The 7N Bus, Part 1 of 2

Part 1 of 2

I never knew their names. In the beginning, I thought of the first one as ‘that young man who sits in front of me on the bus in the morning’. Later, he was joined by ‘the other young man’. After a time, I found that it was easier to think about them if they had names, and so I christened them Adam and Seth.

The 7N Bus runs on a circular route from the train station through Lewiston Place out to the Oldham Industrial Estate and then back to the train station by way of Chelmdene and Haymarket. I am an early riser, and I always catch the bus that leaves the station at 5:40 a.m. It gets to my stop around 6:10, enough time for me to read most of the newspaper.

We humans are so regular in our daily habits. The same people queue up for the bus each morning, more or less in the same order. A talkative, elderly man is always the first in line. Most days a middle-aged woman is the second person in line, and she and the elderly man trade information about what they have done since they last saw each other. I know that he is semi-retired but goes in a few hours every day to ‘help’ his son run the family’s shop. She is a dentist. Over the years I have learned a lot about the two of them from their conversation. When she isn’t there, the older man tries to engage the person behind him in the queue in conversation. I take care to be the fourth or fifth person. I suppose he’s pleasant enough to talk to, but I don’t want to share the details of my personal life with the people waiting for the bus, and I’m not ready to talk with anyone that early in the morning. My colleagues at work learned long ago not to engage me in conversation until I’ve had at least three cups of coffee and an hour’s time to get myself sorted out. One of the advantages of arriving long before the others is that I can manage to be agreeable by the time they show up.

All the regulars take the same seats each day. I usually sit by the window in the third row back on the left-hand side. If someone takes a regular passenger’s seat, it feels as if the natural order of the world has been violated. When it happens, the affected person shrugs and smiles ruefully. I always feel oddly disturbed when someone takes my accustomed place. It’s always a stranger. None of the regulars would do that. It’s quite irrational, but I do believe that it augurs ill for the day.

Until quite recently, a young man sat ahead of me. He began riding the 5:40 bus three years ago, something like that. He is the one I am calling Adam. As I said, I never knew his name. If we happened to stand next to each other in the queue, we might remark on some unusual aspect of the weather or, if the bus was not there at the accustomed time, speculate on the reason. But our conversations never went much beyond that. I once ran into him a store. There was a moment of mutual recognition, followed by some confusion, I think on his part as well as mine, as to how we knew each other. The reason dawned for both of us at nearly that same moment. ‘The bus’--we spoke almost at the same instant. We chuckled and then moved on.

I got to know the back of Adam’s neck well. Most mornings, I had the impression that he was half-asleep. Quite often his head would nod forward and then jerk back suddenly as he woke up. Most of us who ride the 5:40 bus do so by choice, because we wake up early. Some, like Adam, appear to do so because their job requires them to arrive early.

Adam seldom did anything but sit there. If someone left a paper on a nearby seat, he might pick it up and turn to the sports news. He would glance at it, but never for very long. He apparently never read beyond the headlines or the game summaries in the first paragraph. Nor did he spend much time looking out the window. He seemed withdrawn into himself. That may be why I thought he was not fully awake most of the time. About the only thing that occasionally drew his attention was a passenger getting on the bus.

Adam was, I would say, an average person. Well, truth be told, I am that too. No one who rides the bus really stands out. If we were somebodies, we wouldn’t be riding the bus, would we? Maybe he was a clerk in a shop or some sort of assistant in a business that opened early. From the conversations between Adam and Seth that I overheard later, I gathered that both of them were knowledgeable about electronics. Perhaps they were computer technicians where they worked. It’s hard to tell, though. The young seem to know everything electronic these days.

About the only thing that drew my attention to Adam in the beginning was an intriguing discrepancy in his looks. The base of his hair at the back, along the neck, was always neatly trimmed. He never allowed his neckline to become fuzzy or uneven. It was always a straight line across the back of his neck, and the area below that was clean shaven. Yet his hair was tousled, almost unkempt. It looked as if he never combed it and just allowed it to grow as it liked. I don’t mean to imply that his hair was dirty or messy—he kept it rigorously clean—but to all appearances he never combed or brushed it. It wasn’t until the rigour of the neckline hit one that it became apparent how artful this arrangement was.

Adam’s style of dressing was much the same. At first glance his clothes appeared to be thrown on. He gave the impression of being one of those young men who has never learned to knot a tie properly. The knot was always pulled away from this throat a bit, and the tie hung askew down his chest. Until one looked closer, he always seemed carelessly dressed. But his clothes and his nonchalant style of wearing them always looked good on him.

