overheard on the bus today

For much of the year in Berkeley, the buses are jammed with UC Berkeley students, who cram the busses and seem to think the local public transit system is part of their private campus life.  Mid-afternoon on weekdays, when Berkeley High lets out, yes, the buses are fleetingly packed with high school kids but I like the energy of those kids.  The h.s. kids are still kids, they still see unfamiliar grown ups as objects that automatically merit their respect. If not respect, then generational deference. High school kids offer seats or at least get out of the way.

College students don't exactly disrespect adults. And don't get me wrong. I am not a genuine senior citizen. Not quite yet.  I have no visible disability.  I am not automatically entitled to a seat on the bus. Plus when I am going to a Berkeley destination, none of my bus rides are very long. I can stand on the bus for a few blocks and I don't mind standing. I do mind, however, the sense of entitlement of the college kids.  I have never seen a college student offer a seat, not even to people with canes.

Fuck the college kids. The reason I am thinking about them at all is because they are all gone right now. All the students have gone 'home' for the holidays. School is out. The only people riding the bus today, a holiday, are the well and truly poor.

There are plenty of poor white folks here. But the public transit population in Berkeley and Oakland is predominantly African American. When UC is in session, you see lots of Asian kids and more white kids on the bus. On a holiday like today, it's blacks. And some whites. I am, after all, white and on the bus.

So today on the bus, a tall, young, African American male adult hesitates to get on the One. He asks the driver if the 'R', the rapid One, is running.  The Rapid doesn't run on Saturdays or holidays, so no 'R' today. The kid, the man, was going to Fruitvale. The One will get him there in about forty minutes, slowly snaking its way through Berkeley, then all the way through Oakland, to the outer reachers of Fruitvale. BART would take the kid there too but BART costs twice as much. First the guy ducked back off the bus, to weigh his options.  I bet he was thinking about BART but frugality won out. He had a card loaded for the bus ride. BART meant cash. Reluctantly, he got on the One.

At the first stop (he got on, as had I, at the beginning of the route), a gray-haired black man got on, someone he recognized. Quickly, the two man exchanged details about where they staying. Both of them living in shelters. The older man, seeming to feel sheepish, said "Last time you saw me, at your grandma's, I was all fucked up.  I'm paying for it now. I'm getting back on track.  I gonna be all right."  The younger man offered supportive sounds, like "You can do it, You be all right" and the older man kept reciting his path.  "I didn't lose my job, I still work for the airlines, but I can't go back until I go through the program, to learn how to manage my anger. The program cost $400.  I got to pay $400 and then go, complete the program, then they gonna take me back. I still got the job, but I can't do the job until I get $400."  Then he pulled out a brochure for a day work program.

The young man was interested. He has no work either.  He staying in a shelter. The young man asked the old man where he was headed right then. The old man said "I'm going to the Such-and-Such. They do free food, they have raffles. They don't open up until six and they only take so many, so you got to be in line. I want to get in, get that free food, maybe win a prize. They are pretty good prizes. Bus passes. Food coupons. Like that.  You should come with me. You would be welcome."

"No," the younger man demurred.  "I headed to Fruitvale. I paid for the bus now.  I get off here, I can't get back to Fruitvale later." Then he said "Tell me about that work you talked about."

Then the older man pulled out a brochure, handed it to the young one.  "It's good work. They pay eleven dollars an hour.  There isn't always work but if you keep going, you get work. And then when they hire, you know how it is, it is temp to perm. But you keep going, you keep working it, you'll get on. Here, take this."

"I might call them." said younger man.

"It's easy to get there. You go on BART and then you can walk, not too far. Eight blocks. Close enough to walk."

"Where are the jobs?"

"You know, out that way, San Leandro, Fremont, Walnut Creek. But so far, they all close enough to walk from BART."

I just read, yesterday I think, that something like fourteen percent of all African American men are in prison. The unemployment rate for African American men is so high that I have blanked that number. Forty percent?

I don't know anything about those two guys on the bus.  But I know their social class. They were born poor, they gonna die poor and in between, they might enjoy some spurts of middle class living but for the most part, they be scrambling for a room and food.

"A free meal sounds good," the young one said at one point on the bus ride.  "Last night I went to 'Such and Such to eat. It was good. But it cost nine dollars. Well, $8.72 but by then you talking nine dollars.  Nine dollars just to eat dinner."

Nine dollars is a lot of money for one meal. Nine dollars for one meal time thirty days is $270, right? And most folks want three meals a day. It is cheaper to eat 'at home' but when you are living in a shelter, forced to hang out all day outside the shelter, no kitchen, you eat out. Nine dollars. Even McDonald's meals are unaffordable.

