The ST 565, one of these king-sized, articulated behemoth buses, is packed to the gills because the previous two buses never showed up. I land a seat next to a young dude who immediately starts talking to me in a steady, laid-back monologue.
Bus sure is crowded he says. My mother is bipolar, he says, she used to barge into my room at 3 a.m. and ask if I wanted to play Risk, and if I said no ma I'm sleeping she'd chase me around with a broom beating the shit out of me. I had a bunch of money waiting for me when I turn 18 tomorrow but come to find out she had access to the account and took it all. I was so mad, I almost hit her, but then I just walked out. But I stole some of her electronics. I wanna get my GED and join the marines cause really that's what I've been training for all my life. All I do is practice Kung Fu. That and party. I stay up all night partying and go to work at 6 in the morning. I like to taste the rainbow, you know what I mean?
I'm not sure what he means, but as he's talking, he sprawls out further, his legs significantly encroaching my half of the two seats (this is a bus pet peeve of mine... I come from the Les Nessman school of bus seating. That's your half, this is my half. You stay on your side and I'll stay on mine). At this point both my legs were out in the aisle to avoid contact with his. I did a lot of nodding/head shaking and saying, "Shit, man."
As we near my stop, the whole bus heaves a sort of collective gasp. Glancing outside I see that a gold minivan has driven into a gas station... all the way into the station, knocking over shelves of Funyuns and Bug Hunks and what-have-you. Later I read in the Seattle Times that the elderly driver said "his new shoes caused him to accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brake when pulling into a parking space." Shoes always get scapegoated... I blamed mine for a loud fart I cut in seventh grade history class.
We roll on to my stop and I bid farewell and happy birthday to my hard-partying, rainbow-tasting, kung fu marine seatmate. I have arrived at a desolate outpost known as the South Renton Park and Ride, marked by abandoned Wal-Mart carts, uprooted "Buses Only" signs and poorly-executed gang tags. This is
one of the most crime ridden park and rides in western Washington. I'm to catch the 101 here up the hill to my house, but I have about 20 minutes before that bus arrives. As I sit reading with my earphones in, I notice yet another late-teens/early twenties dude pacing and talking loud enough to cut through the volume of my Ipod. He seems agitated, so out of morbid curiosity, I mute the music. This skinny, lily white kid is talking in a pseudo-hardened street dialect to someone on his Bluetooth earpiece:
"Yeah, I want you to take care of this mothafucka. I got ten G's fa ya if you do it. I know you won't leave no trace, knowhatahmsayin? [pause] Naw, I don't have to do shit... why should I do shit when I got people to do it fa me?[pause] Yeah, I want this mothafucka dead. Das what happens when you fuck wid me."
I think, this kid's arranging a hit on someone? At the park and ride on his Bluetooth? He's got ten G's but he still has to take the bus? I continue pretending to read and listen to my headphones as things got weirder. He begins to speak in an unidentifiable (to me) foreign language. If you put a gun to my head (ha ha), I'd say it was Arabic or something. He walks out of earshot, and by the time he's walking back he's back to Urban Black English.
"Aight then, wha's dat worf, then? couple broken legs? A few teef, what? Nevvamind, fuck it. I jus git m'otha cousin to do it. Don' worry 'bout it." [More foreign language].
The 101 is pulling up. I get on, reflecting on whether this kid was actually speaking to anyone at all or just acting out a game of Grand Theft Auto. This bus is pretty full too, but there are still a few seats in the back. I sit down. As we're about to depart, three girls are frantically running to catch the bus. They make it on, one older girl - maybe 17 or 18 - and two girls around 13. The younger girls have dolled themselves up in a way that only a 13 year old girl can, resulting in a strange tragicomic mix of prostitute and grade-schooler who got into her mom's make-up. The older girl is clearly irritated as she talks on a cell phone, emphasizing her language with jerky head movements. As they take a seat near me, the older girl says in a loud, exasperated voice:
"So I'm walking to the bus and who do I see? My little SISTER and her FRIEND and they are GOING to A RAVE. [pause] Yeah, I know! I wanted Patrick to come and pick us up so he could give them a BIG lecture [glances at the girls reproachfully], but that didn't work out so now I'm ON the BUS..."
She continued to rant about the rave for a while, then got off the phone and said to her sister's friend, "I want to talk to your MOTHER."
"Why?" the girl asks.
"Because I want her to know what her DAUGHTER was PLANNING. Where do you live? We're taking YOU home first."
The younger sister pipes up, "I hope you know, I'm spending the night at her house."
"Like HELL you are, after what YOU just tried to pull? You can FORGET it!"
"Hey," says Little Sis, "you're not the boss of me! You can't tell me what to do."
"That is SO FUCKING RUDE," Big Sis retorts.
And on it goes. They even get off at the same stop as me, so I get the extended version of the argument until they turn off. I probably should have turned my ipod back on, but after this whole remarkably weird trek home, I felt like the universe was trying to tell me something, and if so I didn't want to miss it.
But maybe I did miss it, because I'm still not sure what the universe was saying, if anything. I somehow bore unsolicited witness to the lives of a string of weird, troubled and/or homicidal youngsters, against a semi-apocalyptic backdrop of wrecked gas stations and crime-and-trash-riddled park and rides, all in the space of one hour on a Friday before Memorial Weekend. I just kept thinking,
THIS MEANS SOMETHING - THIS IS IMPORTANT. I've been in a bit of a creative lull lately, maybe this shakeup in my corner of the universe is heralding the beginning of a new direction...? Why that would be, I'm not sure, but something similar has invariably preceded the all-to-rare rare occasions where I have felt connected to a larger collective consciousness. And this one was a doozy.
So it's now Wednesday, and I guess I'm still waiting on a creative epiphany. We'll see what happens.
by Matt K
