Riding the Bus with my Soulmate

 The other night, as I was leaving work with a colleague of mine, we began to make small talk as we strolled down the street on the way to our respective bus stops. As single women, obviously, one of the first topics to come up was that of men. Over the course of our conversation, she happened to drop a little statistic that I found particularly interesting. "Did you know that public transportation is one of the top five ways that people meet their significant others?," she said. Now, she had to have seen the  "bitch you must be crazy look" that came to my face, as she tried to justify her statement by swearing to me that she had read it somewhere. Now, I am by no means trying to kill the dream for those of you who still buy your metro passes religiously each Sunday with the hopes of encountering Mr. Right while trying to balance your coffee and ipod on your morning train ride. However, I will say that I have been all over this globe and ridden all sorts of public transportation. I was threatened to be stabbed on the metro in Paris, I slept on an ironing board disguised as a bed on one of those over night trains on my way to Denmark, all the while hoping not to wake up with the weird lady from Utrecht lying next to me and I have even ridden the bus next to a woman holding a chicken in the middle of Latin America. Yet, nothing has compared to the unique array of experiences I have had while utilizing the L.A. public transportation system. Seeing as this is a blog and not a book, I will not relay to you every encounter, but instead I have selected, what I believe to be, L.A. public transportation's top three eligible bachelors:

1. The Kobe Beef Guy: On the day that I happened to have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Kobe, the bus was particularly crowded and so we had both been forced to stand and hold onto the same pole for balance.  I was staring out the window, trying to figure out where we were and how much longer it would take me to get to work (seeing as I was, of course, running late) when all of a sudden I felt something sweaty on my hand. Giving Mr. Kobe the benefit of the doubt that the bus had hit a bump and caused his hand to slide down the pole, I politely slid mine down as well, attempting to put a good amount of distance between my hand and his in order to avoid future contact with those clammy bad boys. The only problem is, I don't think he understood that I didn't want to hold his sweaty, germ infested hand because we continued to play this little cat and mouse game all the way from Crenshaw to Fairfax. Finally we made akward eye contact as he looked me up and down (not at all hiding what he was doing, mind you) and said, "mmmmmmmmhhhmmmm. Girrrrrrrrrrl, you fine. Hows about we, you know, go on a date some time? You like sushi? We can go get some sushi. Hows about dat Kobe beef? I bet you like you some Kooooooooobeee beef. Uh huh, yeah dats right, I know how to take a woman out and treat her right. You stick with me and I'll set you up girl. Two words: Kobe beef." Now, as a young, single woman, I have, of course, received dinner invitations before, but I can safely say that this is the first and only time I have ever been propositioned with the promise of pure grade A beef. I mean, how I was able to turn down such a catch, and such a great meal, I just don't know. Seeing as he would not stop heckling me, I decided to turn to the oldest shut down in the book, "Sorry, but I have a boyfriend." To which Sir Kobe replied, "Oooooooh you got a boyfriend?? I bet you do, you is a finnnnee bitch. But girl look at you just jumping the gun. I'm just talking about dinner, but see you want me. Oh, you is a FREAKKKKKKK. Ladies and gentleman, we got ourselves a FREAKKKKKK on the bus! Baby, it's okay, I would want me to if I was in your shoes. It gets cold at night, I can keep you warm after we we finish dinner. Koooobbeeeee beeeef." Thank god, the bus arrived at my stop just as my face was reaching lobster status and the entire bus was left giggling. Even thinking about it now, I'm really not sure how I was able to run off the bus without turning around to get his number and cash in on my beef, but maybe I guess if it is truly meant to be, one day our paths will cross again.

2. The Man who Chews Sticks (yet has money to buy People Magazine): Again, there I was, sitting on the bus, minding my own business, sharing some quality time with Gaga before having to go into work when I was brought back from the edge of glory by a man half sitting down on the seat next to me and half sitting down in my lap. "Excuse me, so sorry," he said, as he slid fully into the seat next to me and smiled, exposing his missing front teeth. I smiled back and resumed my jam session when all of a sudden I took a sharp elbow to the boob. My head darted back towards the man only to see that he now sat with his legs crossed, chewing on a a stick (yes, people, a stick - like a twig that fell off a tree). The jab I felt was because he had attempted to pull the People Magazine from his man bag and wasn't paying attention when he pulled his arm back. "No problem," I said and smiled again as I once more exercised a futile attempt to go to the edge of glory. Naturally, no sooner had I put the earbud back in my ear did I feel a tap on my shoulder. I looked over at the man who was now laughing and screaming how I looked like a celebrity. "Look!" he said. "Look here! You look like this girl here. This myyyy guuuuuuuurl! Uhhh! God Dayyyyyummmm. You must have been sent to me by the universe, you gots to gimme yo digits so we can make something happen." Now, I realize that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that we all see and interpret things in different ways. However, seeing as I have a butt the size of Russia, hair as dark as the Kardashians and a skin tone that has caused several people to ask if I am Puerto Rican, I'm really not sure how he thought that Madonna and I resembled one and other, but that's neither here nor there. The man was so convinced that we were twins that he got up from his seat and began walking up and down the aisles asking each passenger if they felt that I resembled the woman in the magazine. Luckily, as he reached the back of the bus, we reached my stop and I was able to dart out the double doors only to see his toothless smile turn to a frown and the twig drop from his lips as he yelled to the driver "not to let his soulmate get off the bus without saying goodbye". Luckily the bus driver took pity on my poor soul and drove off without paying any mind to Twiggy.