No one would call Adam a handsome lad, I think. Presentable, easy on the eyes perhaps, but no, not handsome. If pressed to categorise him, I would say that he knew how to make the best of what were only so-so looks. By apparently not trying to make himself look good, however, he ended up looking better that he might otherwise have.

I don’t want to give the impression that I spent a lot of time studying Adam. It’s just that he sat ahead of me for three years or so, and over time I became acquainted with his looks. If I had any artistic skills, I could draw every building the bus passes. After nearly twenty years, I am familiar with every aspect of the streets along the route. I sometimes play a game and keep my eyes shut during the morning ride. I keep them closed until I was sure we are almost to my stop. Most of the time when I open them, we are exactly in front of the building I thought we would be. Over time, the 7N bus and its occupants have become rather of a hobby of mine. One has to find something to do to occupy one’s thoughts.

I’m not alone in that. All of us who ride the 5:40 bus could probably compile a list of the people who usually get on at each stop—not by name but by sex and age and physical type. I almost always am aware of a newcomer as soon as he or she boards the bus. It isn’t that I intentionally look. It’s more that I realise that two people are getting on where usually only one does. I glance up and register the stranger and then return to my reading.

That early in the morning, most of us have a bench of seats to ourselves for the first ten or fifteen minutes of the route. After that, the bus fills up rapidly and all the seats are taken, and some people have to stand. Even in this respect, however, the same people tend to sit together most every day. The seat beside me is usually taken by another middle-aged man who boards at Lower Bridge Street. He gets out at the stop before the university.

Six or seven, months ago, the seat beside Adam was taken by a young man boarding at Kensington Street. I had never seen him before. Like Adam, he was slender and lithe. The thought struck me that they were rather of a matched pair in looks and dress. Both stayed on the bus until Lewiston Place. About half the bus gets off there to transfer to other buses or to head for work in one of the office towers there. The newcomer quickly became a regular and, unless the seat beside Adam was occupied, took that seat.

Two or three weeks after I first noticed the newcomer, I happened to look up as the bus pulled into the Kensington Street stop and saw Adam turned sideways in his seat looking out the window at those waiting to board there. He suddenly smiled and sketched a half-wave to someone standing in the queue. I looked out and saw the newcomer, the man I am calling Seth, wave back to him. Seth bounded on board the bus and hurried down the aisle, all the while smiling at Adam.

The two of them began chatting animatedly, discussing a football match that had been broadcast the evening before. I was reading and didn’t pay much attention to what they were saying at first. A car must have cut in front of the bus, because the driver had to brake suddenly. The driver shouted something out, and that made me look up to see what was happening. When the bus started on its way again, Adam and Seth resumed their conversation, and I heard Seth suggest to Adam that they meet after work.

I recognised the place he named as one of the larger and more frenetic gay clubs near Lewiston Place. I’ve never been in it—it caters to a much younger crowd. Whenever I have been in that area and walked past, it’s always been packed with people. Despite the fact that it occupies at least two floors in the building and must be able to accommodate hundreds, there is frequently a line of young men standing outside waiting to get in. At night, light pulses from the building, and the beat of the music can be heard a block away.

The realisation that Adam and Seth were gay made me pay attention to them. Adam had turned sideways to face Seth. ‘But we won’t be able to hear ourselves talk there.’ And then he suggested another place. It happened to be the place Richard and I patronise when we venture out to have a drink, but Seth dismissed it out of hand as filled with ‘old gits’. The two of them kept trading the names of places. Seth seemed to want to go to more active and noisy places; Adam preferred less rowdy ones. They were still discussing where to go when the bus arrived at Lewiston Place and they got off. For me at least, the bus seemed much quieter after they had left. I resumed reading the newspaper, but there was a vacant spot in the air ahead of me.

That quickly became the pattern for Adam and Seth. Adam would sit up slightly just as the bus reached Kensington Street and look out the window for Seth. The two of them would greet each other with bright smiles and talk happily. One day someone set beside Adam before we reached Seth’s stop. When Seth came on board, Adam excused himself and got up. The other passenger slid over into the window seat. Adam took the seat next to me, and Seth took the aisle seat in front of us. Seth turned half-way around in his seat, and he and Adam spent the rest of the ride conversing animatedly. After that, no one took the seat beside Adam. As I said, the regulars respect one another’s space. We quickly became used to their conversations. For me at least, it added a cheerful note to the morning routine. It wasn’t so much the content of what they were saying to each other as the fact that they so clearly enjoyed each other’s company that heartened me. Perhaps I put too much stock in such things, but friendship of that sort seems to me to be sufficiently rare that it ought to be appreciated.

