Passing the Day Away

I ran into a friend on the morning 75 and we caught up for 10 minutes.  She’s working intermittently, as a project manager through a consulting company.  In both of her necks of the woods – software projects at large organizations and social justice work – money is tight.  But she's working today, and seemed optimistic.

She got off at Lloyd Center.  Miles went by and I suddenly noticed that we were on 5^th Avenue – dang it, I got on the Green Line – and I had to get off to catch a Blue or Red Max at Pioneer Square.

Often, there’s an event going on at the Square; that morning it was quiet.  I was looking around at the big buildings and imagining the waves of human intelligence and labor that created a city:  those who were stunned, flung and crushed by Progress, those who swam confidently into the warm waters of the middle class or better, and the few stars who had surfed the American Dream, doing tricks and gaining glory as they went. 

Two men stood in front of the ticket machine, talking.  One was tall, bony and worn.  The other, small, plastered in Army camouflage, held a $5 bill in one hand.  He looked up at the tall man, and the way he extended his neck up and out to make eye contact reminded me of a pet turtle. 

Tall One was showing a TriMet day pass and saying “Five dollars.”  I could hear the rural accent immediately. 

He continued, “Help a homeless feller out.  Look, it’s the genuine article.” 

The Turtle took the day pass, looked it over and gave it back, saying, “I’m sorry, I just don’t know.  I’ve got to get to work and I can’t take any chances.” 

I tried to intervene.  It so happened I had a book of day passes with me.  I showed the Turtle.  

 “See.  Same thing.”  But he turned away and used the machine. 

Tall Guy looked around.  What could I do?  I had a five, which I exchanged for his day ticket. 

The Tall Guy was gone and ankling down the street so quick I had to check the gray market day pass against my genuine article for signs of counterfeit. 

But it was good.  

COFFEE POWER

Sometimes riders show up whose suffering is beyond what one should have to bear. For instance:

A garbled human exclamation pierces the train behind me, loud enough to make me jump.  A moment later, it happens again.  It is unhappy.  The sound repeats and repeats. It is like coughing and talking at the same time, and doing both badly.  I turn to see.  The vocalizations are coming from a person in a wheelchair.  I can only see the back of his balding head.  No one is acknowledging him.

Tourette's maybe?  Choking?

As the man continues in this way, I get up and walk to a seat past him from where I can see if he actually needs help.  He is wearing only light clothes, though the temperature is close to freezing.  The clothes are old and dirty.  He is shivering violently and coughing.  He is a portrait of misery.

There is a big sleeping bag on the seat behind him, which slips to the floor and alarms him.  He yells what sounds like "Please help me."

I jump up to put the bag back on the seat but a woman who is sitting closer to the man beats me to it.

At least, I think, he's not being ignored.  I sit and resume my role of secret gawker.

A minute later he's calling out.  "Otter!  Otter!"

Sitting between the man and me are a woman and two men who've been talking with one another and are also carrying sleeping bags. The woman turns to the man in the wheelchair and says "You need water?"

He shakes his head "Yes."  I have none.  There's some head shaking from a few other passengers. But the woman offers him her paper cup of coffee, which he takes.  "Thank you," he says distinctly, and he visibly relaxes.

His shivering lessens.  After a moment he says, pretty clearly, "Green Line?"

The woman says, "No, this is the Blue Line.  You'll have to get out and go back to the Rose Garden to catch the Green Line."

When he doesn't get out at the next stop, she reminds him that he's got to get off the train and go back the other way.

He nods and says, "Too cold." 

She says, "That's all right, baby, you'll get there."

IN THE JUNGLE

It was just before dawn on the Hollywood Transit Center Max platform. The daily commuter population had not yet exploded.  As usual, I walked to the far end, hopeful of easier seating at the front of the train.  I paced slowly a few steps back and forth like a caged cat, trying to feel a little more alive.  

