December 20, 2011

It is nearly January in South Texas, but it feels how October does in Colorado.  I can’t believe there are only a few days until Christmas.  It hardly exists to me besides the fact that work is more hectic.  I wasn’t ready to go in to work today so I sent my manager a text saying that I missed my bus and I would be in ASAP.  I only assumed I missed the bus, I wasn’t going to hurry to wait thirty minutes.  I sent my lie via text and in doing so locked myself into a karmic rendezvous to miss the bus later.  Now I don’t have to lie about the public chariot passing by without a notion of my existence.  Because it did when I actually went to catch it.

The wind puffs but the sun feels nice against my chilled body between puffs.  A blue Chevy truck passes the stop and the chocolate lab in the back barks at me.  He’s barking at everything really, I can still hear him down the street. 

Most of the cars that go by do not have any passengers.  I would wager that the majority of them are driving by my work.  I’m not a person who accepts rides from strangers, but it makes me wonder how busy the traffic would be if you could only use your car when you have a passenger.  The Chevy with the lab barks by again.

From my stop on Burnet Road I watch a guy across the street at the carwash spray the bed of his truck.  A blue plastic bottle, a Wal-Mart shopping bag and other bits of trash blew out and crashed on the dirty wet cement.   That is where they were when he drove off.

When the bus comes I step on and say hi to the driver who looks like C-lo Green.  It can be unsettling sometimes when there are so few people on the bus.  There are only two now.  There is a guy in his early twenties carrying a curtain rod.  He stared at me and I felt awkward- why couldn’t he stare at the other passenger, a guy farther in the back.  Even though he was well dressed, I think a pork pie hat would have tied his outfit together-despite the risk that he would then look like he stepped out of the fifties. 

The guy with the curtain rod gets off at the stop in front of Ross.  I couldn’t help but notice he had a wedding ring.  I invent what or whom his driving force could have been to take an awkward journey to run an errand that lacks masculinity.  I imagine a very small, very pretty and very pregnant girl who wants what she wants when she wants it.  The consequences of saying no are far worse than a bus ride with a curtain rod.

An elderly lady gets on.  She is short and all I can see is her ratty gray and black hair.  She reminds me of a typical Halloween witch fumbling with her bus pass.  Mexican Buddy Holly followed her on wearing a black hoodie with gold writing.  He went directly to the back of the bus and the witch in pink sweat pants sat a few seats to my right.

The bus lifted off and the old lady began to mumble, only a few words broke out of her mouth that were audible and clear.   At first I thought she was asking me a question.  I ignored her though, and she continued to hex.  

My attention was only taken away from her incantations when a very large and very sloppy man got on the bus, straining the hydraulics.  He wore gray and black plaid pajama pants and, to his credit, wore a jacket that complimented the pants well.  He decided to sit across from me.  The button on the fly had long given up that war and escaped the restraints of the thread.  When the large man sat down his fly spread wide open and his grey belly button stared at me lamely through bangs of belly hair.  The man looked at his belly, looked at me, then looked out the front window to his right.