From My Collection: Men: The Introverts

Anyone who rides public transportation to and from a daily job sees the same riders all the time.  They stand next to you, sit across from you, frankly assess your appearance with a glance, and when necessary, acknowledge you.  You may have shared hundreds of hours of travel and recirculated air with someone but positive contact is still normally limited to a smile or “Excuse me.” 

Surprises happen:  On a crowded Max train one morning a man standing nearby edged up to me and whispered,“Your fly is down.”  (I swear nobody noticed me zip up.) 

For the most part, the familiar strangers who dot my commute make about as much impact as the stuff in my spam folder.  And in this era of smart phones, public transportation seems almost to breed introverts.  My personal collection of TriMet introverts includes the following samples. 

A man reads standing up, usually in the spot where the train car is hinged and the floor moves, so he has to constantly adjust his feet to stay upright.  He never leans against the wall or uses a hand for support .  In fact, his hands are full; there's a book in the left one and, in the right one, a pen for making notes in the book.  The book is always covered in plain paper, hiding the title.  Some days it's a big book and sometimes a small one, but the practice itself never varies. 

A mountainous, fair-haired fellow sits on the side bench, holding a large, worn briefcase on his lap.  He's worn, too, overrun by middle age, though he could probably still take me with one hand tied behind his back.  He's not plugged in, never reads, never interacts, just glazes over and often nods off.  His style is Rumpled Business Casual.  Now and then he spruces up – a pressed shirt, a pristine pair of shoes – as if embarking on an upgrade.  A few days later the shirt is wrinkled and the shoes scuffed. 

A young man in a business suit, always impeccable, haircut fresh, shoes shined, listens to a music player.  He keeps a stolid, unchanging face as he walks deliberately, falling behind the rest of us on the walk from the bus to the Max.  His attention is wholly on the player and what's coming through it.  He manipulates it constantly, as if sponging up every last bit of goodness from the same eight bars or the same affirmation and then doing it again.  And then again.  Or maybe just searching, searching without success for that one good tune.  Whatever the sounds he's hearing, they stop somewhere deep inside of him.. 

Though he has the long, white hair of a retiree, he's on the same schedule I am.  Every weekday, he gets on the car carrying a fold-up bike, which he takes to a seat.  A tiny rearview mirror is attached to his glasses.  Sometimes the helmet stays on; today he doffs it, revealing a thin, insulating cap.  He sports an outfit of beige and browns consisting of a fuzzy, armless sweater from which poke the sleeves of a checked shirt.  Shapeless dockers complete the look.  The right pant leg is tied up, showing off a few inches of bald leg and an argyle sock.  From a shoulder bag he pulls a laptop, followed by a pair of big headphones, and goes to work.  I can see the screen, which in no time is packed with columns of numbers that he cuts and pastes for the rest of the ride. 

Now you know as much as I do about these men and their individual routines for coping with the commute.  They share an emotional remoteness.  I can relate.

Next:  The Women

DOES THIS MAKE YOU FEEL SAFE?

It was a weekday morning at the Sunset Transit Center.  I took the steps from the boarding platform to street level two at a time, slowed to a walk and then slowed again when I saw all the cops.  Three stood on the steps to the bridge over Highway 26, watching some other cops.  The interesting activity was taking place a few paces away from the stairway at the entrance to the parking garage.    

Two cops were standing behind a man seated on the concrete.  The man's legs were stuck straight out in front of him.  His hands were cuffed behind his back.  There was a cop hand on each shoulder and a cop knee on each side of his back.  In other words, a perpetrator was being immobilized as part of an arrest. He must have resisted arrest, or why the heavy force?  But he looked about as strong as your average wasted junkie and positively breakable under the control of the two cops.

Another cop, squatting in front of the perp, was going through one of those filmy white supermarket bags that biodegrade while you wait.  A transparent baggy lay on the concrete nearby.  From 10 yards away it looked to contain a handful or two of white powder.

Another cop was snapping pictures of the perp, the bag, the scene.  He was framing the shots with painstaking care.

