Outside Looking In

I have lived on the bus. I have to admit it. I have. I have lived a little too on the underground and the overland train, but on the bus there has been more to experience. At the bus stop I am entertained by the school girls in their flared uniform skirts, squealing and shouting as they gossip and snack on sweets at the corner ship. On the bus I am flung about, holding on to the railings as the bus swerves through dense city traffic. It is on the bus I confront the hoodie teenagers, those hyenas, with their pugnacious electronic gadgets. Is it not the night bus that delivers me from the cold and drunkenness at Trafalgar Square after a night at the club? Have I not fallen madly in love with my bus roots, my eyes and heart lifting when I see my bus number saunter up to my bus stop? Why even, when I watch a television news report (price of butter up 30p), I don’t hear or see what the reporter says but instead watch the traffic in the footage in case my bus goes by. 73 I will exclaim, that’s my bus! Thats the bus I take to work, from Victoria after the train.

And there have been other moments too. Friendships begun or ended. Deep truths admitted (Laurence, I can’t do this. I can’t work here. It doesn’t feel right) on the upper deck of a night bus in the small hours of the morning. On a number 12 bus I told her I was going home. I said I was going home for Christmas. I also said I was not coming back. I didn’t mean to admit this, but she had asked. I hadn’t the words at that moment, as we rocked side to side. She seemed genuinely disappointed. I was never sure if there was anything between us. So this is the end of your London dream then? she asked. Again, I was at a loss of lies.

I have never got to know a woman so passively before. She phoned me. I did not have to give her my number, my mother did, all the way back in Zambia. I did not have to invent things we have in common, we already had a common past. We toddled together she would tell people she introduced me to. We used to crawl around together when we were small like this (putty her palm down to her knees). Our parents are old friends. I did not have to invent things for us to do. Instead she told me where to be and when. There is a book launch at Foyles at six. We are going to my parents house in Oxford next weekend. There is a seminar on African peace keeping and Foreign Aid. Lets have dinner at my place this Sunday. Since she is an events organizer to a regional society, I guess it comes easily to her. But the down side of all this was that I was always among a large host of other guests. If anything, I was no more than a spare hand to hold her wine while she networked about the notable event organizing personalities.

But I am in debt to her. She showed me that other world. The world of creative students, amateur artists, naive dreamers and political idealists. Older students and younger professionals who think themselves about to change the world for the better with the right combination of poetry sessions, post conflict debate seminars and conscientious green and sustainable investment literature. Them, those over educated mixed race upstarts, spending their youth and skill about this over heated old city, are the ones I seek to impress. A chortle from them, after a witty remark from me, makes me warm inside. For them I performed. For them, I recited every thing I knew from Foucault and Fanon, only twisted to make me sound as gallant as Oscar Wilde. I made sure, with the right spacing of snobby big words and a bbc accent, I sounded as clever as them, one of them even. Hell, I even made a toast at a dinner party, through my wine induced sense of humor, and was a hilarious success. A cute self deprecating joke about my obscure data analysis job with an Indian restaurant company, and they thought me equal to their social science degrees and promising internships.

I think she is attractive, except for some latent acne. I was worried, however, when she phoned me first. A phone call from a strange pretty voice usually means confronting a disarmingly ugly person. But instead, when I saw her (since our early toddling of 24 years ago), as she confidently walked through our living room, I saw a tall colored girl, with high boots, long slender legs and a pretty bush of curly brown hair. For her, this city still holds many secrets. To her it is a large vessel of unexplored opportunities, of notable authors not yet introduced to, hobbies not yet fully developed and possible relationships not yet failed. She has many more bus routes to master and perhaps a borough or two more to live in. I live in peckham I commanded, when she asked me where I live. Now she has moved just up the road from me in what might have been the geographical prerequisite of a strong and meaningful relationship (I will be just one bus ride away from your place she exclaimed just 2 months ago). At her bus stop, she gave me the now perfunctory embrace and dry kiss to the lips. Her and a worldly dream of possibilities stepped off the bus into the dark and leafy city blocks. My bus ride is soon to come to an end.