Harrowing

My guy and I were coming back from a late-ish night in Georgetown spent celebrating a couple of birthdays. We'd gratefully accepted a ride from a friend to downtown, and were busing the rest of the way to Ballard.

We waited for the bus across from the Pioneer Room, women traipsing and limping by in small outfits and heels as best they could. Shiny black cars rolled by slow, scouting ladies or just making a scene, and then would burn out as they turned the corners, perhaps to display their horsepower.

When the 18 finally came, we piled on with just a few other people. I was relating a story to my guy, in bus-appropriate volume. Yes, I may have used some expletives but I'd used them quietly and with discretion. A lull in my story turned my focus forward, just in time to notice a look the man in the seat in front of us was giving me.

He was an ordinary man, wearing a black or navy fleece with embroidery of one of Microsoft's product logos on it. Fairly fit, average hit, darker gray hair, thin on the top. Nothing that would indicate he had more than a normal amount of hate in his body, enough to muster a look like he was giving me.

Still, he looked at me in such a way that cooled my inside 10 degrees and made it difficult to swallow. And it wasn't a steady look that I could get acclimated to. He would suddenly turn his head, bird-like, without moving the rest of his body, at random intervals, with hateful intensity in his eyes. He spoke only once to me - over the seat, I saw only beady eyes and the top part of a long, lean, hooked nose - asking me to keep quiet as though I'd been holding drum practice in the apartment above him for years.

When he wasn't looking at me, he was intently studying a brochure, most likely from the EMP, on different genres of modern music. His irritation was so tangible I began to question my ability to gauge my own speaking volume and general offensiveness. By this time, my guy had his keys clenched in his fist, the ends coming out between each finger, ready for an attack.

When the man decided to leave the bus, on a semi-abandoned part of Interbay, I felt relief. I saw him through the window and all inverted theories about his and my sanities left me. He was a person whose misery was climaxing at that very moment, and I was just another insult to him.