Nearby, another human cat was marking territory.  He was more tiger than kitty.  His path completely encircled mine.  He was punching the air.  He was angry.  It was in the low forties, but he was dressed for playing tennis, in shorts, sneakers and a light hooded sweatshirt. He wore a gray ball cap. As we passed, he growled and spat out a flaming F-bomb:  "F***!"   Maybe he had lost a tough match.

I gave him room.  He was talking to himself, not to me, but I gave him room, because he was scaring me.  I watched him, without making eye contact, because eye contact with an angry predator is asking for a fight.  When I was a kid and got into fights, I was sometimes the angry predator reacting to eye contact.  But that was a lot of testosterone ago. 

He got on the train with me.  I curled up peacefully on a seat.  The other cat paced on, spitting an F-bomb every five to ten seconds.  He paced nearby, back and forth between car doors, muttering and punctuating the mutters with "F***."  Every person within earshot was watching him; no one was making eye contact.

After a few minutes he walked from between the doors down the car to where I could neither hear nor see him behind the gathering crowd.  A few minutes later he came back past me and took a spot between the next set of doors.

Something was pushing the man's buttons over and over and over.  I could not relax and read.  There was nothing to do but just wait for one of us to disembark.  Oh, I thought of asking him if he needed to talk to someone, offer to buy a cup of coffee, but I couldn't muster the courage. At my stop, the Sunset Transit Center, Tiger got off a few steps ahead of me. 

I put some space between us by waiting at the foot of the first set of stairs while he climbed them  I pulled my beanie over my ears and gloves onto my hands as he marched upwards, bare legs flexing.  They were lightly tanned, and I thought maybe he was angry with himself for not packing warm clothes for the trip from Paradise.

He went out of sight.  When I reached the top platform, Tiger was taking his first steps on the second stairway, the one that leads up to the bridge over Highway 26.  That's where I was going.

I followed him across the bridge, wary in case he smelled my fear.  At the intersection on the other side, he turned and marched in the direction I was going.  Was he headed for my office?  It was possible.  the business where I work has plenty of walk-in customers.

When he reached the short street that led to my work, to my relief he walked past.  I thought he was headed for the Sunset Strip, a strip club located in a former Denny's.  Then he turned, as if he might be coming around the block.  I walked slowly towards work, and could see that no, Tiger's destination was not the Sunset Strip, but the Rodeway Inn motel. And he disappeared into it.

A couple hours later I was taking a break outside the back of the building where I work. The area is surrounded by a six-foot wooden fence.   I was stretching and bouncing around.  Somebody said, "Getting some exercise?"

I looked up and a guy had come through the gate to stand nearby.  He looked a lot like Tiger, except he was dressed in warm clothes and a blue ball cap.  He walked over to the cigarette butt holder and went through it looking for good ones while we chatted. He was friendly.  Could it be Tiger? 

He asked me what I did in there, and when I said I was a business writer he said he wished he'd taken his father's advice and learned computers.

That's all I recall from our five minute conversation, because the whole time I was trying to figure out if he was Tiger.  Coming to get me because I'd seen too much.

Eventually he said, "Have a good day, I gotta go."

"Okay," I said, "Have a good day."

He mounted a bicycle he had left leaning against a dumpster and rolled away.


A co-worker told me, "Oh, yeah, that guy comes around all the time and scavenges cigarette butts."

Good set up for a scary movie, eh?

If this turns out to be my last blog post, you know which motel to check for clues.
  

A HEART OF PHARMACEUTICAL GRADE PURITY

I swear, the nearly silent battleweariness that fills a Max train in the morning sometimes makes me wish Bob Hope would come back from the grave and do a set for the troops.

But there I was, and there we all were, not a spark of life in the whole car, except for one guy.  The situation was hopeless, the phenomenal sameness, the extraordinary absence of contact among riders.  Except for this one loose deuce.

It started as a loud conversation, which came as a welcome change from the status quo.

"Yeah, I love all those old rockers.  Jimi, the Doors, Ted Nugent, Metallica, Pearl Jam.  They're all good."  The voice was classic, an arresting blend of phlegm, gravel and testosterone.