A Beaverton police van marked with the word "Sergeant" was parked nearby.

I had stopped near the cops on the bridge.  Now I walked softly around the arrest area.  I think it's good to let cops making an arrest know that a citizen is watching.  Keeps them honest.  I don't want a cop getting nervous or adding my name to a report, though, so without acting creepy, I crept over to a vantage point from where I could see the bad guy's face.

He was a wiry young man with Mediterranean features and long, long black hair.  Terrorist material, if you're profiling, except that all the terror here had been struck into his heart and showed on his face. 


I had seen what there was to see and restarted the trek towards my job when yet another cop strode from the vicinity of the van over to the alleged criminal.  He wore blue latex gloves, a fashion statement, I suddenly noticed, being made by all the cops.  His busy blue fingers fiddled with an arrangement of fabric or plastic -- something that unfolded and which he fitted over the perpetrator's head. 

Before I could angle for a better look, a helmet followed the collar.  The blue fingers fiddled some more, attaching the one to the other.

The helmet encased the prisoner's head completely, clearly meant for restraint, not protection, a little prison cell in itself.  It had the gracious styling of a medieval torture device.  The man's eyes peeked out, an untrained astronaut.

The End


Nick O'Connor
copyright 2011

SPECULATIN'

Traveling on the Max from Northeast Portland through downtown and beyond with me was a young man who looked like Stacy Keach, the actor – Keach 30 years ago, that is – but smaller. He gripped one of the upright crossbar support posts with both hands. He had placed the point – or cleft – I couldn’t see the shape – of his chin on the post, bending his head back towards the ceiling. From the Lloyd Center until I got off at the Sunset Transit Center, he held that position as if tied down. As commuters disembarked, the car steadily emptied. Occasionally, the man's lips moved.

Physically, the man seemed sound – youthful, robust, standing on his own power, no tremors, seizures or outbursts. He was, however, breathing fast.

Unusual behavior, but since he was keeping to himself, no one else was paying attention. He wasn't doing anything wrong, wasn't violating anyone's personal space. You have to wonder, if a passenger dies peacefully in his sleep, will the passenger sitting next to him notice? And will the live passenger, anxious to get to work on time, interrupt her schedule and the schedules of the other passengers, to push the call button to the driver?

“What's up?” I wanted to ask the man. “What's up?"

Had I taken the initiative and asked him ,“What's up?,” what would he have said? Nothing, maybe. Waved me away. Blinked, like a cat waking from a nap?

What are the chances he would have been happy to talk? I didn't ask, so I'll never know. There are reasons for acting like you're in a waking coma. There's anxiety. There's the reaction to a drug taken for anxiety. There's “Rapture of the Ride,” when you're heavy groovin' on the tune coming through the earbud, or, less commonly, on the Tri-Met experience. There are chiropractor’s orders. There's trying not to throw up after a bad burrito. There are those who want attention but are too shy to get it directly. There are dozens of mental or emotional conditions from OCD to a phobia, and dozens of ingestable substances, from PCP to MJ, that could have been affecting the dude.

My favorite possibility is that he was a pilgrim on a spiritual quest, a self-transformative journey. He was praying for the rest of us. Why not? Why not take Tri-Met to the sacred grounds and study compassion on the way? A bus or train car is a cauldron of milling humanity. Where else in little old Portland can you consistently, daily if you like, take in the whole parade, every strata, color, and state of mind? For two dollars and change, your spot on the ride guarantees an opportunity to – in reality, not online – be with and tolerate strangers you generally want to have nothing to do with. This is a good practice.

Or maybe he was trying to win a bet. 

TALKING TANGO

Seats in the “new” Max cars – those of the yellow and blue color scheme and plentiful plastic – were designed for people smaller and chattier than the average Portlander. This is indisputable.

