The Beauty and The Bus

The Beauty on The Bus
by celeriko and 256

And there I was again, existing in an incredibly unfamiliar space.  As I opened my eyelids from their drunken rest to view the purple-tinted room, the spirit of the moment rushed back to me.  I was curled up in the corner of a very comfortable love seat in the second story “living” room of my friend Alton’s neighbor’s house, the owner/s of which I had not yet met and more than likely never would.  Surprisingly, the past four hours were still relatively clear in my head.  Me and two of my buddies had heard about a party just up the street from Alton’s apartment and had decided to imbibe with only the grandest over expectations in mind. Normally something like this was not our scene, but with the key letters “F-R-E-E” spelled out in the invite, we couldn’t resist.  Any other Friday night you could find us all sitting lined up on the couch, yelling and heckling over whatever we had unconsciously agreed to put on the television.  Recently, we have been heavy viewers of Fox News, sarcastically agreeing with Bill O’Reilly’s undying “patriotism,” making fun of Greta van Susteren’s fucked up mug, and calling Sean Hannity a “penis face” and a “semen demon”.  While the channel viewed and insults thrown would differ, these nights always ended the same, with everyone being too faded for their own good and stumbling back to their residences alone.  While the average American would probably view this as “boring” or “stagnant,” we always had good fun and we never let the lack of “excitement” or “females” discourage us.  Even so, it is always nice to get out of the house.  So when Alton told me Friday afternoon that so-and-so was having a party down the street and it was open to the public, I was in.

It turned out to be your typical college party: too many people (male and female alike), shitty music being played way too loud, and everyone shouting to each other because of the culmination of the first two items on this list.  For a party this typical, my friends and I could only be expected to act with our typical party manners; instantly scope out the backyard and post up with a backpack full of beer and a fifth of sub-$20 liquor in the corner, go through the last seven cigarettes between the three of us within the first thirty minutes and quickly drink as much alcohol as we could.  Alton, Eli and I, while vastly differing in the subtle aspects of our personalities, all hold similar views of the world and those around us.  For the most part, we believe the world to be a supremely fucked up place but nothing a little thinking and compassion can’t scrub out.  If only the people of the world would stop eating McDonald’s, think a little harder, and be even just a little less materialistic, we would all have a lot better of a time.  And there we stood in the back corner of a college party, where people were purposely pouring liquid depressant down their throats to drown their manufactured sorrows with the over-arching goal to sleep, hopefully next to someone else.  Shit, I can’t be this harsh because for all intents and purposes we were doing the exact same thing.  The only difference being that our ultimate goal was not to sleep but to be alive and experience something that isn’t possible on the couch in front of the television.  Television was only our batting practice for situations like this, the witty retorts and attentiveness we cultivate on the couch being put to work in real life on real human beings.

Our unstated modus operandi for any party was essentially to each channel our own personal poltergeists, floating throughout the party causing confusion and destruction all while having a grand time.  Examples of our antics included stealing the only working light bulb in a room straight out of the lamp, switching the inner-bags of cereal boxes around, changing the music on the stereo to “Deer Dance” by System of a Down, and providing party attendees completely wrong directions to the bathroom.  While all of the above give us chuckles, by far my favorite devious act at parties was to have conversations with strangers and harmlessly mess with them.  Unfortunately, my natural disposition is to talk as little as possible and instead listen and watch.  You aren’t learning if you’re talking.  That’s where the bottle comes in, instilling the audacity needed to break my everyday rules and strike up meaningless conversations with people I will never recognize again.  Here is a small sampling of some of my favorite conversations I had on that specific Friday night.

Me:  “Hey man, can I buy a smoke off you?  I only got 27 cents…”
Cig Sid:  “Yeah man I got you, you don’t gotta pay me. Here you go homie.”
Me:  “Good looks, works every time.”
Cig Sid:  “What?”
Me:  “93% of the time when you offer an a weird number of cents for a cigarette to someone they will give it to you for free, and 66% of the time when you offer any money for a cigarette you’ll still get it for free, offer someone 27 cents and your almost guaranteed to get it for free.”
Cig Sid:  “That’s bullshit dude, give me that 27 cents. I changed my mind.”
Me:  “Sorry buddy but with me knowing these statistics, do you really think I have any money to give you?”
Cig Sid:  “Damn…”
Me: “Sorry.”
Cig Sid and I light up our smokes and stand there in silence watching the crowd.

Me: “Hello, what are you drinking there, young lady?”
Salty Sally:  “Whatever was in the keg, I think it’s Lionshead.”
Me:  “How much did you pay for that cup?”
Salty Sally:  “Girls get them for three but guys have to pay five.”
Me:  “Well that’s fucked.”
Salty Sally:  “Why? You don’t have five bucks?”
Me:  “No I have plenty of money, it’s just fucked that they charge less for girls than they do for guys, it should be equal rates regardless of chromosomes.”
Salty Sally:  “Um… Everywhere does that. They charge girls less so that more girls will come.”
Me:  “Haha nice pun, that was clever.“
Salty Sally:  “…Oh my god, that’s not what I meant, that’s gross”
Me:  “Something as natural as an orgasm is gross to you, but it’s not gross that the men running these parties are distributing alcohol to females at a reduced rate, for the sole purpose of making them lose their dignity and inhibitions faster with hopes that these girls will fuck them?  Seems a little backwards to me.”
Salty Sally:  “Fuck you.”
Salty Sally makes a noise and storms away disgusted.

