In a word: stability. This man in his grey suit radiated stability, there in the rain next to a lamppost, not leaning against it as I would have done, but standing on his own two goddamn legs as he texted furiously on a massive phone.
I stood just under the eve of a bus shelter, on the cusp, as I was these days, of a life more adventurous.
Not the least bit troubled by his screen becoming flecked with water, he glanced left, west, the direction from which he, both of us, several of us, knew the bus to come.
Pathetically, this was the latest along a string of encounters acknowledged only, it seemed, within my own mind. The thread had grown lengthy enough to reach back six months to a time when a summer spent traveling clung on by one finger and I settled into my first post-grad occupation in Accounting. Yes, it's true that I had traveled, seen Europe with two friends from my college program, and it was an experience every bit as enriching as they had convinced me it would be. For nearly two months I screamed, I laughed, I became someone; I met people on the road whom I revealed my whole self to unhesitatingly. Later on, the enormity of my personal growth would serve only to enhance my disappointment and self-loathing when I slipped with alarming ease back into complacence, gasping fish into pond, at home in my new job.
Perhaps there had existed a small window of time during which I would have approached him, maybe even with some semblance of confidence. This window began when I first assumed our shared bus route, set back down on the earth still ready to run, still willing to share myself, still holding the point of view that I was worth sharing. It ended when my mind no longer grasped so firmly the temporary perspective I had taken on, when outlines of memories were no longer in focus.
If this tiny window had existed at all, I had not taken significant notice of him from within its bounds. That happened later, on one of the last truly warm, sun-filled days, when I sat directly behind him, and he sat next to a small elderly woman. I was first exposed only to the back of his head, a shock of black-as-night hair that spiraled outward from a common center to form a structured mess that occurred to me as nestlike and effortlessly charming. Phone to his ear, he spoke with a voice that scooped up the surrounding air, in a language which, only after some time and with considerable effort, I identified as Thai. Apparently aware of his conspicuous presence on an otherwise quiet bus, his phone conversation was brief, and then he sat in silence.
In this town I would not take for granted another person's ability to speak english, however, the old woman next to him seemed to hold no such reservations.
"Do you ride this bus often?"
He turned to her and I caught one side of his face: the smooth skin of his cheek (not very dark but certainly darker than mine), the left eye, deep-brown and heavy-lidded, abbreviated nose, linear jaw angling cleanly upward near the neck.
"Yeah I do," he said with no particular accent that I could detect. "I ride it to work." He then smiled with such genuine compassion that the woman may as well have been his own grandmother.
"I thought so," she said. "I remember you from the last time I was on, but that was weeks ago." Her shoulders shook in quiet laughter.
"I'm sure it was me. I've been riding this route for more than a year." He then proceeded to ask her about her day and, as her answers came, regarded her with careful interest.
As I listened, forever a shameless eavesdropper, I, too, realized it wasn't the first time I'd seen him. And in the months to come I would continue to notice him. It wasn't something that happened every day. I did sustain a compelling interest in my career of choice, and I will admit that there were days when I was so engrossed in preparing for work that I couldn't have recalled whether he had ridden the bus that day at all.
So, it appeared, did he. On days when I noticed him, his gaze would often shift from papers perched on his lap to his phone's screen and then back again. Occasionally he would hold conversations in English over the phone regarding presentations and clients and many other business-related concerns, but his field never became clear to me.
And unclear it remained on this day in the rain at the bus shelter. Looking up from his phone, he seemed to think better of letting the rain soak into his suit and, in his casual manner, trudged over to stand under the eve, next to me. Although not very broad-shouldered, he filled out his suit well. He was also tall; I had already known all of this but our standing proximity had never permitted me the chance to size him up properly. Without looking over I could tell that he was a couple of inches taller than I was, and I stood somewhat above average.
I imagined a fantasy world in which he noticed me just for one second. What was his impression? Lighter skin, darker suit, this fledgling white boy. Younger maybe, but if so, not by much. Did he fill out his suit quite so pleasantly? Did he stand with any ounce of confidence at all? Was his compulsion to exercise alone in his bedroom evident in the muscles of his neck?
In my past I had beckoned the attention of a few boys whose looks I estimated to surpass my own, and although my conceptualization of the person I projected outward was ill-defined, I lacked much of the insecurity concerning one's own appearance that I sometimes noticed in other people. I cut my dark-blond hair short, as there was a lot of it. I was dealt the fortunate hand of a clear complexion. My face was structured in a way that I believed to be pleasing. In truth, I rarely considered my physical being beyond an approximate effort to maximize what was there.
The bus arrived much more full than I'd ever seen it. I boarded directly behind him and watched him sit against the window in the last remaining open pair of seats. There were other single seats available farther down the aisle, but no matter where I chose I would be seated immediately next to someone. There was no reason not to sit next to him. I understood this then and did so.
Because neither of us were small in stature, this move immediately lacked any of the relaxed feel I'd hoped for. We were not uncomfortably close, but a brief acknowledgement of the circumstance felt inevitable. I was, however, silent for a few minutes.
Finally I said, "Busy today." I don't remember deciding expressly to speak, and yet there it was. "Must be something going on downtown."
"It's Pride," he said.
"It's what?"
"Gay Pride," he said. "Well, as in, the event. Not just the everyday, you know, look at me, I'm gay, I'm proud."
I couldn't help but laugh at this.
"I don't mean to offend," he said, "if you're gay or something. I can be a little awkward around strangers sometimes."
I had trouble believing that. "I am, but you didn't offend me."
"Oh," he said. "Well that's good."
I felt stupid for not having remembered the winter pride event that took place every year. Although it was smaller and by design more somber than its shimmering mid-summer counterpart, I had attended before, more than once, compelled by my own curiosity. It crossed my mind that in my haste to become a functioning adult, I had abandoned a few of my old interests (not to mention a few people I associated with them).