There are at least three discomfort zones in each car. At each end is a C-shaped curve of seats that is meant to encourage either conversation (which doesn't happen in Portland, in my experience, but don't get me started), or disorientation. You could be traveling backwards, which is disorienting by itself. But facing forwards in these cars can make you self-conscious.  Half the faces in the car look back at you and half face away.  Where to look? At the same time I wonder if the person whose reflected face I'm studying in the window is studying me, and if I'm alarming this or that rider by looking at them for too long.  Is it better to smile at strangers or keep a blank face?

Another dubious innovation is the conversation group of four seats. In this arrangement you sit directly across from another rider and so close that it takes an effort to keep from bumping ankles. And you're elbow to elbow with a similarly lucky couple. It's like being on a double blind date without so much as a glass of water, much less a waiter.

Then there are the seats situated behind the structural components, like machine gun nests. Each of these new Max cars has four pairs of seats blocked in by either a perpendicular extension of the wall, that is, a bulkhead; or by the plate glass divider next to the middle door of the car. Maybe the idea is to keep the riffraff from falling asleep.

I was stuck in this last discomfort zone behind a bulkhead, and had wedged myself into the window side, making room for a small child or contortionist. I had my notebook open, pen in hand waiting for a thought worth mentioning when, at the Lloyd Center stop, a young woman was asking if there's room next to me.

I shove over a little further for her. She smiles and comments on the tight squeeze.

“Yeah, you can hear the click as you snap into place.”

She said, “I see you're writing.”

Stop right there.

An attractive young woman might entertain a conversation initiated by an attractive young male stranger, if he happened to strike the right chord of bold sensitivity or raffish humor, and depending on whether her mood was on the upswing or downslide, and if his clothes were socially acceptable in the circles to which she aspired or in the slums she wanted to tour, and if Venus and the moon were aligned, and if the dog had been walked and the rent paid, and so on. All that having fallen into place, a charming and fortunate man, a young man with potential, might strike up a conversation with her.

No attractive young woman starts a conversation with a stranger in a crowded train by showing genuine interest in his notebook scribblings, and certainly not with a man whose jowls sag and whose hair is thin and graying, like her dad's, and whose smile is very slow to appear. Does she?

That's my basic line of thought.

So imagine my surprise when this young woman sits in the uncomfortable seat next to me and wants to talk. Her question about my writing led to my job, which led to my asking what she does.

She was on her way home from an all-night tango dance.

It had been her second night in a row of dancing all night, starting after dinner and going until dawn. Portland, it turned out, was hosting a major tango festival.

“Tonight's the last night. I'll be there. But it's only till midnight.” I shook my head sympathetically.

I've done some dancing, almost all of it during the first years with my wife. So I asked some informed questions, and we had more of an interview than a conversation, largely about the tango scene in Portland (500 impassioned tangueros and tangueras), but also about the dance itself (sternum to sternum!), her love for tango (“I'm obsessed,” naturally), and personal details I shouldn't tell here. I'll just say that tango has boldness, glamor, drama and melancholy, and it might attract people who have those qualities.

My wife and I used to contra dance, which is the opposite of tango. A contra is a line dance, with a caller (“Do-si-do and back to the line!”), like square dancing, backed by a string band playing traditional music. Gentrified hillbilly action to you, Snarky. We tried swing and lindy hop. We waltzed and square danced a little. But we met at a contra dance and contras remained our meat and drink. We danced at the local weekly contra dances, at weekend festivals with names like Fiddling Frog and Harvest Moon, and traveled hundreds of miles to week-long camps where you could dance till you dropped . And we attended a few all-night dances. I proposed marriage at the all-night New Year's Eve contra dance in Pasadena as 1994 became '95.

While my new acquaintance spun her glittering web, a whiff of those whirling nights came back to me. My wife is an excellent dancer; I'm not. But with the band smoking, the women flaunting their assets, the mischievous sideways glances and blatant stares, the stomping and shouting, the parade of attractive strangers, why, even a limping curmudgeon from the planet Grim might feel some pleasant intoxication.

At the Sunset Transit Center I said goodbye to the tango fan and slipped past her. She said “You should come tango sometime. We like beginners.”