Me:  “Hey man, what’re you smoking there?”
Pothead Pat:  “Oh this some OG Kush I just rolled up, there’s some Newport mixed in too, you wanna hit?”
Me:  “Gladly.”
I take three massive hits and begin to float about an inch off the ground.
Pothead Pat:  “Hey man!  I said A hit!”
Me:  “Oh don’t worry buddy, the first hit was all Kush but the last two were strictly Newport”
Pothead Pat:  “Fuck you man, you damn near crushed half of that!”
Me:  “Nah man, I swear, I could taste it, the first hit was definitely Kush but towards the end I tasted some menthol.  So I took a second rip to test my hypothesis.  The whole second hit turned out to be Newport.  Feeling a little ballsy tonight, I went for a third hit.  Towards the end I started tasting Kush again and abruptly stopped. Sorry man, but I promise the rest of this is mostly Kush.  You’re gonna be flyin’.’”
Pothead Pat: “Oh…really? Damn, it all tastes the same to me…I guess I didn’t mix it up too well before rollin’, now that I think about it”
Me:  “Hey no worries, happens to the best of us.”
Pothead Pat:  “True. True.”
Me:  “Say, I feel bad about this now, I know I didn’t kill your bud but I probably burned most of that ‘port, let me give you some bills for your troubles.”
I reach into my pocket and feel around.
Me:  “Damn dude…I only got like 27 cents.”
Pothead Pat:  “Nah man, no worries.”
Pothead Pat passes the spliff back to me and we both smile.

Some may say that in these circumstances I acted like a dick or was being opportunistic.  But here’s how I saw it.  I was teaching Cig Sid a valuable lesson in applied statistics.  I was trying to expose to Salty Sally the patriarchy that surrounds her everyday life and how this is negatively affecting her and the women around her.  And with Pothead Pat I was totally bullshitting, but in the end we ended up mates and I even ended up trading him a shot of my Ouzo for a can of his Miller.  Most of my other fucking-with-you interactions of that night were of a similar vein, many of which ended up with me looking like a dumbass (pretending to know French to hit on a girl, for example) and everyone having a good laugh.  Once I had my fun with fucking around with people, Alton, Eli, and I all reconvened in the now empty backyard and made a game plan for the rest of the night.  Being close to 1:00 a.m. there was about an hour left in this party before either the owner/s started kicking people out or everyone was too drunk for their own good, at which point we would probably start getting into actual trouble for our harmless bullshit.

“Alright, whats the deal?  How much longer you guys wanna stay?”
“Don’t matter to me man.  All chances with any females here are already ruined, and I’m comfortably numb so it’s up to you guys,” mumbled Alton with his eyes closed, swaying with the non-existent wind.
“What do you mean ‘all chances with any females are already ruined’?” I asked Akimbo Alton.
“Let’s all slow down and think about this.  Look at me, boys!” he bellowed with an incredibly misplaced sense of pride.  He was right.  Alton’s faded hammer and sickle t-shirt was spotted with wetness, most likely from spilling drinks, and had various tiny holes from overuse.  His jeans were faded, stained, and ripped, and not in the “I got these jeans from Abercrombie & Fitch” way, but more so in the “I haven’t taken these jeans off in three years” way.  If his eyes were even open at all, it could not have been more than ten percent of their already less-than-normal size.  He sported a doofy grin as we surveyed, only making him look like some sort of demented cartoon clown.
“In contrast to you, I think I actually might have a chance with this one girl.  She kept giving me the eye so I went up and started talking to her.  Seems like a gentle, self-respecting young lady.  Maybe I’ll be able to convince her to leave this place and watch some FLCL with me,” said Eli.
“Hell yeah, nice arrangement.  Ain’t no one here for me so I think I’m just gonna try my best to kill this bottle and find somewhere to sit down for awhile,” I replied as I stared down at the roughly half empty bottle of Greek imported aperitif currently residing in my left hand. With no spins, no blurry vision, and minimal slurring (only on the tough ones like “slithering slippery slugs”) I was feeling pretty confident in my new quest.  I’d had enough of messing with strangers and was starting to get a general feeling of shitty-ness.  I wasn’t sad, just a little discontent and unsettled.  Nothing a little more alcohol can’t fix, I reasoned.

After splitting a Marlboro light three ways that Eli managed to score from his new female friend, we all headed back inside.  Alton headed straight for the first floor bathroom, hopefully to regurgitate the copious amounts of diluted CH₃CH₂OH in his stomach.  Eli pushed his way through the “living” room, which looked like a prom for zombie high schoolers, to try and track down you-know-who.  Everyone moving very slowly to very upbeat music, eyes half closed, groping each other as much as possible.  Not exactly my place to sit down and rest.  I followed Eli in and continued through to the main entranceway of the house looking for somewhere comfortable to rest for a minute.

