Sunday, 7:50 a.m., Haight Fillmore - Union Fillmore

She rides up front, a new rider. I would have noticed her before.
She's got some sort of disability, but that is not why she caught my eyes.
I was sitting four rows back once when I saw her ankles.
She's got these perfect ballerina ankles - an extension that any other dancer could spot from a mile away. They are quietly admirable.
So, last week I tried to talk to her about dancing. I tried to ask if she had ever been a ballerina.
She mumbled and wiggled and I caught harsh glances from other riders for "bothering" her.
I felt a pest. Perhaps, her disability might be on levels more than I had presumed.

But this morning I was moving toward the back and passed her trying to carry on a conversation plain as a political sex scandal with the stranger next to her..
She waved good-bye to a woman who ignored her at Fillmore and Golden Gate and stepped off through the front doors.
She walked with a cane, but all the more daintily across the street.

I was jealous of her gait and pained that it was me that she didn't want to talk with.

-photo compliments of Art Barn

Thursday, 3:20 p.m., Union Fillmore - 16th Harrison

Dancing.

Holding on to the top bar, bumping her hips into the person to her left and then the person to her right, with a little pop-pop uuuh, on each side.
In her other hand she totes a blue iPod mini with no scratches from use.
She sings along so we can all enjoy the song.
She yanks one ear bud out and says to her friend next to her, "Aw, hell no. I'm gonna kill that bitch."
"Who?" her friend asks.
"That girl at the stop. She got my same color iPod. That bitch tryin' to gank my style."

My Husband is Black

She'd told me a story before about moving seats away from a man on the 22 and him calling her a racist.

So this day...
A middle aged black man gets on the bus and sits right next to me. I was in the back row and the bus was fairly empty.
There were two Eastern European girls, cute, sitting to my right in the back row.
The middle seat would have been a more appropriate choice.

But he sat next to me and I was like, "Okay. Okay, let's see what this is all about."
He crosses his legs away from me and begins to grind.
His hands in his pockets, no eye contact, just staring off into the distance, he's humping.
It looks like a dog trying to itch its ass on carpet.
A few stops later I get up and have to pretty much crawl over him.
I say, "ExCUSE me," in a way that means, "You've got to be fucking kidding me with this humping business."
I was just like - alright dude, I've had enough - and if you call me a racist I'm going to tell you that my husband is black.

-JRo

Saturday, 6:50 p.m., Union Fillmore - Oak Fillmore

He's roughly eighteen years old, Mexican. His friend sits across from us and does the Catholic cross bit every time the Deuce Deuce passes a church.
He's on the phone next to me and drooling everywhere.
Drool down his chin onto his Raiders tee/dress.
He reaches into his mouth and props his lower grill to the side and continues the conversation.
We had a double grill situation.
And his friend throws one more Hail, Mary as I step down.

-photo compliments of Matthew Lee

Sunday, 8:32 a.m., Haight Fillmore - Union Fillmore

Distraught, but I had to get on the bus. I had to go. There's more life than time.
The stranger next to me, I wanted to lay my head on his shoulder and cry, the way I've held firm hands with strangers on planes during turbulence. "We're in it, in this life, we're going to make it, but only together," we say.
He and I really can't be all that different that he wouldn't understand how the weight of the world was too much today to even tie my shoes.
He got off at Geary and I missed him.
Encapsulated by people, totally hollow and so alone.

-photo compliments of Josh Damon

Saturday, 7:10 p.m., Union Fillmore - Fillmore Hayes

If you're a seasoned rider you should know if the person you are seated next to on the Deuce Deuce is tolerable, if they don't have a seeping head wound or aren't masturbating under their over-sized hoodie, then don't move.
I'd seen her on the 22 at the same time before, so she should have known.
She's quiet in manner, folded in, wearing her mousy brown hair held to the side with a girl's barrette placed high on her head close to her part. She is sitting next to another girl, the kind of white, blonde girl that I wager hears, "You look like someone I know."
At the stop the four-seaters open up and the meek little lady moves to the window.
This is always slightly offensive. 'Do I smell?' 'Am I talking to myself?' we think.
And I see the blonde say to herself, "Mmmpht."
At the next stop four about 14-year-old hood rats brimming with brand names and testosterone get on and encircle the invisible woman, sitting on all sides of her.
Their conversation, uncomfortable to write let alone hear, goes, "You look like a house nigga."
"A What?!"
"Like a nigga they be keepin' in the house all day with that wide nose."
"My nose is the same as yours faggot."
"Naw, you be lookin' like one of them workin' in the field all day niggers."
"Man, fuck your face, nigga."
"Nigga, please."
And my attention goes back to the girl, her sharp pointed nose glued to the window.
The girl next to me points low to her back and looks at me and says, shoulders shaking to withhold laughter, "Awesome, she moved to that seat."
And we can't help but to crack up together as the boys begin to pass a basketball back and forth in front of her inch-thick glasses.
Don't move on the 22, unless you are being felt up or actually sitting in vomit.
You can always get someone crazier.

-photo compliments of goodsista

Sunday, 12:45 p.m., 16th Church - 16th Guerrero

A blind man boards the bus and my life seems easy.
His feelers are out for a seat. No one knows if he/she should help. Do we say, "There is a seat there. No, two over, there."
Is that belittling? The only standing rule on the Deuce Deuce seems to be ignore, so no one says a thing.
The bus takes off and he adeptly puts on his sea legs.
He tap-taps until he finds a seat, negotiates his space, taps again and sits.
The last thing, I think to myself, I would want is heightened senses on the 22.
The piss smells more pungent. Perhaps, he can deduce whether it came from gin or vodka. The noise is louder. The tightness of quarters, a jungle even with the courtesy of vision.
He is smiling. And I'm humbled and a little jealous.
He may be getting more out of life, more out of the ride, in certain ways, than I ever will.

-photo compliments of Megan Allison