3. The Man who Shits in his Shirt: Now, I must admit that I, myself, was not so privileged as to have met this fine fellow, but this story came to me from a very reputable source and so I believe every word and have decided that his tale is so epic it would be a crime not to share it with you fabulous folks. So there my friend was just casually standing on a street corner in downtown, patiently waiting for her bus to arrive when she noticed, what appeared to be, a homeless man out of the corner of her eye. She quickly looked away and stared down the road, hoping that she would see her bus begin to peek out from around the corner. Upon realizing that her bus was nowhere in sight, she backed away from the curb and turner her head around, only to see the man unbuckling his belt and pulling down his pants. He had laid a shirt against the wall of a building and began to squat with his bare ass up against the wall. Half disgusted and half frozen from mortification, she stood frozen in her tracks and felt her lunch beginning to work its way  up into her esophagus. She then (and I kid you not folks) witnessed the man take a shit into the shirt. Once he was finished, he then took the shirt over to the garbage, emptied its contents, folded it back up and put it into his backpack. As my poor friend looked back down the road, she sighed in relief as she saw the bus coming down the block. When it arrived she climbed aboard and began depositing her change when she noticed the Shirt-Shitter get on behind her and begin rustling for change to pay his fare (I am assuming that he must have had somewhere important to go, seeing as he felt his dollar fifty would be better spent on LA public transportation than on a burger from the dollar menu so he could use the restroom).

Now, I am not trying to be the typical single, female, New York born and bread, cynic, but if one of the top five places to meet people in L.A. is riding public transportation and the best they have to offer are beef enthusiasts and shirt shitters, I think my time might be better spent trying to like cats than trying to locate Mr. Right.

Hello, Have We Met Before?

Two years ago I stood on the corner of Rue de la Tremoille, just off the Champs-Elysees and watched my parents' faces slowly drift away through the tiny window at the rear of a taxi cab. As I waved my arm back and forth amidst the cold October air, I had not the faintest idea as to what exactly I was saying goodbye to. At that point in my life, goodbye was still just a word, one whose entire meaning was still somewhat unbeknownst to me. On that day, on that street, in that moment I said goodbye to my father forever.

Two years ago yesterday fate found it necessary to take him from this world unexpectedly, without the slightest warning sign as to its plans. When I returned to New York for the funeral, it didn't seem real. His car still sat in the driveway ready for him to leave for work the next morning, his coffee cup still sat at his desk half full waiting for him to return for the last few drops and his cologne still hung in the air as if I would turn the corner and see him fussing with his tie. I don't know what came over me but I spent the next few days rummaging through everything I could find. I didn't know what I was looking for or what I was hoping to find, I just kept scouring. I think I thought that maybe I would open some small, secret box full of answers, but, in fact, the only thing I seemed to find were more questions.

I learned a lot about my father when he passed (some of which I think I had rather not known), but even so, I found myself confronted by so many questions that I would never know the answers to. There were so many things that no one would ever know about him, so many things that died on that December night with him. I couldn't help but to wonder how I could have lived with a man for 20 years and only scratched the surface of who he truly was, how I could have shared blood with someone and yet felt as though he was still somewhat of a stranger to me.

People think they know someone by looking at them, talking to them, going to school with with them and even by going to bed with them. However, truth be told, how well do we ever really know anybody whose path crosses our own? How well will they ever really know us?

On that night my father laid in bed struggling to bring air into his lungs, the night my mother desperately tried to resuscitate him, the night my sister fought with her trembling hands to dial 911, the night my youngest sister awoke to the sight of my father being carried out of the house on a stretcher, and that same night that I danced atop a Dutch bar unaware that my life was unraveling thousands of miles away, we all changed. That one night changed everything, and yet that one night was still just one night, only one piece of who we became, of what we have encountered within our lives.

I'm sure at one point or another people have looked at us and judged us without knowing where we were coming from. Likewise, I'm sure people have looked at us and judged us because of where we were coming from. Everyone's road has bumps in it, some of us just hit them sooner than others. Thus, making it difficult for us to relate to one and other from time to time. I hope that this blog is able to entertain you, even just a little, but if I can also leave you with one meaningful message, I would want it to be this: people are the way they are for reasons. My time with my father was cut short  and for this reason, it will always be a little bit harder for me to allow myself to get close to someone, to put aside my fear of losing them in exchange for the possibility of gaining something wonderful, even if only for a little bit. However, with that being said, I have also learned to look at people in a new way; to ask questions and to question answers.  No one's story is printed on their face. You will only ever know as much about a person as you are willing to discover and you will only ever encounter truth when you have gained trust.