Walking up the steps to the second floor I was confronted with three options: door #1, sporting a hand drawn, taped up sign with “Bathroom! Don’t Flush Anything Besides Piss, Shit, and Puke! Please!” scribbled on it in black Sharpie; door #2, slightly ajar and looking to be an entrance to someone’s bedroom; and door #3, totally closed with no distinctive markings on it.  Door #3 it was, and as I opened and peeked inside I saw a sort of three-quarter sized living room that led to another set of steps up to the third floor.  A single floor lamp in the corner with one standard incandescent light bulb and one ultra-violet light bulb screwed in gave the room an ethereal, lavender glow.  There was about half a dozen people sitting on various chairs or sofas, all deep in conversation with those closest to them.  No one looking up as I walked in, I spotted an empty love seat in the corner big enough for two people.  “Perfect,” I thought and walked over to it and plopped myself down.  “Mind if I sit here?” I asked to no one in particular.  Two people briefly looking up mumbled “Nah, man,” and returned to their respective conversations.

As I sat there, sipping from my bottle, I observed the various situations around me.  People gradually milled through the room, either going up or going down, some sitting taking a brief break in one of the empty chairs or couches.  I overheard various conversations, all of very little substance to me.  A few about how drunk they were (laundry list of drinks for the night included), a few about their plans for tomorrow, and most about some sort of distress that had occurred over the course of the night.  I’m always the first to drop eaves in almost any situation, but at this point it just wasn’t worth the effort.  So I shut my eyes and closed my ears. 

As I sat there on that incredibly cushioned love seat, two things happened to me.  First, as you can imagine, waves of intense intoxication passed over me.  At first they came slowly.  When I would move my head around to get comfortable, it felt oddly heavy.  But soon enough the effects of the alcohol grew exponentially.  At one point I tried standing up to rearrange my jeans and instantly collapsed back onto the couch.  Anyone who has unfortunately encountered a similar situation will tell you that getting drunk while sitting down is a bad idea.  You sit down with the ability to utilize your legs and move around, but by the time you finally stand up it’s as if someone has directly injected them with muscle relaxers.  Sitting down requires hardly any motor function or balance, two of the major victims of drunkenness, so instead of manifesting itself to the external world, this particular night's boozing decided to fuck with my internal world.  And this leads to the second thing that happened to me on that couch.  Eyes closed, as I drifted into my interior, I knew if I just let things happen as they were, I would be in an unconscious stupor within minutes.  Never being one for waking up in a stranger’s house, regardless of the circumstances, I needed a method to keep myself at least somewhat conscious.  Forgoing the physical methods, such as pinching my arm or flicking my face, I decided to try performing some mental calisthenics.

At first I started off with something straightforward: see how high I could count powers of two.  1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128...264...256,516... was about as far as I got.  Next was binary (I still cannot give an explanation as to why I thought this would go any better).  0,1,10,11,100...1...0...1...shit.  This vein of thought was not going to do me any good, so instead I decided to play a memory game.  I decided to try and remember as many things about the room that I was sitting in as I could. Purple light, carpet...green?, three couches with maybe 7 people total in the room, a television, speakers somewhere because there was music playing, ipod probably...poster of some band I have never heard of over my head...jeeze this is going pretty good.  As I continued to remember various objects or traits of the room, a gradual mental picture began to develop in my head of what laid just on the other side of my eyelids.  It was probably not entirely accurate but it was close enough to begin to feel very real.  After roughly five minutes of this, my image was more or less complete and I was able to view it with exceptional clarity.  There was not much more to remember, I had exhausted the extent to which I was able to reach into my memory.  Since the image was more or less complete I started focusing on individual aspects of it, as if my eyes were in fact open.  Gee that table has a lot of shit on it, magazines, ashtrays, cans, bottles, someone is gonna knock all of that shit off of it one of these days...probably already beer all over this carpet...yep, there’s a spill right over there by that dudes foot...I wonder if he made that spot?  I continued on like this, getting more and more entrenched in the mental image I had created, taking notice of every small detail.  It was no longer a task to stay awake; I just watched what went on in the room.  Gee there sure are a lot of people coming and going through this room...I wonder what the other floors look like...I can still feel the music bumping downstairs so it must still be a party...this black light is really making everything stand out...check out that big old stain on that couch...could be piss or shit or blood or tonic water...probably tonic water...gee I didn't know bruises also glowed under UV, I thought as I looked from the couch over to the glowing blotch on someone's exposed forearm.  Without being able even get my eyes up to their face, I instantly felt an enormous weight pull down on hundreds of gossamers that had attached themselves evenly throughout my entire body.  I was instantly plunged into darkness and when I opened my eyes everything had changed.

As I looked around the room, there was one other person passed out sitting up in a metal folding chair and two people lying passed out next to each other on the couch to my right.  I looked down at my bottle and was shocked to find that there was only one swig left.  I didn’t remember drinking all of that and certainly didn’t feel like I had consumed roughly 700 mL of 80 proof liquor over the last few hours.  Sitting down and taking in my surroundings I smiled. Another night over, time to head home, I thought to myself.  But as I tried to stand up, all the liquor that mysteriously entered my corpus hit me like a fucking freight train.  I immediately fell back down on the couch and had to catch my breath and shake my brain.  With the proper support of both hands on the armrest of the love seat, I slowly got to my feet.  Arms spread like a gymnast on the balance beam, I slowly made my way to the hallway outside the room.  Seeing the bathroom door open and vacant, I crept inside to assess my situation.  Viewing my face in the mirror, I realized I looked even worse than I felt.  A huge drool-drip was hanging off my chin, my face was red as a tomato, and my hair was greasy and electrified.  I turned on the faucet, splashed some cold water on my face and hydrated from my cupped hands.  After a few large gulps, I looked up to the mirror and it seemed that at least a modicum of life seemed to return from some far off place where it had been staying for the last hour.  I lifted my left foot, unzipped my pants, dropped them and performed a quasi-pirouette directly onto the toilet.  In no mood to try and aim my urine from a foot over the bowl, I emptied my bladder with extreme pleasure.  Once finished and after a two minute deep breathing exercise, I stood up, gulped down some more water, and exited the facility.

