A Website on the World Wide Web with writing by Laura Jayne Martin

Dermot slowly walks back toward me down the aisle.
He has bad news for me.

If communism as an “ism” were to endorse a single mode of transportation, it would definitely be the bus. Weary souls pointing out vomit puddles to those boarding, blue collar workers rubbing elbows with the unemployed they support, students, mothers and children, off-duty bus drivers, desperate uncivilized people without access to train schedules, united in a way no subway car could ever be (not even on its best blackout). Make no mistake, I am not referring to buses that in anyway correlate with the any part of the New York Transit System. Those buses,such as the M4, run in a similar fashion to the subway and might be distinguished as “local”.  Rather, I am referring to the carnival of mass transit: the commuter bus.

Riding a commuter bus, is breathing the air of people who reside, for whatever reason, someplace they would rather not. Each morning they attempt to escape and each evening they are dragged back, like starfish in a tide. I defy you to find a satisfied commuter bus passenger. Forget satisfied, just find one that isn’t nauseated.

Commuter buses are free of harnesses like timetables, although they continue to print them out so would-be passengers have something to read during their unplanned 40 minute wait at the bus stop. The bus stop which, is undoubtedly in the most creepy and desolate location in the area–fresh from its cameo in a recent David Lynch film. Due to a cruelly godless twist of fate, recently I attempted to board a commuter bus to return to New York City from Upstate. The driver asks me to wait on the steps, rises and walks the length of the bus methodically slapping the headrest of every single masochistic passenger. He returns to me and announces that “there are no more seats”. I curse the two ancient Slovakian women I let board before me and I glance back behind the dusk.

“Can I stand?” I ask the driver whom I have named Dermot out of spite. “You can sit on the steps.” I am astonished as Dermot indicates the steps one uses to gain entry to the bus. I wonder if he realizes these steps are in front of the white line and bus will be in motion–a regulatory infringing combination. Clearly, Dermot has a problem with regards to bus protocol but, I sit down on the steps and we cast off.

A few minutes later, Dermot decides to give me the change from my bus ticket. This change should have been a complete refund as I had intended to purchase a seat on a bus, not a piece of a bus. Nevertheless, Dermot chooses prodding me in the back with the money as opposed to a more conventional method of getting my attention like say, talking. I have crossed the line literally and figuratively, and am now demoted in status from patron to cargo.

All I can think of is “is this really what Marx would have wanted?” and “what would Lenin do?” I am positive my fellow passengers have never heard that famous Joan Osborne song, most likely because there is no radio allowed on the bus. Additionally, this crowd is very busy avoiding popular culture, so Joan Osborne songs are out. However, what if god was one of us? Just a slob like one of us? Just a stranger on the bus?

He probably would have gotten an armrest at least.