Get On The Bus!

You awake in a daze. The thunderous rumble of heavy rubber on corroded asphalt, the hollow rattle of graffiti-thatched plastic panes, and the whiplash lurch of the aerodynamic juggernaut through fickle traffic lights is what has roused you. Perhaps you nonchalantly wipe a crust of dried blood from yr inner-ear or pore over an inexplicable pants stain or elegantly sip yr non-fat latte and carefully fold a newspaper under yr arm before adjusting yr monocle and staggering through the hostile jostle of stubborn extremities to the double-door maw. The behemoth slows, and Funkytown-esque pneumatic break s/fx slightly mystify yr still-thawing brain. As the grogginess sloughs off you give a lackadaisical wave of thanks to the bus driver and continue yr day where it left off.

It’s just another day for a busrider; like me, a commuter with a bus pass. I take about 30 bus trips a week, and spend about four hours in a given day on or waiting for the bus. Although I’ve only been an Angeleno for about two months, my immersion in public transport has given me a chance to hob-nob with the blue-collar snobs, the white-collar slobs, the green-collar mobs, and of course the occasional transvestite priest-slash-clown.

I’ve noticed idiosyncratic aspects of public transportation that create a unique liminal (threshold, in-between-time) environment. For one thing, there’s the athleticism required for standing riders. Wildly vacillating g-forces are created by the frenetic footwork of the bus drivers (those loyal public servants whose personalities range from the zombie/catatonic/automaton type to the exuberant/tweaker/tourguide type) so agility is important when wading through the crowded corridors. A delicate balance of stamina, endurance, and a minimal propensity toward frotteurism is necessary for a satisfactory trip, and requisite for those planning on being a commuter or for those considering a career in busriding.

To avoid embarrassment, and also to look cool, you’ll need to be able to shift yr body weight and flex yr pole-holding arms in sync with the helter-skelter gravity changes in the straw-bent chamber; the strutting, self-conscious bus poseurs are quickly outed, as soon as the behemoth resumes its lumbering, by their dog-in-a-car stumbling and lunging toward the safe pillars of chromium or the rigid, faux-ergonomic seats decked in thin swaths of kaleidoscopic cloth.

After you’ve managed to gain yr bearings, a new challenge of proper bus etiquette arises. If you are a young man like me, don’t sit down in the front half of the bus, because you’ll probably feel obliged to give up yr seat to one of those people so burdened by the crushing accumulation of age or gender that it would be brutal to deny them a short rest during their travails.

You know the type I mean. Old people. And women.

Also, the pair of inward-facing seats at the front of the bus must be folded up to accommodate the less peripatetically inclined commuters, so yr chances of having a nice, recuperative, uninterrupted sit up front further dwindle.

If you can manage to slither yr way through the obstacle course of dangerously akimbo elbows, stubbornly protruding knees, and sharply cocked hips, there’s a chance you can sit on what I consider the thrones of the bus, which are the back-corner seats. These seats are optimal because they offer extra legroom, a footrest, a primo unobstructed window-view to keep you aware of yr environs, and seats that face forward for minimal nausea and disorientation. Also I swear to god this one time one of those seats had Magic Fingers. And for only a quarter! God bless the U.S.A.

But I digress; the older folks tend not to venture up the rubber-blunted stairs to the thrones, so chances are you’ll only be obligated to give yr seat up if you’re feeling chivalrous. Bonus hint: Give yr seat a quick swab with yr finger before sitting to avoid bum piss, spilt boba, and sweat cesspools.

If you’ve managed to get a seat and are taking a long ride, consider watching some Transit TV (as if you had an option), MTA’s foray into the lush and untamed wilds of media technology. Like an effulgent LCD beacon in the dank catacombs of the bus, Transit TV provides a real-time map of the bus’s progress through the streets, which is actually a really useful feature for non-natives or Angelenos on an MTAdventure. But the map displays are frequently interrupted by the real meat ‘n’ taters of Transit TV: A minimally useful, barely relevant hodgepodge of news, PSAs, and “entertainment” segments.

Examples of this include Pat Sajak’s vapid “Q&A” sessions, the occasionally interesting but usually soul-shattering trivia tidbits, inexplicably long segments of “contemporary” extreme sports or dance and music stylings (such as break dancing in hip-hop beat relief), a faintly gruesome pair of disembodied hands that perform magic tricks, and sometimes there is a cat who peeks its head from behind the MTA logo, a la Kilroy, and is cute. With such accommodations it must be blaringly clear why I’m hooked on bus.

If you haven’t yet been spurred to take off yr headphones, either by the helpful Styrofoam voice that informs riders of approaching streets and stops requested, or by the incessant audio accompaniment to Transit TV, do it now, because the best parts of the bus are, naturally, the Busfolk. And even if you don’t have the guts to strike up a conversation, you can always just stare out the window and eavesdrop on yr ostentatiously conversing comrades.