As I stepped into the hallway, I looked down to find none other than Salty Sally, presumably waiting to use the bathroom.
“Yo what up? You seen my friends around?” I mumbled to her.
“Who?”
“Alton and Eli.  One is tall, wearing a Soviet shirt, and probably sleeping standing up.  The other has a beard, red Chucks on, and hopefully an anime girl with him”
“Nope, sorry I just need to pee.”
“Be my guest, it’s a nice place, I’ll see ya, have a good night…er, morning,” I managed to say as I started to head for the steps.
“Hey, before you go, I thought about what you said earlier and I think you might have been on to something”
“Really?” I replied, shocked that she even remembered our previous interaction.
“Yeah, I guess it is kinda messed up that they use cash as a means to improve their chances of sex.”
“Hey there, now your catchin’ on…well, again, have a good morning,” as I headed for the steps.
“Thanks, you too,” as Sally stepped into the bathroom, turned around, and closed the door smiling through the diminishing crack.

Before I left, I figured I would peruse the first floor and see if Alton or Eli was around, otherwise I was out.  Walking through the makeshift dance floor, all I saw was one couple still trying to dance even though the playlist had made it to the dregs of “The Whisper Song.”  Entering the kitchen I saw nothing short of mass destruction: cans and bottles everywhere, a huge spill of something covering nearly half the floor, and a dent in the wall from the handle of the door being slammed way too hard.  There was a guy, who I took to be an owner of house, standing by the range attempting to cook an Ellio’s frozen pizza in a saucepan.

“Hey man, you want me to help you clean up a little? I can at least toss some of these cans in the recycling bin for ya,” I offered.
“What? Nah man, this ain’t my house, you want some pizza?”
“Nah. Thanks.”

Peeking out the backdoor all I saw was a stranger’s back, leaning headfirst motionless against the corner of the fence.  My theory was that he was trying to take a piss and ended up passing out on the spot.  Pretty lucky if you ask me, could have been much worse.  I closed the back door and directed my attention to the front door.  As I stepped outside, I took in a deep breath, the fresh air nearly burning my dirty lungs.  Great, six block walk to the bus stop, wait for twenty minutes, then thirty minute ride back home, I thought, not looking forward to the next hour in the least.  Had I found Alton or Eli, I would have just crashed at their much more conveniently placed residences, but alas it was the standard journey for me.  Living this far from campus was not all that bad: cheap rent, good neighborhood, and an atmosphere that was much more conducive to my livelihood than constantly being surrounded by college life.  It only sucked that at the end of every night I still had an hour before I could lie down in my bed.  Regardless, bus pass in wallet, I started my voyage.

The streets between the party and the bus stop were more or less deserted, so the walk was pretty uneventful.  Rejuvenated, by what I assumed to be a very realistic but strange dream, I was feeling slightly more and more sober as I proceeded forward.  But as we are taught in high school physics, with every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.  For every degree of drunkenness that left me on that walk, an increasing amount of pain developed on either side of my head.  A feeling I was by no means unfamiliar with, having had almost weekly headaches since a very young age, I was kicking myself in the ass for not having some sort of emergency NSAID with me.  Stupidly leaving my backpack at Alton’s, there was no chance of me getting to my 200 count bottle of Aleve that lived in the front pocket.  In retrospect, I could have made a slight detour and gone to the 24-hour CVS before getting on the bus, but anything other than my bed was not on my mind at that point in time.

By the time I reached the bus stop, the pain was almost unbearable.  I sat down on the curb and began the inevitable, and currently excruciating, process of waiting for the infrequent, post-midnight bus service across town to my neighborhood.  After what seemed to be five minutes, my sense of time highly compromised, I heard someone walk up behind me and sit next to me on the curb.  I looked up and saw a middle-aged man, shabbily clothed and sporting a dirty Philadelphia Phillies fitted cap.

“Brotha, you look like shit,” he said to me.
“…Yeah, you know how it goes.  When you finish the majority of a bottle of liquor…”
“Shit, that’s why I stick to good old Bud Ice, two tall boys and I’m set, not feelin’ shitty ‘til the mornin’. Haha”
“Yeah, I just got this fucking headache now that won’t go away no matter how hard I tell it to.”
“Take a hot shower, always used to do it for me.”
“Damn, forgot to bring my shower out with me tonight.”
“Haha, you’re funny.  Say, you think you could hook me up with a dollar? I got three so far, another dollar and I can get a large rice from the China men”
“Sure man,” as I reached into my pocket, pulled out a five and handed it to him.  Very uncharacteristic of me, as the only money I usually gave away was metal, but it just happened to be the first thing I grabbed.
“Fuck, good looks!”
“Yeah, no problem, don’t spend it all in one place”
“Shit, you know I will!” as he firmly shook my hand, stood up, and just about skipped down the block to China Garden, open until 4 a.m.