"I got to rock, man.  I got to feel it.  All the time.  You know if I'm not shakin' I'm dead meat on the highway."

He had to be at least 50.  That was a lot of rockin' under the highway overpass. The guy wore a hard hat and orange flagger vest over blue-collar work clothes. The gleaming black patent leather shoes with the thin soles, however, were cut for show, not rockin' - or standing on rocks.  The metal cane in his hand, sampled from the same estate sale where he got the shoes, maybe, completed the impression he was testing some sartorial limits.

His acquaintance, a young man whom I took to be humoring the old guy, muttered something and handed over an earbud, which the old rocker placed expertly into the side of his head.  The party began.

Rocker cut loose, shouting lyrics and comments at a volume appropriate for a dive bar on Saturday night.

"Walk back, bitch!"

That turned some heads.

"Semper fi, do or die."

"What do you see in me?"

And then in James Brown style:  "Huh.  Huh.  Huh."  Moving like Brown, but sitting down.  The stuff he was spouting was all over the place, like a crazy mixtape.

He bopped in his seat for another minute, then handed the earbud back to his companion.

"That's badass."

The acquaintance muttered politely and disembarked. A middle aged woman dressed for work took the empty seat.  Rocker was still stoked.

"I'm stoked," he said.  "I can't help it.  I'm wired on tunes."

On her look, he said "I know I look like 100 miles of bad road, but my heart is pure."

The woman was making space between them.

"Yeah, I got leprosy.  I'm totally disgusting.  I can't help it.  I can't do no more.  Just thought I'd change up the station here in Pot-Land."

She left.

He tried to bum marijuana from a kid who totally looked like he never left home without it.  No luck.  This may have discouraged Rocker, because his bravado trailed off and within a couple stops his head was hanging on his chest, sound asleep.

Yeah, I liked the change of pace.

The Sweet Life

He's young, with wild hair that starts out dark at the roots and has been bleached almost blonde -- by the sun, I'm pretty sure; the look is very much “California surfer.” He's sitting in a crowded bus next to an attentive young woman with a pretty face who is enjoying his company. A second young woman is with them, in the bench seat next to their knees. The women are hanging on the man's words.

He's talking about music – his own, I think. The woman sharing the seat says “What do you mean?”

He says, “That's your responsibility. I just use the words.” She beams as if complimented.

Suddenly I remember this type of jock from high school: the animal good looks, the attitude of humorous condescension, the desirous babes.

My mind drifts as their conversation continues. A moment later he says, again to the one next to him, “You know what you're really good at? Excuses.”

She says something I can't hear.

He says,“Excuse.”

She says something.

“Excuse.”

The women have a giggle about this.

This is my stop, ending the eavesdropping. But the high school feelings continue. I'm resenting this guy for having it so easy with the ladies, in spite of his being a jerk and them being dumb.

The best remedy for being outshone by a stud muffin back then was the knowledge that in a few years he'd be working in a gas station while I was having a career. This guy was maybe 25 – very young by my current standards but well out of high school. The women might have been a little younger. He's still playing high school games, wrapping them around his finger. And as for my career – oh, yeah, that didn't really happen, did it?

GRRRRR

On MUNI, San Franciso’s excellent transit system, riders get it: 1) that when the seats are getting full, they have to move to the back of the bus to let other riders board; and 2) that one fare entitles a rider to one seat.  I rode the buses and street cars and cable cars in that city for about 11 years.  Almost always, as a bus got packed the standing riders would drift to the back without being asked.  When a driver did have to call out, “Move back,” or “Make room,” people moved.  

There was a guy who sometimes got on the Market Street bus with me at rush hour who liked to holler “Lady with a baby!  Make way!” if the crowd was a little slow to move to the back.  He didn’t have to do it very often.

In that city I seldom saw a rider splay himself or his stuff across multiple seats.  Nor did I ever have to tap one on the shoulder to get his attention and explain why I wanted him to free up a seat.  