Then one morning, Seth was waiting with Adam in the queue at the train station. They were behind me, and I didn’t realise the two of them were together until I was seated on the bus. I had already folded my newspaper open and was reading it, when I became conscious that two people had taken the seat in front of me. I think I briefly felt regret that Adam has lost his usual seat. It wasn’t until I turned the newspaper over that I discovered that Adam and Seth had boarded the bus together.

In contrast to their usual talkativeness, both were sitting there without speaking. It wasn’t the quiet of two people who have nothing to say to each other, however. Rather, they appeared to be in that state when the important things have been said and done, and further conversation would disturb one’s enjoyment of what has happened. They also were physically at ease with each other. They weren’t touching or groping or doing anything to advertise the fact that they had made love, but they weren’t being careful not to touch each other. I wasn’t the only one to notice the change in their relationship. As I looked up, a passenger who had just boarded the bus and was coming down the aisle registered the fact that Seth had apparently spent the night at Adam’s place and smiled with satisfaction at her deductions about what had happened.

Thereafter the two of them almost always got on the bus together. Most of the time they boarded at the station. Occasionally they would get on at Kensington Street, often enough to make it apparent that Seth still retained his own place and hadn’t moved in with Adam. On a few days, Adam boarded alone at the station and Seth joined him after Kensington Street. The first time that happened, I wondered if something had come up between the two of them and was quite relieved when it became clear that the separation was temporary.

Maybe I am romanticising others’ feelings, but I think all of us felt better because Adam and Seth had found each other. The atmosphere on the bus seemed much more pleasant during that period. The two of them so obviously were happy, and that spilled over on the rest of us. They weren’t demonstrative about their feelings or so wrapped up in each other that they were oblivious to the sensibilities of others on the bus. But in many little ways one could tell that they were in love. One morning there was a patch of construction just before the intersection of Kitchener and Harlow streets. There were a few seconds of bone-jarring vibrations as the bus passed too quickly over the temporary patches in the streets. All of us swayed in our seats. But for a half-minute or so after the normal ride had resumed, Adam continued to sway in his seat and bump shoulders with Seth. Seth gave him a complicit smile and a look that said ‘What are you up to then, mate?’ But he didn’t move away either.

The episode brought a memory to my mind. Soon after Richard and I began sleeping together, I awoke one morning with Richard spooned against my back and his arms around me. I could tell from his breathing that he was asleep. We were both naked, and I can still remember his half-stiff cock pressed against my rear and the odd mix of comfort and arousal that caused. The hair in his groin felt wiry and stiff. It was almost as if I could feel each individual hair. I lay there wondering what would happen if I began to flex the cheeks of my ass together and press it into his crotch. It’s strange how strong certain memories are.

At that time, I was living in quite a small flat. The bedroom was barely big enough for the bed and a small table and chair. It was late morning, and the light in the room was quite bright even though the curtains were pulled. The night before, Richard had hung his shirt over the back of the chair rather hurriedly. One shoulder and sleeve were almost touching the floor. I lay there stroking the fabric of the shirt and feeling ridiculously happy about waking up to see Richard’s shirt in front of me. I can still see the colour—it was a dark blue shirt with almost invisible thin grey stripes running vertically up and down the fabric. It had one of those narrow, stiff, white bands that were a popular style for collars in the late 1970s.

Richard had pulled his wallet and keys out of his trousers and left them on the table. It was peaceful to lie there and let my eyes take stock of all of Richard’s possessions scattered about my room. When I looked down, I could see one of his arms and all the dark hairs on his forearm. I was almost afraid to move for fear of disturbing my quiet happiness.

I was so absorbed in my reverie about those early days with Richard that when Adam and Seth stood up to get off the bus, I did something unusual for me. I looked Adam directly in the face and smiled at him. Somehow I felt that he would understand the train of thought he had occasioned by his playfulness. He smiled back at me. It was only then that it struck me that he must think me an old fool. Adam couldn’t possibly have read my mind, but he was kind enough to share his own happiness with others.

Most of us who ride the 7N bus that early in the morning are older. We haven’t forgotten what the first flush of love is like, however. But even though the memories are overlaid with what has happened since, we can still be transported by the thought of love and hope for the best. Or maybe it’s just me. I can’t speak for the others.

Continued—read Part 2 here: http://www.abctales.com/story/nexis-pas/7n-bus-part-2-2