As I continued to sit on the curb waiting for the dubious bus, I tried to focus on anything besides the pincers surrounding the upper half of my head.  I ran over the events of the night, from the meaningless banter with strangers, to the ... me on the sofa, to the pleasant second encounter with Sally.  It seems through all my fuckery and devious intentions, I somehow did manage to actually see one of my self-justifications come to fruition.  No great feat by any means, but I would take what I could get at this point.  Thinking back on it, she did smile at me as she turned around to close the bathroom door…did I fuck up? Should I have stuck around until she was done?  I had no idea what her intentions where with that short encounter, and would never know, but something had happened over the course of the night to alter her disposition.  And that something was most certainly connected to what I had sarcastically uttered to her previously.  Shit, I don’t know what would have happened if I had waited around, but a very strong feeling came over me that I missed a chance.  A chance for what, I’m still not exactly sure, but I knew it was something positive for both her and I.  I seriously contemplated saying, “Fuck the bus” and heading straight back to that party to see if Sally was still there, even with this horrible headache. This headache…I had nearly forgotten about it and the pain that it was causing me.  But as soon as the thought of pain crossed back into the entrance of my conscious mind, it manifested itself as real-life, excruciating pain.

Trying to get rid of a headache is very similar to trying to sleep.  Next time you lie down in bed to go to sleep for the night try this little experiment.  As you close your eyes and hope to drift off into dream world for the next 8 hours, think this thought, I really want to get to sleep.  Do this and I guarantee you will lie wide awake for the next 8 hours, the whole time with that same thought irremovably planted in your head.  As soon as you focus on the act of sleeping, a vicious cycle is started and it becomes impossible to sleep.  Headaches are the same way.  The more you focus on the headache and how much you wish it wasn’t happening, the worse it becomes.  The worse it becomes the more you are constantly reminded of how terrible the pain is.  The worse the pain is the more you focus on it.  One of the worst cycles known to man, up there with the Keynesian Economic Spiral and the never ending Pick-My-Scab-as-Soon-As-It-Forms routine.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take anymore of any of this, the bus pulled up to the intersection.  The tired looking bus driver opened the door and loudly asked, “You getting on or what?”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” as I slowly stood up and pulled my self up into the pungent vehicle.  I swiped my pass and looked at the prospect of the now post 3:00 a.m. ride ahead of me.  There were three other passengers.  One sat in the back right corner, staring intently down into his lap.  Maybe checking his phone, maybe rolling a blunt, maybe touching himself, who cares?  There was a lady in her mid-30’s in nurses scrubs.  Judging by her comfortable demeanor, she was not leaving from work but instead headed to the hospital to start an early morning shift.  The last passenger was a homeless man sitting towards the back, head leaned against the window, sleeping away with a moderate snore.  Awesome, if the driver is letting this dude sleep, that means I can at least try to sleep.  I sat down at a window seat somewhere around the middle of the bus and leaned my head against the window and close my eyes, taking after my homeless comrade.

No more than three stops after I had boarded, the bus stoped, the doors opened, and I heard someone walking back towards where I’m sitting.  Please don’t sit next to me, please don’t sit next to me, I thought, a mantra I repeat every time I manage to get a seat and there is an open one next to me.  Sure as shit, whoever it was, sat down right next to me.  This late at night, on a deserted bus, someone sitting directly next to you can never be a good thing.  Instead of seeing who it was, I continued to pretend to be asleep, hoping they would move on once they realize I’m wasn’t going to acknowledge their presence.  All of a sudden I felt a poke on my shoulder.

“Hey. You,” said an incredibly unexpected voice.  I wasn’t planning on entertaining whoever this may have been, regardless of what they did, but upon hearing that voice I couldn’t resist.  I opened my eyes and looked to my right to see an incredibly unique yet familiar looking female, I guessed to be between 25 and 30 years old.  She had dark hair, which looked as if it may have been dyed, resting underneath a camo cap.  It looked like one of the round, short brimmed hats the ROTC members wear, but was definitely not made by the U.S. Armed Forces.  It was your standard camouflage pattern with green, black, brown, and grey spots, but there were maybe seven brightly colored spots, from turquoise to magenta, scattered all over.  She had two thick but small hoops in her left ear lobe, and one of the same style hoop in her right ear.  Her ears were larger than normal, but they did not stick out to the side like Dumbo.  They were merely slightly over-sized and jutted out at a slight angle towards the top.  Her hat pushed them out even further than they normally would have been, giving her an elfish look.  Her face was one which I felt I had seen very recently, but at the same time I couldn’t for the life of me remember where exactly I had seen it before.  For a second I thought I recognized her from the party, but quickly dismissed the idea.  She had a defined bone structure throughout her face, especially in her cheeks, but without the gaunt look of a runway model. Her eyes seemed to encompass at least three-quarters of the colors in existence into one beautiful, glossy amalgam, no one individual hue standing out.  Her face was perfectly symmetrical, vertically, horizontally, and even diagonally.  Her bottom lip, plump, pink, and slightly cracked, formed a solid base for her thinner and slightly paler upper lip to rest on.  Her nose was strongly formed, complementing the rest of her sturdy features nicely.  For all intense impermanence she looked completely normal.  Normal in the sense that no one aspect stood out. Instead of being two ears, two eyes, a mouth, nose and lips, the face I viewed was cohesive, only able to be viewed as a whole. 