It's a stirring thought, but no. not me, not now. The occasional dancing I do anymore is with my wife, in the kitchen, to the radio. Sometimes our daughter joins in. Maybe some day, when I've recovered from parenthood and a scientific miracle has restored my youth, tango will be in the cards for me. Still, as I cross the footbridge over the freeway, I'm tangoing in my imagination.

In my fantasy, I'm a tango master. My tuxedo fits like a second skin and feels like silk. My wife is dancing with me. She reminds me with a glance and a shift of her hand on my shoulder why I married her. We glide like tigers through a jungle of other couples. The music is so intense the bows want to fly from the violinists' hands into the hearts of those who are the most tangotastic.

At the office, I hung up my jacket and settled into the cubicle. I had trouble getting down to work; I was surprisingly aroused. Within a short time, however, the office worked its magic. It is, after all, one of my comfort zones.

Nick O'Connor

Copyright 2011

THE CAST IRON HOMING PIGEON

My nephew and his wife were having a housewarming. For the occasion, I bought a cast iron bottle opener in the shape of a bird.  It's definitely a bird, but definitely not a specific bird. It doesn't matter.  It's the thought that counts, right?  Right?

Anyway, the party was scheduled from 3 till 9 p.m. on a Sunday. I got a late start but expected to make it on time to see the house, greet the family and present the bottle opener.

At 7:20, the 77 bus picked me up at the corner of 17^th and Weidler.

At 7:40, I got dropped off at 58^th and Halsey to wait for the 71 bus. There was still some riding ahead, but enough time to see the house, greet the family, and give the gift.

I noticed another guy waiting a couple doors down the street, back towards 57^th. I thought maybe he was standing there for a view of the 71 bus, which turns left from 57^tth coming south onto Halsey and heads east. But no, he wasn't close enough to the corner to see up 57^th. Then I had the impulse to walk back to 57^th and see for myself if it was coming. The instant I moved in his direction, the guy crossed the street.

That's when he showed how far gone he was. As he crossed, his legs were misbehaving and he did a little half squat every few steps to keep from launching sideways. I calculated he was about one drink from final splat.

I think he was avoiding me, not because I look badass -- I'm a medium-size, mild-mannered, middle-aged guy in glasses – but because alcohol had short-circuited his judgment. I've been there. I think brother man was alarmed by his condition. Whether I was coming over to rob him, hit on him or just ask a question, he couldn't trust his wits with a stranger. He could die on the spot, or be humiliated and not even know it. But if he started moving now, into the well-lit, wide-open street, he had a chance.

When I returned to the stop, he returned as well, squat-lurching back across the street and then trying to keep his balance on an undulating piece of sidewalk about 10 yards away.

I had mislaid my cell phone and also maybe to screw with him a little, asked if he knew when the bus was due.

He managed to call the tracker. “Ten minutes.”

A conversation followed. He complained about the transit tracker's inaccuracy and praised Tri-Met, “rated the best in the country” (repeated three times, slurred not spoken), because “we do good work in Portland.” And never mind how good we are here, he was mad that the fares keep going up.

This sent us on a side trip to the Tri-Met budget, the federal government, unions and ultimately, his union and his job.

“I'm in mail. I just do mail.” At a printing company, he said.

He called his supervisor “a turd” – only the tip of the shitberg, of course. After railing against the supervisor, he railed against the company owner, who inherited the business and had no idea what he was doing.

“Two bad bosses -- I feel for you, man.”

“What?” He squinted hard at me.

“The supervisor and the owner. Right?”

He said, “No, It's just one guy. He plays video games and drinks beer every morning in his office.”

According to my unnamed acquaintance, his boss is not only a slob, but he overbids jobs, resulting in not getting the jobs, resulting in too little work and too little income.

“I was laid off for years. I had 18 vacation days taken away. Eighteen.”

I asked how the company could strip benefits with a union in place. He shrugged and said, “They've got no money.”

I nodded sympathetically. He said again, “They've got no money.” Shrugging again. Bottom line.

He said “They've got no money.” a couple more times, shrugging each time. He seemed to be fading.