I saw my homeless friend Kathy. She's not homeless these days. She has a room in an SRO. SRO means single room occupancy. In the old days, it was called a flop house, skid row.  When I first moved to Berkeley, she was homeless, waiting to get a room. But she still has to pay rent. She pays her rent by begging. She has long white hair. She's at least my age. Not eligible, she said once, for disability, not old enough for Social Security. Can't work. She was living on the street in downtown Berkeley when I moved here. I don't think she remembers me from one time to the next. I think she lives by instinct, like an animal in a natural setting. She is friendly when people are friendly to her but she makes no bonds. How do you make bonds when you have no base? How do you create a base when you can't hang onto to a room?  Someone loved Kathy when she was a toddler, kept her from running into the streets. Playmates and neighbors knew her as child, then a teen. She's known decades of friendship but never found a toe hold. She's just hanging on, waiting to die.  I know she has a room now because I don't see her so much. I think she might have got on disability cause I don't see her begging anymore, never see her selling that homeless news.

Lately, in my neighborhood, there have been little clusters of very young beggars.  Scruffy clusters of young kids usually hang out on Telegraph but the business owners there are constantly working to get rid of them and they have to go somewhere. So they go downtown. The storefronts down here have better overhangs, its dryer in the rainy season. Kathy was sleeping downtown when I met her two years ago cause there are more drop spots at night, she told me. She moves to areas of Oakland in the dry season. It's rainy season, probably why I have been seeing her lately.

I get angry at the young clusters of beggars. They are always smoking cigarettes.  I don't give any beggars money. I give Kathy five dollars whenever I see her. Let me explain why.

Once, sitting next to her on the bus, I told her I was glad to see her, that I hadn't seen her in a while and was glad to see she was okay. She told me that while she was begging that day, a guy gave her a ten dollar bill. She lit up as she told me about that ten dollars. She hardly ever gets ten dollars from one person.  Later, the guy walked by her again and she asked him again, not paying attention to him. She said 'You know how it is, to beg you don't pay attention to the people, you just ask for spare change, you don't look at them." But I saw he gave me a dirty look. He was offended that I was asking again because he had just given me ten bucks. I remembered him, of course I did, but I hadn't looked at him when he came back. I started to apologize, she said, but he was gone. I feel so bad.

I decided that day that every time I see her, I will give her five dollars. And I do. Sometimes I don't see her for months. And to tell you the truth, I wish I wouldn't notice her.  I wish I didn't notice poor people and hear snippets of their lives. I seem to hear folks on the bus all the time talking about 'good jobs, paying good money' and then they say 'eleven dollars'.

Eleven dollars is not good money.

I think I already wrote about the guitar lady. A few months ago, with the electricity out at Peets, she asked me to go into Starbucks to buy her a tea, said she would pay me. I got her the tea and she paid me, but not the full price I had spent.  She said she was short because someone had stolen her guitar. This was a couple months ago. Then just before Christmas, she was at the top of the BART escalator. She usually plays her guitar inside the BART station. That's how she supports herself. But she was at the top of the escalator, looking for her regular customers, I think. I think she couldn't just stand in the station where she usually plays and beg so she was hoping to reach out to her regulars at the escalator. She kept saying "Someone stole my guitar, can you help me get a new one?"

I decided to give her the bill I had in my secret pocket. I have an awkward, zippered pocket on my left sleeve. I don't know what it is supposed to be for but I keep bills in it. If I had pulled out a twenty, I would have given it to her but I pulled out a ten. And I gave it to her. Another woman stopped just as I handed over the ten and stuffed a one dollar bill in the jar. The guitar gal thanked the one dollar lady and barely looked at me. I wanted her to light up over the ten.  I wanted her to be grateful but she didn't even notice. I don't think she saw that I have given her a ten. What was I gonna do, point it out and ask her to recognize me?

I see her all the time. She never acknowledges me. I wonder, am I appearing to ignore her? Does she ignore me because I seem to be ignoring her?

I am one of these people.  I am slipping further and further away from the middle class, from what I want to all normal life.  I know exactly what that poet meant when she wrote about The Bell Jar.  She felt like she lived separate from others, separate from normal. She felt like she was shut off from whatever others had that she lacked, like she didn't quite have enough oxygen. A bell jar.  Frosted glass. Cut off.

I remembered that awful movie, starring Meryl Streep based on a novel called Ironweed. The Streep character lived in flop houses, scraping together money from one day to the next to get a room. When she was lucky enough to have a room, she laid out her few things to make the room homey. She had a scarf that she put on the dresser. She hung on to a few mementos.  Her life was hard. She grasped hard for rays of light. She was better than me.  Just about everyone is.

Who was the guy who wrote that line, life is solitary poor nasty brutish and short?  Life is solitary, poor, nasty and brutish but where did he come up with short?  It's way too fucking long.  I hate my life.  I hate me.