As she stared unhesitatingly into my eyes, her face showed very little emotion.  However, her candy-coated eyes more than made up for her relaxed facial muscles.  It was as if, as I continued to stare into them, I was directly viewing my own soul with her soul as merely a filter in between.  I was so struck by her beauty and the absurdity of the situation I could think of absolutely nothing to say.  The discontent I felt earlier at the party, while of a different flair, was nothing compared to the emptiness I felt at that moment on the bus.

“What’s going on?” she asked, still maintaining the exact same blank expression.  I didn’t respond for a time, I just couldn’t.  I wanted to say anything, anything to show her that I was in fact a human being with the ability to speak; anything at all even if it was nothing more than “purple” but my vocal cords were frozen.
“Ok…stop staring and answer the question…what’s going on?”
“…I was just asking myself that same question not more than two hours ago,” I managed to spit out after some time and deep breathing.
“Oh yeah? Well I guess we can start there.  What was your answer ‘not more than two hours ago’?”
“Um…I’m still not entirely sure, it probably wouldn’t make any sense,” I responded weakly.
“Try me.  I’ll bet you five dollars that I can keep up.”
“Alright, well I was at a party two hours ago, finished a fifth to myself, something weird happened, and currently have the worst headache I’ve had in a long time,” I said, cutting straight to the point and stupidly reminding myself of the still persistent pain that had started in my temples and now just about encompassed my entire brain.
“Hmm…”
“Yeah, I just wish I had my bottle of Aleve with me”
“Why?”
“Why? So I can take two and forget about the pain in about 20 to 25 minutes.”
“Sounds like a shit patch to me.  That Aleve won’t stop your headache next week.”
“OK. Well nothing is going to stop my headache next week.  It’s not like I can just choose when my head is going to hurt and when it’s not.”
“Sure you can.  Stop doing what ever it is that causes your head to ache and bam! No more pain.”
“Again, it’s not like I have some explicit list of causes and can just scratch them off one at a time.  The headaches just come and go as they please.  What would you suggest Ms. Headache Doctor?” I retorted, starting to get annoyed at her inability to understand my pain.
“Jeeze, I think you’re about to give me a headache,” she said looking away and scrunching her eyes slightly as if she really was developing a similar pain.
“Well why don’t you take your own advice and stop doing whatever causes it., i.e. stop talking to me,” I uttered.  This was the last thing I needed.  All I wanted was to go to sleep and try to forget about my headache but now I was having a conversation with a total stranger about the ins and outs of my pain.
“Why do I even try?” she muttered as she turned away and began to stand up to move seats.
“Shit…wait,” I said slightly panicked, reaching out and lightly touching her forearm.
“Woah,” I managed to utter as I made contact.  As soon as I touched her skin, my hand became indescribably hot.  It was not the sort of hot that you feel when you hold your hand over a stove or dip your hand into a Jacuzzi, but the total opposite.  The warmth started somewhere deep within my own hand and radiated outward to meet with my bones, then my tendons, ligaments and muscles, and finally my skin.  I continued to hold on to her arm as she turned back towards me and looked down at my hand with the same stone face she had been sporting since we first laid eyes.
“Woah? What? Have you never touched a female before?” she asked, sounding slightly irritated.  I let go and the heat quickly dissipated.
“No, it’s not that. Nevermind, I’m drunk.”
“No you’re not,” she said sternly as she looked back up to my face and continued the same penetrating stare.  And she was right.  With the onset of the heat, my head simultaneously became incredibly clear.  No more blurring, no more heavy-lightness, no more swaying.  My headache was still as strong as ever but it was as if all of the alcohol coursing through my body had instantaneously turned into water and an incredible sense of clarity washed over me.
“Hey, what’s going on here?  What did you do to me?” I asked, utterly confused.
“I didn’t do anything, you’re the one who touched me.”
“Whatever you say. This is too weird.”
“You still haven’t answered my question.  What’s going on?”
“If I answer you, can I touch you again? Sorry if that sounds strange but I felt something when I touched your arm,” I offered.
“Sure, I don’t care.  I have a knife in my pocket so don’t even think of trying anything sketchy.”
“I’d never,” I answered truthfully.
“Alright then. Lets hear it.”
