the pole on the bus

i was waiting for the bus after work tonight, watching the snow add inch upon inch of white fluff to the city streets, listening to the woman next to me mutter about the damn chicago winter starting so early this year, and thinking to myself how delighted i am that i don't have to drive home in this.

i love the bus.

seriously, it's smelly in the summer, and it's always crowded, and i never actually want to take it anywhere, but as soon as i deposit my fare by the driver, i feel surprisingly satisfied.

tonight was made even better by the company of a young polish gentleman, dressed to the nines in his long camel-colored wool coat and top quality boots but with a childish ski hat pulled unevenly over his ears. he approached me at the bus stop to verify directions he had been given and kept up a conversation with me until an acquaintance (let's call him lars) interrupted. lars looked the man up and down as though he were unwanted, and offered up what i suspect he intended might commence a discussion for the two of us. the polish gentleman, with his unbelievably long eyebrows and deep, wide grin, edged away, allowing lars to discuss whatsoever he pleased. i addressed lars with a smile that i think fully expressed my wish for his quick departure, though lars regrettably could not assess its meaning. i suppose the pole noticed it, because he returned to my side to ask more questions (how else can you continue to engage a stranger?) and effectively eliminate lars' participation in the exchange.

the group at the bus stop vocalized their hurrahs as the bus's lights appeared towards the end of the street. we climbed onto the bus, the pole following me, after begging a quarter off of me to meet the standard $1.75 fare. the pole was certainly loud enough on the bus (as i find most visiting strangers), asking me a series of questions: where do i work? what do i do? why is chicago america's nicest city? and why won't his employer move their headquarters from new york to chicago so he might have the pleasure of such company?

i certainly don't think i was flirting, but everyone on the bus seemed to enjoy the pole's inability to be distracted from our conversation. at one point, i caught the eye of a middle-aged man who sort-of chuckled to himself and then smiled widely at me. i nearly laughed to myself as well.

oh! if you had seen this pole. a tall, handsome, 6 1/2 language-speaking man, but oh! his eyebrows. i was fascinated. they were so long they nearly curled at the ends, so thick they could have had their own operating system, and so perfectly ash-blonde, you would have thought he dyed them for a l'oreal commercial.

when i informed him he was about 5 minutes from his destination, he laughed and asked me if i meant the conversation was over. i smiled and laughed, too, only because when he asked the question, his eyebrows looked they had crawled up his forehead to examine new terrain. we said our goodbyes, and all within hearing distance expressed a look of disappointment, as though i was failing them all by not accompanying him off the bus to join him for a cocktail at binny's (his final destination).

my stop was still another 10 minutes off. but i enjoyed my brief encounter with this man, with his eyebrows and camel-colored coat and wide-grin (which reminded me fondly of my friend ej - as the pole said, "all poles look alike. you see that boy there facing us across the bus?" "yes." "he's polish. look at him. see his nose? his chin?" he did look like my bus friend. then the boy, suddenly aware that we were staring at him, turned from us. and there, on the boy's backpack, we saw a sewn-on patch of the polish flag. "there," said the pole. "what did i tell you?")

so i didn't mind opening the doors of the bus and finding 5" of snow waiting to cover my backless slides in cold, wet precipitation. in fact, i jumped in. if you're gonna get wet and snowy just a little, you might as well go all the way.

i was laughing to myself so delightedly that i ran nearly the whole way home on a fresh layer of beautiful snow. my feet were colder than they've ever been, but the music in my iPod kept my spirits high. oh, i wish you were here! it's too gorgeous, too beautiful not to love.

snow at night, and christmas lights, and polish men from new york, and caterpillar-like eyebrows, and diversity on the bus, and my roommate waiting for me to come home - man, oh, man! does god love me.