M. On The #75
Time has been very fluid over the past couple of years. Honestly, I can no longer accurately place just when it was. The passage of time, and particular moments that set down within the flow, are more emotional than temporal.
I must have been a little disconnected again, not quite myself. Talking to strangers while waiting for the bus isn’t part of my character, in general—let alone talking to a random She at whom I keep stealing glances.
She was blonde. I don’t tend to notice blondes. It must have been the funky glasses, and the strange black-beaded chain which held them.
The telling of it will forever be ruined by the simple fact that I can’t remember just what it was we talked about, nor precisely how the conversation began. Perhaps she asked me if I’d been waiting long. Perhaps she asked for a light. The out-of-characterness of it might help explain why my memory of it is all so damnably slight.
Whatever the subject, we talked while waiting. We sat near each other and talked on the bus. I’m sure that I was the one to make sure there were introductions, which is how I learned her name was M.
I had been at BOG most of the evening. I wasn’t drunk, but I was restless. I do remember saying that I wasn’t sure I wanted to go home, I just didn’t want to be where I had been. I’m sure I must have been, in my own stumbling way, trying to get a feel for whether she’d want to do something.
Who was this, talking with this girl? It certainly could not possibly be me.
When I didn’t get off at Powell, she asked if that meant I had decided it wasn’t time yet to go home. Still fumbling around, simply not wanting to get off the bus before she did, I decided I was going to go have one last drink at the Lutz. Maybe she’d like to come with.
“I have friends waiting for me at home,” she said. “Maybe if I can convince them to come out.”
She got up to get off, somewhere before Woodstock. I told her I’d be there for awhile if her friends decided going out would be good.
The one Black Butte at the Lutz seemed to take forever to drink. I felt irretrievably certain that everyone there knew I was waiting to see if this random girl I didn’t know was going to walk through the door.
She didn’t.
To this day, I remain as clueless as anyone else who knows me would be about what I would or would not have done if she had. Meeting random people—on the bus, at the bar, over coffee—is not what I do.
Frankly, it confuses me. It makes no sense to me, and I don’t know why people do it.
I saw her once more, some time after. Same stop. Same bus. A short, almost cursory exchange of Hellos.
But, for whatever reason, and although I would probably just keep to myself, I still sometimes look to see if she’s among the waiters, peering down the road for the #75.