“Ok. What’s going on around us? Or what’s going on with me personally?”
“Surprise me.”
“Alright, uh well we’re currently sitting on a smelly bus presumably waiting to get to our respective stops.  I have no idea what you plan on doing but I plan on stripping naked and crawling into bed.  Er, first I have to brush my teeth.  Then I will crawl into bed.  Assuming laying down does nothing for my head, I’ll probably take some pills with a big glass of water and get a hot shower until I pass out,” I responded without any response from the woman.  After a brief pause I continued.
“You seem pretty awake right now, you’ll probably go home and make something small to eat like a cup of ramen or apples and peanut butter, drink a glass of mineral water, and sit under a blanket on the couch and watch television or read a book or something like that,” I responded.
“Mhmm.”
“Am I right?”
“What?”
“Is that what you are going to do?”
“How should I know? It hasn’t happened yet.”
“You’re telling me that you have no idea what you are going to do when I get off of this bus?”
“I know exactly what I’m going to do but that’s not the point.”
“Whatever.  I answered your question.  I believe we had a bargain.”
“Not so fast.  Tell me more.”
“Um…Ok?  Since I have nothing else to go off of, I’m going to assume I am correct thus far.  After you finish eating and drinking, you’ll slowly fall asleep doing whatever it is you are doing.  You’ll wake up fifteen minutes later and think you slept for an hour or two.  You’ll check the time, realize your mistake, and fall back asleep this time for longer.  Eventually you’ll wake up and be restless and probably make a cup of coffee or tea and sit around.  Maybe smoke a cigarette or something.”
“Sure.”
“At this point I guess the sun will probably just be coming up which means it will be tomorrow.  And that’s it. Sorry, I can only predict the future of the current day”
“Your right.”
“Really?”
“Oh. No. Not what I’m going to do, but that when I wake up the sun will be up. It will be tomorrow.”
“Oh. Yeah.”
“That’s how I see it at least.  I know that technically right now is ‘tomorrow’ but its always easier for me to think of a day as the period between waking and sleeping.”
“And night is the period between sleeping and waking?”
“No, night is when it is dark outside,” she said.  I couldn’t tell if she was serious or sarcastic.
“So right now.  For you.  It is simultaneously night and day?”
“Sure.  Why not?”
“Alright, just clarifying.”
“So is that it?  That’s your answer?”
This caught me off guard.  I had forgotten I was supposed to be answering a specific question instead of just having a conversation.
“No, I mean, I don’t know.  That’s not it, there’s more,” I said defensively.
“Lay it on me.”
Panicking, I couldn’t even remember the question.  I said the only thing I could think of, something I had been thinking the entire time.
“Your eyes are wild.  In a good way, like beautifully wild,”  I stammered than instantly blushed.
Without looking the least bit embarrassed or judging she said, “Thank you, that was very nice of you to say.”
“Er, yeah no problem. Its true”
“Mhm..”
I continued to stare at her for a good fifteen seconds before I realized what I was doing.
“Um, tomorrow I’m probably gonna get a house plant or something to take care of.  I’ve never had to take care of anything other than myself”, I blurted out, trying to cover up the awkward staring I had been doing.  Where did that come from? I’ve never even thought about something like that.
“Cool.  If that’s it, you can touch me wherever you’d like.  Breasts are fine I guess, if you want to look like a pervert.  But only on the outside of my shirt.  And absolutely no vagina or asshole,” she said still maintaining her stoic look.
“Actually, I was thinking…maybe you could touch me somewhere,” I ventured.
“Oh my god, if you think your gonna get a tuggy on the fucking bus, you’re batshit crazy,” she said, for the first time breaking her firm gaze and making a face of total disgust.
“No! No! Not at all, I can handle that myself when I get home.”
“Thank god. I hate having to use my knife.”
“I was wondering if you could just touch both of my temples.  Like two fingers on each one?”
“Sure,” as she reached across her front with her right hand and behind my back with her left hand.  She extended her middle and ring finger of both hands and concurrently placed them on my temples.  As soon as they made contact my eyes instantly shut.  I hadn’t decided to close them, but instead it was as if she had pressed two buttons directly connected to the synapses of my third cranial nerve, releasing the brain of any ability to hold my lids open.  The same heat I had felt in my hand was now encompassing my entire head, but with much more intensity. 

