The Bus, Part II

As you might imagine, this is the long-awaited, by-now-completely-over-anticipated sequel to
The Bus, Part I. You can either click the link to reread part one, or you can just peruse the following summary:

I have to ride the bus. I don’t exactly love doing this, especially the waiting part.

And now, the sequel:

About a year ago, shortly after I posted a Yellow Shirt entry besmirching the various aspects of traveling on the Champaign-Urbana Metro Transit Department’s fine motor coaches, the Bus gods decided to smite me a little bit. On a cold, cloudy March afternoon, I emerged from my building only to see my bus, the 23 Shuttle pulling away from my bus stop a half-block away. I definitely saw the driver was cackling wildly in triumph, having fulfilled his divine charge to make me wait the maximum amount of time possible while the 23 Shuttle circled the campus and possibly the state at seven miles an hour. Reaching into my bag for my iPod, I was reminded that the Bus gods had earlier in the day tricked me into forgetting my headphones. Further, I had nothing to read. Now, I am all for taking in the beauty of the world around me and observing the passing comedy of humanity, but the prospect of standing grumpily on a familiar street corner is not the ideal execution of this philosophy.

The March wind swirled bitterly. The monotony grew. I tried hopelessly to take interest in passing cars, cloud formations, and the local flora in the sidewalk cracks. I cursed the Bus gods for subjecting me to such boredom when all I wanted to do was get to my car and begin the very long drive home. They chuckled at my curses and smote me a bit more:

“You look like you’re mourning the death of Hunter S. Thompson.”

Have you ever regretted a physical movement even as you’re in the act of doing it? As I turned to my left to respond to this unexpected conversation starter, the little man at the controls in my head leaped across the cockpit of my brain in an attempt to hit the “Do Not Move” button, screaming wildly, “Do NOT respond to that! Pretend you’re deaf! Pretend you only speak Farsi! Turn the other way and run! You do not want to engage this person in conversation!” He was, of course, tragically, absurdly, late. I had already turned and was emitting my standard mindless verbal response:

“Huh?”

“I saw you standing here, and you looked pretty grim, and I figured that you were probably mourning Hunter S. Thompson.”

Still stuck in the turned-left position, I found myself about fifteen percent too close to a man who resembled a sketchier version of the actor W. Earl Brown, who plays Dan Dority on the excellent HBO series “Deadwood.” W. Earl looks like what you would expect a guy named W. Earl to look like, which is this:

Dan, as this unknown individual shall now be called, was sporting a thin, scruffy beard, long scraggly hair, and large headphones that were on his head just above his ears. He had on an undersized blue nylon jacket and an army-green canvas backpack stuffed just beyond capacity with an unknown variety of items that I’m sure would fascinate a clinical psychologist.

Dan was, of course, smiling at me, which caused me to make mistake number two:

“Ah, the good doctor,” I replied.

This illustrates a key double-edged-sword element of my personality, which is that if you are a stranger and you are initially nice to me, I will be nice back to you almost no matter what. You could approach me holding a crowbar in your blood-stained and twitching hand, but if you smiled and opened with an earnest, “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” any internal alarms would be drowned out by my own voice cheerfully saying, “Sure is!” This usually isn’t a problem because bad people aren’t cheerful in their approach, so I see them coming. Insane people, not so much.

Not only had I cheerfully engaged Dan in conversation, but I had inexplicably indicated my knowledge of the subject that he was proposing, “the good doctor” being the nickname of the writer Hunter S. Thompson, who had recently killed himself. My comprehension, as you can imagine, really got the ball rolling for Dan.

“Yeah, too bad he had to go like that, gun to the head and all, but hey, I mean, I can respect that I guess, I mean, I’ve thought about it too, I mean, why not, man, go out on your own terms, right? Go when you want to? How you want to? No hospitals, no doctors, just you. I read that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas once, man, now there’s a book. He sure would have done it, I believe it. I’d go that way for sure, man. Not that I’d ever do that, but if I would, I could see doing it that way.”

“Uhhh, yeah.” I mean, really, what is the appropriate response to the above statement? All things considered, I would argue that “uhhh, yeah” was a pretty articulate choice. I turned back to face the street. So did Dan, having found a friend for life with whom he could stand on a corner and converse about suicidal authors. There was a bit of a lull in the conversation at this point, which Dan broke after about thirty relatively relaxing seconds:

“College town?”

“What?”

“So, is this a college town?”

It is worth noting that we were both at that moment standing in the middle of a college campus, surrounded by college campus buildings with big college signs on them and hundreds of college-aged and college-attired individuals walking around us. From that location you can not swing a sorority girl without hitting blinding evidence of collegiality.

“Oh, um, yeah, this is the University of Illinois.”

“Oh, really? Wow. How about that. Do you go here?”

“Yes I do.”

Fortunately, Dan did not inquire as to my course of study. Explaining that you are working on your Ph.D. in Theatre History is difficult enough when you’re dealing with non-insane people. He did, however, proceed to regale me with his views on a number of topics, including...

Love: “Yeah, I had my heart broken a long time ago, do you have a girlfriend? I had one, but it didn’t work out, she broke my heart, but love is what it’s all about, man, it’s all about love.”

Family: “And family. It’s all about family.”

Substance Abuse: “I mean, I smoke and I drink, I mean, I like to smoke, but I could quit any time I want to, I just don’t want to, but I could if I wanted to.” (Throws down half-finished cigarette and stamps it out.)

Homelessness: “I could be homeless any time I want. I mean, I was, but I’m not now. I could be if I wanted. I was homeless for like twelve years, but now I’m crashing at my buddy’s place here in town.”

After about fifteen minutes of this, I’m pretty sure that the Bus gods were laughing uncontrollably at the smiting that they had wrought upon me, rolling back and forth on the huge piles of dirty change in their bus barn in the sky. For my part, I had actually resigned myself to the presence of Dan, and in letting go, I found that his rambling, incoherent diatribes were actually quite entertaining. Who needs music or reading material when you’re getting free lessons on the pain of heartbreak or the nuances of voluntary destitution? When the 23 Shuttle finally returned from its round trip to, apparently, St. Louis, I returned momentarily to my previous state of alarm when I imagined Dan following me onto the bus and back to my car at the shuttle lot, then asking for a ride, then getting offended, and downhill from there. However, when the bus pulled up to the curb, Dan simply said goodbye and wished me good luck (at what, I’m not sure). I said goodbye to him and stepped onto the normal, boring 23 Shuttle.

And that is what happened to me one day while waiting for the bus. Like all extreme things, crazy people can be entertaining in small doses. Have your headphones with you, though, just in case.