I rode the bus.
An urban youth fell asleep next to me. His head was encased in headphones, blaring rap so loud that I understood the words and I wondered how the boy could sleep through the sound. A constant blaring mantra of street existence, pulsating him to sleep, engulfing his subconscious.
I wore a black leather jacket and a baseball cap and for some reason I thought that made me invisible, a blank canvass walking for others to paint their impressions upon. If I committed a crime they would report “She was wearing a black leather jacket and a baseball cap”. From then on I would wear cocktail dresses and never be caught.
I don’t smoke but this was a day that it would have made sense. To carry the burning slow suicide stick with me, constantly aware of the closeness of death.
I watched a homeless man sitting on a bench, walked by a very tan man asleep at the bus stop. listened to the business men chat as they passed us all in their pale blue shirts and dark blue ties. Found myself wondering who was crazier, the man sleeping at the bus stop or the men with matching dark blue ties. Then the thought came that perhaps I am the crazy one because I actually ask myself these questions.
My walk took me to “The Market” coffee shop with it’s small tables and deli cases full of flaky pastries. Drinking coffee outside on Larimer street under a street clock so that I would not be late for the only appointment I had, a lunch meeting with an old friend.
A gentleman with missing front teeth, bruised skin and a crooked stance told me he had AIDS and begged for money. I told him I didn’t have any. I lied, for I juggled three quarters between my fingers in my pocket as I spoke, knowing I needed the change for the bus ride home. Then I wondered “Why do I give people money sometimes and not others?”
It was a strange day, one where the lines of poetry sung in my head describing the world around me in private melody. Without a book to write in the prose just danced around and narrated the street before me, placing stories upon the characters. A private dialogue that will never be heard or read or recited.
A man, grungy and tall, wearing a dark blue wind breaker and a baseball cap moved sideways towards me and growled “Hey gorgeous”. His movement, that of a predator. His smile, a dark scar that lifted just enough above his canines to resemble a snarl. I met his eyes briefly, just long enough for him to slightly step backwards. A game of body language. I nodded , acknowledged his presence and kept moving. He fishtailed behind me for a few feet after I passed. A shark in dark water. If I had been bleeding or had walked with a limp he might have attacked. So primitive.
Perhaps that should have scared me, but it didn’t , probably due to the crowd around me, walking with me, the illusion of safety in the presence of strangers. Instead I laughed to myself, if he had done anything I would have told the police, “He wore a dark blue wind breaker and a baseball cap.” All other details I had already forgotten.
Three quarters of the central city passed before me. There was an old man playing the clarinet. He has played here since I was a child. When I was sixteen I took pictures of him, thinking that I was being unique. Then one learns that he has been there since the beginning of time and every photography student takes pictures of him. He was old when I took pictures then, he is ancient now, gaunt, thin with pure white wispy hair, still playing the clarinet. More famous then any of the professional musicians I have ever known. More famous and more photographed. Everyone who lives here knows of him, the homeless, the street gypsies, the business men and the dishwashers.
I was almost to my destination when the same gentleman with AIDs approached me and begged me for money.
“Didn’t you just ask me over at the coffee shop?” I asked and he looked sad and forlorn and ashamed and we moved away from each other but I thought to myself, “I should have asked him if I could buy him lunch.” However, I had to keep moving, towards my only scheduled event of the day, my lunch meeting.
Arriving at the steel and glass building that contains my friends office, I felt the immediate change upon passing through the revolving door. The walls smooth concrete, the air in the lobby cool, the elevators sparkling chrome, the floors polished marble, the security guard dressed in a gold hued suit. Eighteen floors to Hitachi and a wall of glass with locked doors. A little intercom with a maroon button that I push to let them know that I am on the other side of that glass and would like to be on their side, with my friend and the people wearing suits to look at the pictures of her daughter that line her cubicle.
We went to lunch, talked of what we have done and what we are planning on doing. Three hours of stolen time where friendship held our attention until the power of data systems called her back to her cubicle and I strolled back to my wandering.
The stroll led me through the echoing convention center hallways then past the massive bronze sculptures that reside below the glass archway of the theater. It ended with me buying cereal and milk at a supermarket and waiting with a man in a wheelchair, both of us holding plastic grocery bags, for the bus to come take us home.
My friend and I had talked about diversity. That there can not be diversity if there is fear. How else can one really “see” a city except to accept it’s chaos and humanity without fear. How else can one experience life?
