Serenity Times Twenty-Two

I saw her on the bus
and thought she looked so serene
and at peace and I wondered
what her "life story" was.

- Laura Wiggs

Friday, 2:50 p.m., Haight Fillmore - Fillmore California

I got on and was overcome by a sense of you. It made me drop some of my change. The driver grew tempered as I scrounged the perforated ground for impossible dimes. I stood and looked to the back. You weren't there. Maybe I had just missed you. I know that feeling like my right hand pinky knows the home key and the delete key as well.
"Well good," I thought. I looked like hell and felt worse. There's no hiding on the Deuce Deuce - or from deadlines and unforgiving sunshine. And no amount of makeup will cover my ass after three whiskey sours, two cups of coffee, two term papers and two hours of sleep.
My headphones on, three songs in to Electrelane's Powers Out and nearly asleep - there you are - boarding and walking down the aisle.
Of course, of course I would see you today, with my hollowed out eyes like a deranged zeppelin, after all this time.
But, at least I can still rely on my instinct. I knew you were on this bus. I smelled your intentions before I could smell you.
And you do. You sit next to me and you smell so nice.
I think about opening the window and jumping out. I'm so tired it would be a pathetic attempt, resembling falling off of a bed more than fleeing.
I think about opening your mouth and crawling inside of you.
Small talk is mean.
I'm playing polite with the one person I can still feel rustle on the horizon. We used to talk about children's names, now it's the weather. What an insult.
But, it was humbling to see your inescapable face - I'm responsible for my regrets, holding them close like my passport in Mexico.
It's your stop. And you rise to exit, and say, "Good-bye," in a way that sounds nothing like, "See you later."

-photo compliments of A modern girl, Tina, from San Francisco

Sunday, 9:00 a.m., Hayes Fillmore - Union Fillmore

Why am I always surprised. I am such a feeble creature. The way I have weather amnesia in SF. I find myself saying, "It wasn't this cold last summer. It didn't rain this much last Spring. It wasn't this warm last May."
But it's Sunday morning and the bus is not supposed to be this full. But it is and for some reason, I am surprised.
I get herded to the middle next to a teen mom. There is a small, Chinese woman sitting in front of me. I'm damn near straddling her. And she smells. I know in America we have some absurd obsession with hygienic smell, but really, she smells like how my ex who worked in a kitchen, how the bottom of his pants would smell after being dragged in sink water and discarded beef cutlets soaked in garlic all night.
The mom is holding her maybe two-year-old son. The boy is staring at me and I quick stick my tongue out at him, lowering my defense status to that of a toddler. He looks away and begins kicking the Chinese lady in her little dome covered in a floppy hat. I think of saying something, but if I open my mouth I imagine smell particles flooding in like a whale eating krill, so I would taste her.
Finally, the woman grabs the child's foot and says, "He kick me. He kick me too much."
And the teen mom responds, "So? It's a fuckin' crowded bus. Get a car if you don't like it." Everyone goes quiet and stiff. Confrontation on the bus mimics an instant game of freeze tag.
"You old bitch," mutters teen mom.
At Geary the man sitting next the elderly woman gets up and teen mom sits down with her child. The child, a little over an inch away from the elderly woman, just stares. Stares and then stares some more at her now.
And then...I fart.
I have no idea how it escaped. Liked a trained double-agent, it is silent and violent and it smells grotesque in the way that only unassuming girls can fart. It is peeling my eyelids back it is so bad. It is too warm on the bus for farts of this magnitude and it just expands and lingers at nose level like a half-dead balloon.
I look down at the Chinese woman and try to glance over and place blame, feign like it was the boy. But, she is covering her nose and mouth and glaring with two, angry round eyes. There is no fooling her.
So, I start to laugh. My shoulders are shaking. Because my smell trumped her smell and that is some accomplishment.
The teen mom sees me laughing and says, "Holy God, was that you?!"
And I can't stop laughing, my face clown red, and I say, between chuckles, "Yeah."
"Oh my fucking God. My baby's shit don't even smell that bad."
I say that I am sorry, but I can't stop cracking up.
"Woo, girl. Daaamn." The toddler is hysterical with giggles.
An older guy behind me, pushing me and also pushing 300 lbs. says, "That's almost impressive."
And now, we're all laughing. Me and the hundred people crammed into the 3 x 3 space where we are standing smelling my ninja fart. Everyone laughing, except the little, smelly Chinese lady still covering her nose and mouth.

The 22 Transfer

The 22 lets me off at the corner of Fillmore and Chestnut where I make one of two sorts of transfers. The first is the kind to curse. The second, also to curse. Okay, the first is a running forward curse. The second is a running behind curse.
At 7:40 am, the 22 to the 30 is an unreliable route. Fillmore street descends two steeply for the bus. So it moves over to Steiner. The bus cannot turn when a car is parked to close to the corner. If a Mercedes or Audi or a garage truck blocked the zigzag down the hill for five minutes all of us on the bus sat for five minutnes as the driver honked. On occassion the driver changes to a different line midway down the hill. “Everyone off,” he announces without warning. At that point, I am running the remaining 6 blocks to Chestnut.
Assuming I arrive at the corner of Fillmore and Chestnut, I catch the 30. The 30 runs turns off Chestnut at Van Ness to get over a couple of blocks to North Point. That runs into Fisherman’s Wharf where I’m going. During commutting times though, the 30 bus picks sides. Three of four 30 buses run as the 30X, the express bus to the financial district. It has fewer stops because its only purpose is to haul people in the Marina to downtown. Riders on the 30X wear ties, skirts and suits.
The leftover 30 buses took the rest of us. Schoolchildren, moms, dockworkers, construction workers and asian highschoolers rode nest to me.
In running kind of curse I step off the 22 to see the 30 is already at its stop, across the street. If I miss it, I get chewed out at work for being late. So I’m chasing after it. Some mornings I climb on just in time. Other mornings, I run for two blocks before watching it pull away from me. I arrive late.
For the second curse, I wait with the suits in front of a swanky Marina restaurant. A small group of them swells before the 30X collects them. Some mornings, I watch a handful of groups amass and board before a regular 30 comes. I tense up, one eye pegged to the clock as the minutes pass and no 30 bus whines up the street. 30X, 30X, 30X, finally, a 30. 7:55am. I hope there are no more snags. If there aren’t my boss won’t be on my case.

Riding the regular bus.

-J. Marchildon

To the Fillmore on the 22 Fillmore

Pete had sprained his ankle performing ill-advised feats of strength and agility in order to impress a pretty lady. Jordan had not yet grown his beard. Their was another person with us, mild mannered, jovial. I can't remember his name, but it was probably Ben. I was oblivious to their intentions until we boarded the 22 Fillmore at 16th and Mission. It was Monday, an Indian summer's late afternoon. Pete had bought tickets to the Spoon show at the Fillmore. It turns out dancing on crutches is not all that difficult. Thanks guys. Thanks 22 Fillmore.

- David Murphy

Waiting

I had been waiting at the stop for so long that I thought I would die of old age before it came.

- kid ampersand

A Poem and a Driver

Driving the Twenty Two

Driving America to America,
Indian, Irish, German,
Spanish and Swedish ghosts
looking over the shoulders
of black and Asian and Latino:

Being a shuttle
gathering all these threads
red and black and gold and brown and white
and weaving them into
this town's fabric -
Ah, who would not smile?

- Birrel Walsh