It was about 25 minutes into our talk, and I excused myself to take a refreshing walk to the corner and back. He used the break as an opportunity to get behind a bush next to the front porch of the nearest house, where he took a leak. He concluded the festivities by dipping a wad of snuff into his cheek. Then he took a little walk down Halsey the other other way from me, using the entire width of the sidewalk as a giant balance beam.

He made a show of looking up the cross street. Then he looked down Halsey Street towards the neon signs of a couple of bars. For a second, I thought maybe he was going to go top himself off at whatever bar he'd recently left. Wisely, he chose to return to the busstop.

We continued the topic of his work. In that overly forceful and blurred way drunks have, he confided “I'm just about ready to say 'Fuck you' to the boss.”

I said “The bus?”

He repeated himself, verbatim but louder. “. . . THE BOSS!”

I could relate. Though my current boss and company are relatively enlightened, experience as a member of three unions has convinced me that labor and management are natural enemies.

The walk had revived him. He had a lot more to say about the printing company, the boss's family, the dire economic situation, and where was I going, anyway?

The boss finally arrived at 8:40. We called each other “buddy,” as in “Nice talkin' with ya, buddy.” He boarded, but it had grown too late for me; I crossed the street and walked all the way back to 42^nd to catch the 75 homeward, feeling extra safe with my hand in my jacket pocket on the cast iron bird.

Nick O'Connor
Copyright 2011

A BIT OF A STIR

On October 5^th, the day before Occupy Portland began, I witnessed a miscarriage of justice. As I came onto the inbound platform at the Sunset Transit Center around 5:10 p.m., a woman's raised voice got my attention. She could be heard clearly along the entire platform. Every passenger was looking her way. She was standing near the middle on my side, holding onto a bike and dressed in riding gear. She was talking to a Tri-Met cop. At the far end of the platform, where the front end of the trains stop, the cop was trying to ignore her. He had his ticket pad and pen out and was talking with a young man.

The woman accused the cop of harrassing the youth, saying he was “misusing his position of authority.”

Though loud and with an edge of anger, her voice was even and her thoughts rational. The cop shouted back, “Sir---”

“I'm not a sir.”

“Ma'am. This is none of your business. You don't even know what we've been talking about.”

“I've heard everything you've said,” she replied. “Your conversation has been loud enough for everyone to hear.”

“I'm doing my job. I'm investigating a violation. You have no say about this.”

“I certainly do if I witness an abuse being committed.”

“I'm doing my job. You're interefering.”

“I can speak. I have a right of free speech and I'm exercising it.”

“You don't have free speech to interfere with my job.”

“I'm not interfering. I'm nowhere near you. I'm just speaking.”

This went on for about 30 seconds before the cop ran out of patience. He left the young man to half-stalk, half-run over to the woman. He was about six foot eight. She was portly, middle-aged, and showed no sign of being intimidated.

I noticed my train pull in and decided to stay for the next one.

“If you don't keep quiet I'm going to cite you for interfering with police business.”

“I guarantee if you cite me you're going to end up in court.”

“You could get 30 days.”

The cop saw that the young man had fled up the stairs. He trotted after him.

I took a seat a respectful distance from the woman, got out my phone and fired up the camera.

The cop came back, agitated. He walked up to the woman, rolled back another page of his citation book, and said, “I'm citing you for interfering with police business. May I see your identification, please?”

As she got her card out of a saddlebag, I held up my phone to get a picture. The cop spotted it right away and bolted over to me.

“I have to tell you that it's against the law to take a video of anyone in public without the knowledge of everyone who's being filmed.”

“I consent,” the woman shouted.

I said, “It's not a video, it's a still camera. Are you saying I can't take photos of you, as a public officer, doing your public duty?”

“I'm not saying that. I'm saying that you can't take a video or sound recording without the knowledge of everyone in the area who might be filmed.”

“It's not a video.” I was holding up the camera so he could check it out but he was already on his way back to write the ticket.

There was a woman who had been sitting quietly nearby throughout the scene. I asked her if she'd seen what happened. She said yes, but hadn't tuned into what was going on between the cop and the young man.