Listening to other riders rewards you with voyeuristic attunement to a myriad of issues: youthfully audacious opinions on esoteric musicians, genuinely mind-blowing philosophizing among pretentious professionals or the schizophrenically strung-out, the stumbling mumblings of crumbums humming dim hymns that slowly cascade to dull dins, painful breakup conversations, reflections on and analysis of recent movies or TV programs, and raw, unspun political punditry.

But arguably more compelling than these topics is the prevalence of burgeoning or, alternatively, old-growth Buslove. Now, to all you icehearted antiromantics who’re still crippled by the pangs of love unrequited and the sting of jilt, I beseech you save yr scoffs and jeers. Buslove is real.

On one occasion, I listened to two strangers sit down beside each other, kick off with an endearingly trite icebreaker, move from the niceties and lay meteorology to vocational grumblings to plans of conquering Hollyweird and self-actualizing, and from there to the crucial moment of name-exchange.

There’s another type of Buslove, which can be touching or repulsive depending on how you perceive it, and that is the PDA among those who’ve found their profound human connection in some perfect erstwhile moment but who’ve decided to take it along for the ride.

Case in point: I was brought to tears by the sight of an older couple sitting across from me at 3 a.m. one morning; the woman was asleep with her head cradled by the man’s shoulder, and he had his arm wrapped around her such that his weathered hand was perfectly positioned to tenderly caress the smooth face of his slumbering partner. With a look of tranquil contentment on his face, he stroked her cheek and scalp for the half-hour bus ride, and gently roused her when their stop came; they walked with fingers interlaced off into the witching-hour L.A. night.

I never would’ve expected it, but bus environs are indeed host to some of the most meaningful moments of interpersonal interaction I’ve ever experienced. Often bizarre, sometimes awkward and occasionally frightening, but meaningful nonetheless. Regular conversations with strangers are often merely tools to ameliorate the drudgery of commuting or to prevent the dangerous and potentially sinful activity of introspection, but during the broad yawns of time on the bus, there lurks the potential for authentic connection and brilliant conversation. You just have to allow yrself to engage yr fellow Busperson. Donning a festive hat at a jaunty angle won’t hurt either.

Seriously! A crucial aspect to becoming a part of this impromptu web of humanity is finding and recognizing yr means of connection. In my experience, the cigarette represents the pinnacle of the conversational conduit. Also, according to a recent and unverifiable study, it makes you 15 percent cooler.

For instance, you may find yrself rigidly postured on one of those sun-stained, advert-plastered Playskool plastic benches and adjacent to another soul with whom you desire to converse. And you may ask yourself: How did I get here? And you may ask yourself: What’s a good icebreaker? I find that either asking to bum a smoke or bumming a smoke to such a soul is adequate precedent for at least a brief exchange of platitudes and at best a discussion on the nature and function of art in revolution.

Pretty outlandish, pretentious even, I know. Except, the latter happened to me on one light-polluted L.A. night as the exhaust fumes and the stench of rancid garbage played delicately off the smog-haloed moonbeams. And although nicotine was present, it wasn’t necessary; in lieu of substance, calamity serves as a glorious conversational catalyst.

Bathed in the antiseptic tangerine streetlight, I stood and gazed indiscriminately into the dim thicket of concrete and plastic, drawing deeply on a stogue. Without warning, an ’80s-era bone-colored van spackled with rust rear-ended a Mercedes coupe waiting at a stoplight, crunching and chipping away the metallic gray paint, which in turn caused that Benz to rear-end the platinum-hued Mercedes coupe in front of it.

As the trio of fender-bent autos slunk drearily to a nearby gas station parking lot for the burdensome exchange of insurance info, I turned my head to a middle-aged man who was waiting beside me for the bus and who also bore witness to the crash. We traded chuckles and sympathetic ribbings of the poor Hispanic van driver, who we agreed would probably be out at least a couple grand for his inattentiveness. From there the conversation began to spiral into one of the most poignant and delightfully free-associative conversations I’ve had.

Using an old standby – “What’re you doing awake at this hour?” – I learned that the man had just completed his treatise on the globe’s oldest constitution, millennia old and of Fertile Crescent origins. A veritable torrent of two-cents, conjecture and hypotheses were exchanged between myself and Rafik. Our meandering and probably a little overzealous conversation bounced from musings on a nation unfettered by gasoline-addiction, to the woeful stagnation of bipartisan politics, to the nature and function of art in revolution, to the unfortunate negative externalities of religious zeal, to the importance of creative expression to one’s psychological and spiritual well-being.

The conversation left me reeling. I rarely have this caliber of conversation with close or sober friends, let alone complete strangers. I was lucky enough to have calamitous happenstance as an impetus of thought-exchange, but this is unpredictable and rare; if you want to inundate yrself in the magnificent and whimsical posits of Busfolk, it’s integral to have some sort of conversational conduit on hand; choose a poison and pack it.

