Aug. 20, 2003 - 10:09 a.m.
Dear Vincent,
I was at a bit of a loss as to what to write this letter about. I've stumbled across some brilliant ideas in the past few days, none of them mine. Now I finally have a topic. Something I can't believe I've neglected to tell you. Its exclusion from letters before this one can only be explained by the reasoning that I do this as often, and as heedlessly as I breathe.
Twenty four hours in a day and I spend twenty three of them falling in love with people I don't know.
There was a boy on a bus once. And he was wearing long corduroys and a tee-shirt and jacket even though it was warm outside. But he had interesting eyes. And he arched his eyebrows in humorous ways to indicate to me that he thought the drunks in the back of the bus were just as funny as I did. And when they got off and I plopped gratefully into a seat across from him and struck up a conversation, he kept his eyes on my face the whole time we spoke. I could feel the plastic seat pressing sharply against my spine. The lurches and screeching from the bus chucked me back and forth across a few seats. I banged my elbow against a pole. But I felt his eyes on me much more acutely than anything else happening around me. Then he got off the bus, but I imagined that I could love him.
I don't need to know people. I can put whatever I want behind those eyes for as long as the conversation stays platonic. It's the anonymity of being a person.
I love the bus. If only because there are a million people to fall in love with on it. There were the girls who stumbled on weighted down by bags from the grocery store. Laughing with each other behind curtains of dark hair and seeking seats with eyes that cherished a shared joke. Flopping into two seats and letting the blue plastic bags crash and rustle around their feet. We pass at least three grocery stores before they get off. Why didn't they go to one closer to home?
There was the couple standing by the door. Which opens with a gasp at every stop. The bus jolts to a stand still and she takes an unsteady step backward banging into an intrusive silver pole. She looks at it in shock and then glances briefly, as if astonished at the bus around her. It's not inertia, it's that love thing. He caresses her upper arm concernedly looking for the plum colored bruise that he seems to believe will appear instantaneously. Satisfied that she has not been wounded he pulls her closer and glances fondly down at the top of her head. When they get off he tugs her along by her hand with all the finesse of a hero whisking her off somewhere.
The man who boards the bus with a spring as if he may run a race right then. Lithe and high strung he folds himself into a seat with a sort of tautness. Even though he fits in one seat his energy takes up several more. The cowboy hat, worn with the intention of giving the wearer a veil from which to cast quick glances from beneath seems to make him too tall. Breathlessly behind him an older woman wobbles onto the bus and asks him with several assorted versions of 'dear' to go and get her bags that she couldn't manage to bring on herself. The firmness in his calves, and quickness is combustible. Cruelly he sneers "I don't even know why I bother carrying my shit if I have to carry yours." I turn away. I could not love him. There's no room for empathy behind those eyes.
Some days the bus is crowded. And people cling to the overhead bars and occasionally fall into the laps of people they don't know. In which case a hurried embarrassed apology will take place or a conversation. Yesterday was crowded. The boy next to me stiffened as I sat down. The seats are, admittedly very close to one another. I could feel him folding into himself. Burying his eyes in the sites he's not seeing outside the window and gripping his briefcase to his chest. So I kept my spine respectably straight even when the bus bucked over bumps and didn't once force him through a mumbled and painful 'excuse me.'
Several seats away a small blonde swings too short legs gleefully. She's humming to herself delighted with something I wish she'd share. I smile at her and she takes a break from examining the man across from her to study me carefully. But I'm not interesting enough so she goes back to studying him.
There is a middle aged couple holding hands near the middle of the bus. She's only letting her hand lay rather limply in his but he clutches it as if her hand is his seatbelt. She's sighing and keeping glassy eyes diligently on the front of the bus. His head is inclined in the same direction but his eyes are flickering to the gold earring in her left ear. The light is catching the little gold disk and playfully sliding across the off white ceiling of the bus. The old man just across from them is watching their hands. And clenching his own hand in wistful little pulses.
And there is a man sitting right within my line of vision on the left hand side of the bus. He's staring at me and it's not because I'm fascinating in my mannerisms. I am not bitterly twisting a gold wedding band and slipping it off every few minutes as if to contemplate if it's too loose or maybe something more difficult like the woman next to me is. And I am not tossing a long silky sheen of blond hair that would make Disney animators envious like the super model blond sitting toward the front who needs attention now. I am not crossing my legs, or tugging my earlobe or biting my nails. I am sitting quite unobtrusively. And suddenly I remember why I don't like the bus sometimes. I suddenly become overtly conscious of my body, and I begin to second guess innocent gestures like tucking my hair behind my ear or chewing nervously on my thumbnail. I remember I am petite and blonde and wearing red. And that in heels, a black skirt and lip stick I am not my usual ignorable self. I wish silently for my jeans, wish I wasn't going to a meeting that I had to look nice for. I cross my legs and uncross them and fidget and try to hike my shirt up and my skirt down without being very obvious about it. And he's still watching me. And I know that this will be the one hour in the twenty four hour day that I do not spend falling in love with anonymity and imagination. It will be the hour I practice my best withering stares.
There is looking and then, there is looking.
At a glance,
Meghan
what they said - what they will say
