Bus People

So here's the thing. Providence is a city of contrasts. They have done up the downtown area and built a big mall and have Waterfire every couple of weeks during the summer. The neighborhood we live in is really pretty and full of large Victorian homes*.

However, we live just barely on the "right" side of Hope Street, meaning we're about 3 or 4 blocks from the park where all the drug deals go down. Jason's cousin used to live on the wrong side of Hope Street and someone was murdered just down the street from him. He moved. It's weird because Hope Street really is a dividing line. I have been for many walks around my neighborhood, enjoying the big homes and nice gardens, and never felt unsafe. But all sorts of crazy stuff happens once you cross that street.

In Providence and surrounding areas you have neighborhoods like ours and then you have really, really depressed areas with old broken-down factories and mills. My boss lives in a really ritzy town. My church is located in a town that is, shall we say, not so ritzy. There are a lot of extremes.

Those extremes come together at Kennedy Plaza downtown. That's the big bus depot where I take the bus to and from every day. There are those of us who actually work downtown and then there are the people who just don't have anything better to do with their time so they hang out at the bus depot. Around normal morning and evening rush hours, it's pretty calm. However, sometimes I take the 7:00 PM bus and since most people leave work at 5:00 that means there aren't very many commuters on the 7:00 bus. So there are some interesting folks.

Also, I go over once a month in the middle of the day to get my bus pass and that's when I run into the people who really just hang out at the bus station. As in, "What are you gonna do today?" "Oh, you know, hang around the bus station."

I have stories.

A couple of months ago a man and a woman who, to use a friend's phrase, looked like they had been rode hard and put away wet**, got off one of the buses and started yelling at each other as they walked along the platform about 10 feet away from one another.

Woman: "You almost got me arrested!"
Man: "What?!"
Woman: "You almost got me arrested!"
Man: "What?!"
Woman: "You almost got me arrested!"
Man: "What are you talking about?"
Woman: "You made me so mad! I was gonna hit you and the bus driver saw me."
Man: "Yeah."
Woman: "He was gonna call the cops. You almost got me arrested! I was gonna hit you."

This conversation continued until they reached a bench and sat down next to each other, talking more quietly. But their conversation was occasionally punctuated by the woman exclaiming, "You almost got me arrested!"

Then last week I came out of my building and heard yelling. I thought someone was performing spoken word or something in the park across from the bus station because sometimes they set up microphones and speakers and people perform. As I got closer to the station I realized that, no, it wasn't someone on a microphone, it was a man yelling really, really loudly. REALLY loudly. My office building is a couple blocks away.

He wasn't really yelling at anyone, just kind of yelling towards the street. Loudly. I couldn't understand him at all, but he was upset about something. At one point he stopped for a minute, but then started up again. This continued for the entire 10 minutes I was waiting for my bus. All I could think was, I bet his throat is really raw at night.

I have to give kudos to the woman who was sharing the bench with him, calmly reading her book. Everyone else was standing at least 20 feet away.

One day I was on the bus and a teenager with a baby recognized another teenager with a baby and they started talking. Loudly enough that I could hear them halfway down the bus. One of them started explaining who her baby father was. Not "baby daddy"; "baby father". Did she think that classed it up?

Then we have last night, which is what got me thinking about all of this. I was standing on the platform, waiting for the 6:30, which is always late, reading, when this man walked straight up to me and, standing uncomfortably close, asked "What's she reading?"

I assumed by "she" he meant me.

I was kind of flustered at the close-talking and just said, "Dracula***."

He said, "Ah...Dracula. Okay then."

Then he squeezed my arm and said, "You have a nice day," as he walked away.

I said, "You too" because I never really know what to say in those situations, but what I really thought was, Hi, Stranger Man. Don't touch me.

So, yeah. Bus People.


* But rent is cheap. Woo hoo!
**I don't think the woman had any teeth.
***Really good book, but I'm at this point in the story where the rampant misogynism in the guise of chivalry is getting out of control. Makes it hard to concentrate on the story.