Planes, Trains and Citybusses I

Sometime in December a friend introduced me to podcasts. At the time I tentatively subscribed to several NPR broadcasts and Democracy Now. Two months later and I’m addicted.

One of the NPR Casts is something they call “Story of the Day”. This is (as they remind at the beginning and end of the broadcast) “the one story that NPR editors believe listeners absolutely should not miss”.

At its best, my blogging serves as my own personal “Story of the Day”. Unfortunately, I am usually about a day or two behind.

Yesterday’s Citymouse incident involved the Number 90 city bus. First - some things about the Washington DC transport system: when I lived in New York I rode busses all the time, especially when I lived on the East Side of the city. Everyone rode busses. Businessmen, janitors, the unemployed, the homeless, students, hipsters – everyone rode busses. They were generally amenable transportation experiences, coming and going efficiently and on a pretty regular basis.

DC is a different story. The busses are economically (which yes, also mean racially) divided and utilized (at least in the city – it may be different in the suburbs) primarily by people who live outside of the “better parts of town”. Perhaps because of this, or perhaps just because it is the way it is, busses here tend to be haphazard in their departures and arrivals, schedules are not dependable, and a bus ride is always, ALWAYS, a memorable experience.

The 90 Bus tends to be particularly lively. Super-mover-man used to call it the “Party Bus”. On a good day it’s a “party”. But even then it is not ever a party that I was invited to.

Yesterday was no exception.

I use the 90 Bus to cross the Hill from my sort of transitional SE neighborhood to the sort of transitional NE neighborhood where I will be directing a play this spring. I was on my way to a design meeting, had a laundry list of things I was supposed to accomplish that day, and thought I was going to be late.

The bus came relatively quickly, so there I was balancing a starbucks cup, my ipod, an overstuffed lap top bag, and fumbling to get the dollar and quarter out to slide into the money thingie which never, ever seems to work for me (see, even the busses themselves don’t like me).

All fine. There is a seat near the front (I don’t go towards the back as that is usually where the “party” is taking place, which in the past has ranged from 40’s being passed around to funny cigarettes being smoked out of a window to extremely animated diatribes about how all the white people in this city are intent on keeping the black man down) and I sit.

I quickly realize that several rows behind me is a woman standing and doing the street preacher thing. Her face is completely expressionless and the words just keep spilling out of her mouth. It is fire and brimstone stuff, where we will go if we are not born again, what hell fires and eternal damnation awaits those that are not “saved”, etcetera, etcetera.

At first I tune her out. Bus she is just loud enough to be heard over my Ipod. And I am just not in the mood to hear about what awaits my heathen soul. So I roll my eyes and sigh.

That’s it. Not to anyone in particular. Not even looking towards her. Just a sigh and an eye roll. A woman across from me, holding a baby and surrounded by grocery bags, saw the eye roll. And she jumped on it.

“What, you don’t like what she’s saying? Are you not a believer?”

“Excuse me?”

“You rolled your eyes! I saw you roll your eyes.”

And this was my fatal flaw. I should have said, “I didn’t actually roll my eyes, I was just trying to dislodge a small piece of dust from my cornea” But instead I said:

“I don’t appreciate being preached to on a public city bus”

“What, you don’t like hearing about Christ? Have you not been saved by Christ? You don’t want me to say Christ? Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ…” (she continues this as I try to respond.)

“Well, there are people in this world who don’t exactly believe they need to be saved by Christ”

At that point all hell (and really, no pun intended) broke loose. The woman next to me looked aghast:

“You don’t believe in Christ? Ohhhh, you will get your due”

The bus driver turns around (yes, the bus driver) “You’ll see! The last will be first and the first will be last”.

The only other white person on the bus is a tired looking guy in a suit who is about to get off. He turns to me and sighs, “This happens to me all the time at work.”

At this point I give up. I put my headphones back on and say, “Look I’m out of this. Continue on if you like, but I’m out.”

Several other passengers are now shouting out to the woman with the baby that if she wants her hands free to show me (pretty Christ-like, huh?) physically how she feels about me rolling my eyes, they’d hold her baby for her.

And the whole time the preacher woman mumbles on, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around her.

Un-believable.

I made it to H Street and was actually on time for the meeting. But I was shaking and angry.

Everyone has a right to believe what he or she chooses to believe. They have a right, in this country, to speak about it. But on a public city bus, where I can’t walk away, where I have to sit and listen to all of the reasons why I will eventually burn in hell, is that fair? Is it even legal? Come on legal council, tell me it isn’t!

Or is that the price we pay for freedom of speech in this country?