Buttonholed at the bus stop: A Talk To Muckefuck Story™

There's a special kind of sinking feeling that comes over you when you realise you're the only one waiting at the bus stop for a bus that you think is scheduled to come in two minutes. At first, of course, you wonder if you read the schedule wrong. Or if they changed it without informing you. Then you panic about making getting to your destination on time and begin worriedly considering other options.

My anxiety was extinguished when I checked my phone again and realised the reason the shuttle wasn't there is that it wasn't due for another hour. How I managed to convince myself that 7 a.m. was 8 a.m., I'll never know, but now I was stuck with the choice of waiting nearly half an hour for another shuttle or playing CTA roulette. A few stray drops convinced me that this was not a day for games of chance. I took a seat and opened my book.

Some minutes later, a well-dressed older gentleman came by and offered me a copy of Awake magazine, which I politely declined. That didn't discourage him from chatting and he launched us on a getting-to-know-you conversation. You're a librarian? My ex-wife was a librarian. She used to do storytime. You do storytime? For the first few minutes, I was tense expecting that fateful personal question which would change the whole dynamic; when it failed to materialise, I allowed myself to relax.

People I recognised began appearing and I realised the shuttle was nigh. I don't know if he realised it, too, but he wound down his disquistion on what a lovely place E-town is and wished me good things. And then it came:

"You have a family?"
"I do."
"You have a wife and kids?"
"No, I don't. I have a partner of thirteen years. We own a house together."
His face darkened. "Well, everyone chooses their own lifestyle..."
"And some lifestyles choose you."

Then he preached to me briefly about desire, about how if you lust after something long enough you'll give into it. I bit the insides of my cheeks to avoid saying, "You mean like desire for a God?" After he said his piece, he hurried off like there was suddenly someplace important he had to be.

There's a special kind of thrill you get from seeing a hot topless bear approaching. That thrill is heightened when it's a hot bear you actually know. Between the panic and the Witness, a friend of aadroma's I'd met at Bear Pride stopped at the light long enough for a bit of chat through his open window. "Work is that way," I told him, pointing in the opposite direction. "I quit my job there." he replied. "Now a full-time gigolo?" I teased. It was a fun exchange. It would've been even more fun had it happened about, say, ten minutes later.

Popping into the bookstore for a snack

After lunch today, I swung by Amaranth looking for more books by David Mitchell. Found number9dream, but there was highlighter on some of the pages. DO NOT WANT! I also looked for titles by his editor, David Ebershoff, but struck out. However, in the process I came across a book of short stories by Andre Dubus which I very nearly bought on the strength of the jacket photo alone. But that would've been shallow even for me, right? (I SAID "RIGHT?") So I read some excerpts and some of the editorial material and had second thoughts. The content seemed like it might be too heterosexual to hold my interest and I feared the prose would be Hemingway-esque in all the wrong ways. Anyone care to offer opinions?

In the meanwhile, what I did leave with, then, was an omnibus edition of Maria Edgeworth's groundbreaking Castle Rackrent coupled with its sequel Ennui. (Something for next year's Irish Lit Month, I reckon.) That and Joseph Mitchell's Up in the old hotel, which looked like good bedside reading. Two paragraphs of dialogue between the narrator and a representative of the Anti-Profanity League was all it took to convince me I needed to own this.