I also commuted by public transit in Los Angeles.  There, you might never see the same driver on the same route and the vastness of the city gives a background vibe that is overwhelmingly impersonal. Of course, drunks and the deranged occasionally got out of hand.  Sometimes a petty crime took place.  I was punched in the face once.  I watched pickpockets at work.  Fare evasion was rampant.

But in L.A., people were usually as well-behaved as angels when it came to moving back and keeping seats open.  (Maybe they were just trying to stay out of harm’s way?)

Yet in Portland, a tamer town than either of those California grease spots, it’s standard procedure when standing to plant oneself in the front of the bus; and if seated, to keep the seat next to you handy for your stuff or for kicking back.  

This week on the 75, crushed between boarding riders and a mash of beings stopped behind, I had to ask twice “Could you please move back and make room?”  And the lug at the end of the line, who had six or eight feet of space behind him, glanced at me without acknowledgement. But worse, not a single one of the rest of the group inhaling each other’s air said a thing. 

Why is this?  What dumb territorial impulse is at work? And even if you are not guilty of the original transgression, why don’t you urge the stand-in-fronters to move back?  Why aren’t there more righteous passengers demanding civilized behavior from their fellow citizens?  

Is it a cultural thing?

BUSTED

One morning last week, the fare inspectors were thick as ants on a PB&J sandwich.  A team of them, including a couple of Portland cops, were waiting at the Hollywood Transit Center, human speed bumps on the way to my destination.

I boarded and found a seat.  A couple of inspectors boarded right behind me.  I'd seen the one who was working his way towards me before.  He's an efficient one, glancing at passes and tickets as fast as they appear with a "Thank you," taking a second longer to acknowledge a transfer, taking his job seriously and calmly.

I showed my pass for the second time in five minutes.  Two seats down, a man flashed his wallet and the inspector said, "That's September.  Do you have an October pass?"

The rider was a 30-something white guy dressed for work, definitely not a typical target for harassment.  But he did not have the pass.  As the conversation continued, his voice rose higher and higher, as if he were being harassed, which he was not.

In his defense, the rider showed that he was carrying passes from several prior months and even found a receipt  proving that he had bought an October pass.  The officerr opened his ticket book.  The rider blurted out that his wife must have borrowed it over the weekend and not replaced it.

At this point, I knew the man was in trouble. You might assume, having bought a monthly pass, that you could loan it to another person.  Obviously, only one person at a time can use a pass, so what's the problem?  Well, in its accounting for estimated income from passes sold and estimated income from people nabbed using passes wrongly, the head bean counters have concluded that the best numbers will occur when there is no pass sharing. Remember, these are the same people who eliminated Fareless Square and significantly cut back service within the last year or so.

"May I see your identification, please?"

The man replied, "Hold on," and made a phone call.  The inspector, to my surprise, kept patiently quiet.  I suppose the rider was hoping to find out if his wife had returned the pass to his lunch bag, or some other unlikely but possible spot that would save the cost of the coming ticket.

But the call didn't connect, and  the cop had to ask again for ID.

"Why?" the violator asked, handing over a driver's license.  "Don't you like me?  Are you trying to bust my chops?"

The cop muttered something about procedures while scribbling.

The violator said, "This is not fair, that I should have paid for this month, not to mention many other months, and this one time. . . "

The cop glanced up at him.

"My wife borrowed it and didn't return it to me," he said. Whining and trying to blame his poor wife. I felt sorry for (and superior to) the violator for his ignorance. 

The inspector gave him the ticket, saying "Sharing a pass is not allowed.  The pass is issued to one person, for his sole use."  The violator stared like a dead trout.

See?

The inspector went on to explain the violator's options.  He could pay by mail or credit card, or he could appear in court.  The inspector had conveniently already set the court date and time.

The violator was done protesting.  The cop was done explaining. The $175 (or more) ticket was doing the talking now.