I no longer felt my headache. I no longer felt anything.  Within a few seconds of her touching my temples, the heat had spread throughout my entire body, engrossing my mind, body and soul in waves of pure sensation.  The only sense I had of the outside world was the slight pressure of her four fingers to my temples.  The pressure was incredibly stable, not increasing or decreasing.  She continued to press as I slowly drifted away.  Where I went I don’t quite remember but it was incredibly calm and still.  Images were moving around but not through space or time.  They moved as the mind moves, without any use of matter or force.  All the troubles of my past and uncertainty of my future slipped away and I was left with a gorgeous, crystalline absence. I reveled in this absence with no regards as to where I was or how long I sat there with closed eyes.  As long as she was still touching me, I was unable and entirely unwilling to return back to reality.  As my only connection back to the real world, I never forgot and never will forget the feeling of her fingers.

Sometime later, how much later I can only guess, while still feeling her fingers I also felt two hard shoves on my right shoulder.  I ignored them and continued to bask in the inner-bliss.  Another harder shove managed to press my body against the bus window, and I opened my eyes.  Still in a daze I looked to the side the shoves came from, expecting to see the mysterious woman sitting there, but instead was confronted with the crotch of the tired bus driver.

“Hey man, last stop. You gotta get off. I’m assuming you missed your stop but the cleaning crew has to come on and do their thing.  I’ll be heading back the way you came in like twenty minutes if you want to wait,” the bus driver said to me, not sounding annoyed or angry, just exhausted.
“Huh? What?” I questioned still thoroughly confused at what this world now confronted me with.
“You gotta get off the bus.  You looked so peaceful I didn’t want to wake you, but its part of the job.  I’m on break until they are done cleaning.  I’ll buy you a coffee at the diner around the corner.  Come on,” he motioned with his hand and turned around to exit the bus.  I sat there for a few seconds, realizing what had happened and where I was.  I looked all around the bus.  I was the only one still on and this was definitely the last stop.  Still perplexed, I slowly stood up and followed the driver off the bus, around the corner, and into Maggie’s 24-Hour Diner.

The near deserted diner was comfortable enough, with red velvet walls and chrome benches and tables.  It still retained the smell of cigarettes from before the no-smoking-in-restaurants ban.  We sat down in a booth near the back of the building and the bus driver ordered corned beef hash, two eggs, white toast and two coffees.
“Cream or sugar?” asked the middle-aged waitress.
“Both black. Thank you dear,” answered the bus driver for both of us.
Turning towards me, both hands resting on the table he asked, “So what’s up man? Were you meditating or something? I’ve seen countless people sleep on my bus but I’ve never seen someone look the way you did.”
“How do you mean?” I asked puzzled.
“I don’t know.  You definitely weren’t asleep.  That I could tell.  But from the second you sat down, you just sat there bolt upright, eyes closed, breathing deeply, pale as a ghost.  At one point the guy who was sleeping behind you got up and started yelling some bullshit nonsense as he walked up to the front door but you just kept on doing your thing.  No reaction in the least,” he explained.
“Well that woman sitting next to me did something where she touched my head and made my headache go right away and made me feel all warm inside.”
“What woman? The last woman on that bus was that nurse and she got off downtown.  After that, the only people on that bus were you, the sleeping guy, and the dude rolling the blunt in the back.”
“What are you talking about?  She sat down right next to me, we talked for a bit and then she touched my head.  That’s when I closed my eyes.  And I felt her touching my head until you woke me up five minutes ago.”
“No women entered my bus after you got on,” he said flatly.
“Stop fucking with me man,” I said, confused as to why he would lie about this.
“I’m not fucking with you.  Why would I do that?  I wake you up, sit here with you, and buy you coffee all so I can get a rise by making up some bullshit? Nah.  We can go back and check the surveillance tape in the office if you really want to.”
Looking at this man, I could tell he was being honest.  He was right.  Why would he lie to me about something so trivial?
“Alright…” I replied, still bewildered.
“I don’t know what this woman business is you’re talking about.  Maybe you were asleep after all and dreamed her.”
“Nah, you’re right.  I definitely wasn’t asleep.  But I swear I felt her touching me up until the moment I opened my eyes.”
“Weird.”
“I guess that makes my question of where she got off at null and void,” I said.  Walking up to the diner I had a million questions racing through my head.  Where did she get on?  Where did she get off?  Had he seen her before?  Did she say anything to him?  How did she look while she was touching my head?  But given the newly revealed circumstances I withheld.
“Say, why did you bring me in here for coffee anyways? Shouldn’t you have just kicked me to the curb?” I asked after a few minutes of sipping in silence while the driver ate his meal.
“I don’t know man.  I was gonna come in here regardless.  The coffee works out to about a dollar, after tax.  You just looked like you needed someone to talk to I guess.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“No problem.  I’m about done with this.  You want this other egg and this half a toast?”
“Nah, coffee is enough for me right now. Thanks though.”
“Guess we better head out then. They are probably about done cleaning,” he said as he stood up, leaving a ten under his empty cup and heading towards the door.  I followed him back to the bus, swiped my pass and sat down in the same seat I had been in earlier.  I tried to look around and see if there was any sign of her left but the custodians did a good job, the cleanest I’ve ever seen a bus look.  I thought maybe if I closed my eyes I could think back and get a better grasp on what had really happened, but it was no use.  Probably due to the caffeine, I couldn’t keep my eyes closed for more than about 15 seconds without getting restless.  As I traveled the twenty minutes back to my house, I realized I felt fantastic, especially considering the events of the night.  I couldn’t help but to keep grinning until I finally laid my head down on my pillow at nearly 5:00 a.m. and easily drifted off to a dreamless sleep.


I’ll never know exactly what happened that night.  Not wanting to believe the bus driver’s honesty, I rode that same route for the next month every chance I could, getting on the bus, examining all the faces, and disappointed, getting off two stops later to wait for the next bus, all in hopes that that woman would be on.  Eventually I gave up and chalked it up to one of life’s great mysteries.  I can say this though; my life has been much different than it was before that fateful Friday night.  The leaves are greener, the moon is brighter, and the birds sound more harmonious.  I still get headaches, but I no longer take medicine to get rid of them.  Instead I find a nice place to sit down, touch my middle and ring fingers to my temples, and think about how it felt to have her touch me.  Without fail, given five minutes of this my headache dissipates into nothingness and I continue with my day.  I haven’t solved Goldbach’s Conjecture, cured cancer, or stopped world hunger, but I like to think that I have made peoples’ lives better even if it’s just with one smile at a time.  Oh, and before I go, that Saturday afternoon I went to a local pet store and bought myself a juvenile leopard gecko.  I named her Sally and her tail is enormous.