Booze is always a sure shot, especially for the post-midnight tetes-a-tete. Sharing sips out of an oval of Smirnoff, I was able to meet Miguel, an adamant clubgoer I’ve run into multiple times since our first encounter. Spectating others’ sipping of the sauce can also serve as a buttress to conversation.

Like this one time, it was 3 a.m., and I bummed a Parliament Light from a young couple, which opened the floodgates for talk of genres of electronica, information technology, the tragicomic veneer of Los Angeles, and the local party scene, among other things. As we shot the breeze under the fluorescent bus stop glow, we noticed a drunk Hispanic man exchanging ostensibly pugilistic lividities with one of his busboy co-workers (the air of animosity was clear, even if Gabriel, one of the men, and I, didn’t understand Spanish, which we both did); there was even a miserably failed punch thrown before the bus arrived. Upon this event Gabe mentioned that during his late-night adventures on the bus there was “never a dull moment,” which proved prophetic.

I followed the carefully sauntering Gabe and John to the back of the bus (they headed straight for the thrones), and we talked for a minute or less before we were joined by the aforementioned borracho. In slurred, thickly accented Spanish, the drunken busman began his tale of woe to us, but not before pulling three bottles of Corona Extra out of his book bag, opening one with his metal tooth, and offering us the remainder of his grog.

We politely declined, and the man went on sloshing and gurgling about the argument he had with his co-worker over purportedly misappropriated tips, how co-worker was so enraged that he threatened to call ICE on him, how his wife and he were at odds due to his drinking, and how the children were suffering as a result, as well as mounds more that we were unable to decipher. After he finally staggered off the bus, Gabe, John, and I exchanged nervous grins and were able to briefly reflect on the magnificent madness of red-eye MTA briefly before they reached their stop and exited bus right. Never a dull moment. That’s for goddamn sure.

In a little less than two months as a Busperson, I’ve been exposed to a near-perpetual circus of humanity; a grand theatric free-for-all among the masses. But it’s human drama and comedy that is actual and tangible and more important because of it.

The exquisite minutiae (from helping a struggling, wheelchair-ridden elderly man off the bus by giving him a sensitive push, to retrieving an escapee rolling orange for a homeless gentleman hunched under a cadre of bags, to trying to disregard the absolutely absurd rants of a twitching man twisted off that kryptonite, to being a one-man audience to a heavily accented African comedian, to the occasional Quaker wedding, to politely turning down an offer of rock coke from a bug-eyed, hooded pusher, to cultivating the nervous inertia necessary when sitting beside an individual of prurient interest) all accumulate to corroborate the idea that the bus is an accurate sampling of the real (as opposed to the Hollywood plastic set) population, of the no-collar stiffs scraping by to get over.

And I could go on and on with misfit tidbits and smoke-fueled local anecdotes, like how the bus aisle can be easily transformed into a hive of captive evangelism if you are unlucky enough to encounter the vociferous, adamant, ear-splitting prattling of a certain shawled bilingual lady who will browbeat you with Jesus’s love if you so much as glance at her. (Incidentally, I am convinced this woman cursed me after I solemnly shook my head in response to her Christ polemic; a can of soda mysteriously burst inside my satchel and drowned my laptop, camera, phone, notebooks, and iPod in sticky cola directly after my nonverbal dissent.)

It’s a little ironic to me that as a man of such little faith, I have found the spaces and events of public transportation to be the closest thing to sacred I have ever experienced. I am frequently overcome with an overwhelming sense of empathy when sardined among my fellow Busfolk. At least during this temporal fragment of my being, I am a member of this scrappy, lovable lot; I notice others nodding off or reading or listening to music to pass the time just like me, and I am struck with a sense of natural fellowship that is spiritually rich but devoid of the trappings, trip-ups, and traps of organized religion.

Rumbling along on the bus, it becomes exceedingly obvious that I am no martyr or workhorse for working 70 hours a week, I’m just one of tens of thousands of people here who were not born into privilege but who are ambitious and strong-willed and tenacious just the same, with goals of self-sufficient autonomy or family providing or simply cake-stacking. I understand and identify more with people on the bus without ever even talking to them than I do with the upper-crust jet sets I occasionally encounter. Also I find myself getting expensive tequila thrown in my face far less frequently among the formers.

I live and work in a city so choked by the plastic and porcelain goddesses and the ersatz titans of the silk screen, a city so drowned in materialistic glitz bliss, that I once felt I would surely be an alien, what with my disillusionment with cinema culture and my lack of avaricious aspirations. But I think I’ve experienced an authentic paradigm shift in my perception: The Los Angeles working class is not a subculture, and we’re not a minority. The petty, outlandish, disconnected superstars are the anomalies, and the whole city runs on Busfolk. And we still run to catch the bus.

Also one thing I forgot to mention is the bus has no bathroom, so keep that in mind.