People are strange when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
The Doors
And so I miss my bus last night, just miss it but I'm in luck, the boys, they want to go for a drink. It's Stampede. And so I catch a ride downtown, go for a drink with them at King Henry VIII on Stephen Ave. Mall because they don't want to wait in line to go anyplace better and I don't care, I'm sweaty and still dressed for work and all I really want to do is to go home and shower and go to bed.
Now I don't smoke. Or only cigarettes, which is probably the worst of the vices. But the boys, they smoke, and the smoke pools in the back seat of the car where I'm sat and by the time we're parked downtown I'm already pretty fucked up.
At the bar I drink my drink, quickly, it's filled with other people who didn't want to wait and get into better bars, all looking about as happy as we are. I finish my drink and then go to catch the connecting bus home.
And I'm pretty fucked up, whatever they were smoking it was pretty good if I can be fucked up after sitting in the back seat of the car for 10 minutes and drinking a single beer. And I don't feel nauseous, which is a good thing as I seem to recall it being the reason I never pursued that particular vice. So I wait at the bus stop and notice the people, all the people, they're looking at me, they know how fucked up I am and I see a group of chinese tourists coming down the street in these sheer raincoats, you can see their bras and knickers beneath, and I turn away because I don't want to stare, to seem like I'm all fucked up and they pass and it's a group of blobby young teenagers, not the chinese tourists I thought they were, and I realize that I'm pretty fucked up.
But I'm concentrating on waiting for the bus, ignoring the many staring people around me....
The bus comes and I get on and find a seat and I have to concentrate now, concentrate on the stop I have to get off at, I could imagine very easily missing it, riding the bus all night until the driver kicks me off, and I just want to get home...
The regulars, the bus has regulars, depending on the hour you board it, they're all there. And I'm in the midst of life, in tune with it all, not apart or above as usually I am but right there in the midst of it all and I tune their conversations in and out, move my concentration about the bus and capture the snippets of their conversation....
...and I realize that they're all pretty fucked up as well. I had never noticed before, had overheard but not paid attention, thought them boring, irrelevant, whatever, but tonight, tonight I realize, tonight I'm on their page, I understand just how fucked up everyone really is.