unequivocally displaying how that approach has paid off. It helps to think a few chess moves ahead.

It helps to think, period.

(That Rock manages even to remain standing is its own feat, given the size difference between the two and the complete unpredictability of the event. There is a significant physiological difference between having even a slight expectation of physical conflict, and predicting none. Rock predicts none because this is the Oscars, and he still manages to keep his footing.)

That Rock regains his composure and goes about the business of presenting Best Doc (to Summer of Soul, in a moment of almost absurd irony) in under a minute is impressive. I call that consummate professionalism. He’s being paid to do a job, does so under humiliating duress, and completes his task. If either of these men is at all qualified to give a rambling six-minute monologue on an international live broadcast about the importance of tolerance and loving others, it would be Chris Rock.

6. What Didn't Happen

Additionally, Rock benefits from Smith’s overreaction in that it rather forcefully swings the spotlight away from the misfire of his own joke; without it, all our Monday morning carping would have been about Rock’s misstep as a comedian, and how comedians have a tricky job of pushing the envelope and trying to search out where the line is. That type of work, because it involves taking risks, necessarily requires that there will be mistakes. There will be moments of going too far. Like perhaps this one.

It is human to make a mistake.

If Will Smith had instead boldly walked up on stage, as he did, but instead asked for the microphone and said, "Chris, I think what you just said is hurtful and unkind. My wife has been battling this auto-immune condition for years and I'm right by her side, and because of the heartache and pain and disruption it has caused us we are unable to tolerate your wisecrack. You're better than that."

You know what would've happened. Chris Rock would've stood in cowed silence, as he did, except as a monumental dolt, and we would all nod our heads, agreeing that making fun of alopecia is, yes, a mistake. But that is not what happened. What happened is that Rock's flub will forever be a minor sidebar in the conversation of someone else's history-making overreaction, a monumental lapse of judgment which will make comedians everywhere nervous to try out their jokes, however (mis)calculated, for some time to come.

7. What I Saw

It is human to make a mistake. When I see Chris Rock I see an enthusiastic jokester who improvised a line he quickly realized would've benefited from more consideration.

When I see Jada Pinkett Smith I see an actor in failing health doing her best, here in support of her partner's big night and trying to make the best of things, tired from the beguiling fact that no matter how easy life gets, it remains primarily a series of struggles.

When I see Will Smith I see a devoted husband who saw a look from his wife and no doubt recalled their shared struggles with her illness, no doubt recalled the tearful nights and hard decisions and times shared high and low, and realized with forceful passion and deep anger that he had violated himself. That moments of painful weakness with his wife were being ridiculed in broad daylight. And he saw that he no longer wished to play along and wear a dumb grin after every comment made. That his allegiance was not to cameras or fans or even career but to his life partner. I saw a man furious with himself, furious that he had betrayed something precious to him for things less important. Who stumbled through his acceptance speech about as well as you could hope given the pressure and circumstances, who plaintively tried, and partly succeeded, to convey with inarticulate and unstudied words that he, at large and deep down, endeavors as best as he knows how, to the absolute upper limit of his human abilities, to be a good man.

Now that I do believe.