The woman who had riled the cop was quiet as he wrote the ticket. The next train came and I felt the call to get home to my family, dinner, the evening schedule. At the same time, as a witness I should stay and let the woman know I could back her up, if necessary.

Force of habit got the best of me and I boarded the train. As soon as the doors closed I got witness regret: that's when you don't take a stand even though you were right there watching. So if by a remote chance the cited bicyclist is reads this, please get in touch with me: nickareeno@gmail.com.

                                                   THE END

Nick O'Connor

Copyright 2011

I REMEMBER SHIRLEY TEMPLE

I was riding the 75 bus north towards home on 39th avenue in the dark, damp evening, somewhere between Powell and Division, reading a book on the topic of working memory.  Working memory is the stuff you try to keep in mind while doing something else.  It's similar to the "copy" function on your computer, if the thing copied always rapidly decayed and disappeared, like a lump of sugar in an ocean of coffee.  Working memory is a good indicator of the fitness and health of one's brain.  Generally, better working memory equals a sounder brain.  That I can recall all this confirms that my own memory was working during the bus ride and sets my mind at ease -- at least until the next time I leave the burner on.  

I was sitting in the frontmost forward-facing seat, behind the handicapped and senior love seats, when a little girl draped her arms over the divider and started talking to me, as if we had an appointment. She was about two, with a head of thick Shirley Temple curls. She told me, sentence by sentence, about her life.

“This is our bus.”

“It's your bus.”

“Aaaand my momma, too.”

“Aaaand your momma, too.” This is how I talked to our daughter when she was little. The research shows – I don't know what research, but people I trust (i.e., my wife) told me -- that when you say back to a child what she just said to you, it helps her learn to talk. It's called “mirroring” (“Does my hair look okay?” “Does my hair look okay?”). My daughter, now ten years old, talks like a 35-year old professor (of stuffed animal psychology), so I believe mirroring works.

The girl's mother was sitting on the other side of the girl, and said, “Anna, he's trying to read.” I said “No problem, I like talking with kids,” and the mom went back to her conversation with her boyfriend.

The little girl told me that Christmas was coming, aaaand that she was gettting new toys, aaaaand that they were going to visit grandma, aaaand that Garglegee had pushed Impkiss down the stairs.

“Who's Garglegee?”

“Garglegee's my guardian.”

“Garglegee's your guardian?

“No! Garglegee's my garden doc.”

“Garglegee's your garden doc?”

“NO! Garglegee's my guard dog aaaaand...”

“Garglegee's your guard dog.”

“....and she pushed Impkiss down...the stairs....”

“Who's Impkiss?”

“Impkiss went down the stairs... aaaaand...”

A woman sitting across from the girl and her mother and the man with them yelled out, “Don't mess with me!,” obviously meaning them.

The mom yelled back, “No one's messing with you.”

The woman was muttering and rummaging in a monstrous handbag, one of those soft black leather and brass designer items that perfectly complement a full leather outfit and not much else. She yelled across the aisle again, “Stop bothering me.”

The mom raised her voice higher. “Listen, lady, I don't know what's your problem ---” The mom's boyfriend, or husband, or brother, or whatever laid a hand on the mom's shoulder, stopping her.

He leaned halfway across the aisle and muttered something to the woman. She listened. She took a couple deep breaths. He muttered. She relaxed.

Wow. A Psychopath Whisperer. The man was dressed like puke, a thick slab of prison muscles covered in blurry tattoos – in other words, a typical Portland high school dropout.

The little girl was still talking to me. She was saying “Impkiss is okay. He's okay. He didn't have to go to the hospital.”

“He didn't have to go to the hospital.”

“Aaaaand he didn't have to go to jail.”

The mom gently pulled her away, saying, “She hasn't stopped talking since she said her first word,” to me, and then “This is our stop, darlin',” to her.

“Bye,” the girl said to me.

“Bye,” I said back.

THE END

Nick O'Connor   Copyright 2011