Waiting for Gouda

No self-respecting citizen of our fair city wants anything to do with the strangers they might meet during the course of their day, whether it be at the supermarket, in the elevator, or especially, in that lower level of hell known as public transportation.

We don’t want to talk to you. We certainly do not want to touch you if it’s at all possible to avoid. Hell, if we could somehow manage to not even look at you, that’s what we would do. A perfect commute for us would be a bus full of super-thin, semi-transparent mutes that only want to get off at the same stop we do. We want to just read our books and newspapers, listen to our personal radios or CD players, get where we’re going and get the hell off the bus.

It’s nothing personal. We’ve got nothing against you, as an individual, see. We just don’t like you, as in, the collective you, the whole bunch of you. It’s not your fault. You just happen to be one member of a massive group of people, the purpose of which appears to be to get in the way and make things more difficult than they should be. Plus, and this is important, we just happen to know that you’ve got nothing interesting to say. People, by the very nature of their everyday existence, are not terribly interesting, and we would rather you just keep quiet. This is especially important in the morning hours, when we have just rolled out of bed, faced with the bleak prospect of another gray pre-winter day in the trenches of economic warfare, before we have truly come to grips with the horror of the work that awaits, and we want nothing more than a few still moments to steel ourselves against our own creeping despair.

We thank you for complying.

Most of you.

Now, I understand that some people actually enjoy striking up conversations with people they don’t know, no matter where they are. That some people are friendly and outgoing. That some people believe that every single person out there has some valuable tale to tell if the world will just listen. That some people like to chat. Just chat, chat, chat, chat, chat, chat. Just talk it up, to whomever happens to be nearby. But I think there is a place and a time for this behavior.

Like an institution. As soon as possible.

I climb aboard the gleaming Diversey bus as usual and make my way to the back to find a seat. I crack open the book I have brought along, as is my custom, and begin to read.

This is when she starts. Or, I should say that this is when she continues, for it soon becomes clear that the brief lull as I was boarding was deceptive. She must have just been catching her breath. And then, somehow in the fifteen minutes between Western Avenue and Sheffield, I learn more about Chatty Cathy than I ever wanted to know about anyone. Anyone. This includes co-workers, family members, neighbors, pets, neighbors’ pets, and close friends. I could not have read a more thorough biography of an important historical figure. No current events news program could ever hope to be as comprehensive.

I know all about how well her precious little Darren is doing in the first grade. They recently had those parent-teacher conferences, don’t you know, and even though Darren’s teacher seems nice enough, she came across as a little ditzy, which wasn’t very encouraging. I know way too much about her husband’s degenerative joint disorder, including the fact that his health insurance won’t cover these experimental procedures involving shark cartilage, which, by the way, don’t seem to be helping all that much. Speaking of insurance, did you know that Blue Cross and Blue Shield is involved in some sort of contract dispute with local hospitals? It’s true! Our Loudmouthed Friend might just have to switch doctors, too, which is a real shame because now she can just walk from work during lunch over to the clinic for her tests rather than have to take another whole day off from work, which she can’t really afford right now. And besides, there’s still rumors going around that there’s going to be more layoffs at her job. One of her friends at work is a smoker, and a lot of the financial guys in the main office are also smokers, and so her friend overhears things while puffing away during her afternoon breaks, and can you believe that the company had to pay almost $400 million in property taxes this year? Well, they’ve got buildings all over the city, and they’re trying to sell some of them, but with today’s economy and all, who knows what is going to happen?

On and on and on and on she goes, her voice completely unmodulated, giving no indication whatsoever that she’s aware she is in a public place. Her friend, to whom this breathless monologue is ostensibly directed, sits quietly, no longer even trying to interject the polite yeses and nods that other, lesser talkers might need in terms of encouragement. Ms. Bigmouth needs no such prompting. She’s reached critical mass; her obnoxious voice can not be stopped now, ringing loud and true throughout the entire cabin. People sitting way up in the very front seats turn and scowl at the source of interminable blather. Yappy’s friend seems uncomfortable, shifting in her molded plastic seat, like maybe they’re not actually friends but that she somehow accidentally started talking to this woman, perhaps asking if she had the time, fully unprepared for the avalanche of empty words that burst forth, and now cannot extricate herself from beneath their terrible weight.

I understand. What can she do? There is no polite way to say For the love of all that is holy, shut your huge flapping cake-hole, you insufferable harpy! Even if you say please.

I have to set my book down, as the words have begun to swim on the page. The gabber’s voice becomes the only sound in the universe, drowning out the bus engine, the low under-hum of the surrounding traffic, and my very thoughts themselves as it bores into my skull only to rattle and echo about inside.

And you know that my sister’s husband got laid off over two months ago and he still hasn’t…

I actually put my fingers in my ears, but it doesn’t work. While the whiny, nasally drone is considerably muted, I can still hear it. It occurs to me that perhaps, in the grand tradition of the Chicago Transit Authority, extra-terrestrials are involved somehow. That perhaps I am not hearing this voice in the traditional sense of the word, but rather that this unceasing string of sound is somehow being transmitted directly into my brain itself.

Well, I told his mother that he needed a hat when it gets windy like that…

Can she not hear herself? Does she not realize that she is so godawfully loud? Failing that, can she not see the piercing darts shooting from the eyes of everyone around her? Can she not tell that any one of us, given the chance without fear of punishment, would gladly rush to the back seat and strangle her with her own shoelaces?

Normally we don’t watch that George Lopez, but Sandra Bullock was on it this week, and you know how much I just love her…

The bus approaches my stop, and I leap from my seat to angle for a decent position near the door, the quicker to escape when the time comes. To my horror, Gabby McTalkstoomuch tells her friend to have a good day. She is standing! She is getting off the bus too! God, no. Is she following me?

I don’t want to have to kill her. Okay, I suppose I wouldn’t mind all that much, but then there’s the messy legal proceedings. Sure, maybe I could convince the court that a jury of my peers would consist entirely of grumpy commuters who all happened to be on that bus at the same time I was. Certainly I would escape conviction if there was any real justice in the system. But that might take up to a whole day to get it straightened out, I figure. Maybe two. And Survivor is on tonight! I guess I could tape it…

Luckily, she doesn’t follow me into the El station. She has veered off in the other direction, to torment some other group of unsuspecting fools with the dreadful minutiae of her wearisome life, never knowing how close she might have come to not seeing another sunrise. I trudge up the steps to the platform, thoroughly enjoying the rediscovered quietude of the indifferent masses.

I climb aboard the train, claiming my preferred position right near the exit doors. The familiar, almost sub-conscious, two-tone recording chimes, indicating that the doors are about to close. I pull out my book, ready to pick up the thread of the narrative where it was so cruelly severed on the bus. The doors begin their rapid slide toward each other, and are just short of touching, sealing off the outside air, when an arm is thrust between them, halting their progress. The train operator commands the doors to open again, with what I imagine to be great reluctance, and the man steps aboard.

He is wearing bright blue trousers with wide white stripes, a puffy red coat, a black and white spotted scarf, and a brown fedora-type hat. He doesn’t speak, but his outfit is plenty loud. He stands there, leaning against the wall opposite me. We regard each other coolly, both thinking the same thing.

One of us might not make it out alive.