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THE WILSHIRE BUS |
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by Charles Carreon I. Overture
This bus rattles on through the night. RTD, dirty and doomed, it slides through its own Tunnel of poverty Down bright-lit Wilshire as the deep blue twilight enriches the dusk behind the black tree silhouettes of the neighborhoods.
Mini-markets, corner malls, new car showrooms, hair salons slide by, past scratched-up plexi windows. At last, almost everyone gets off before we reach the Westside. Flashing light red and yellow bar marquee has no announcement. No show tonight. I've gotta pee.
The Wilshire bus makes you suffer, drags you painfully down the whole built-up congested length of town, till you despair of your life, of ever reaching your destination in a timely manner. Drags you through midtown, and Fairfax, and Beverly Hills and Westwood and West LA, and at last, when all the other riders have given up, it lets you out, My God, in front of Polly's, which is crammed, of course, with people who are having a better time than you are, presumably they did not have to ride the Wilshire bus.
II. Winnie-the-Pooh and Tigger Too
Winnie-the-Pooh would not have enjoyed this trip, nor would Piglet or Christopher Robin. There would not even be the possibility of sighting a Heffalump from this vantage point, although you might spot some threadbare Tigger lounging by a mailbox, bumming dimes, if you looked close enough.
III. Aliens
The Wilshire bus is chocked with people who don't live where you do, who aren't the same kind of people and don't live your way, don't bury their noses in books for the whole trip, don't catch up on their work between now and McNeil Lehrer, don't do a thing except stare and rock wearily side to side and back and forth with no expression.
IV. Sleaze
Forty five minutes after you board and you're barely in Beverly Hills. The scratch-dimmed glamour goes sliding by, and the streets all meet at jack-knife angles. Bright neon, and a glimpse of violet bar light radiating from the ceiling of a glassed-in booze emporium. Where's the mescaline house, the DMT lounge, the ecstasy den? This bus doesn't take you through Venice.
V. Pastorale
Now, in the long, smooth stretch going west from where Santa Monica Boulevard crosses Wilshire, garden hotels line the streets with high-rise serenity. Tiny white lights twinkle in delicate tree branches, the Westwood signature. I see a lobby, and a few hotel room bedside lamps; I sense a certain TV ambiance. The bus slows to a stop at an angle I know by the tilt of the floor is Comstock, the light before Beverly Glen. I'm coming home. My children are waiting, the video is waiting, the leather couch, the wooden floor, the porch light is waiting.
VI. Carnavale
Westwood & Wilshire: at the intersection of dream and reality, UCLA spills its progeny forth into the marketplace like a giant uterine canal of higher education, slick with drink, commerce and bland sex. They're going for a joyride; if they wanted higher education, all they'd need to do is catch the Wilshire bus.
VII. Sea Dream
The bus goes whistling past the VA cemetery and the old brown hospital buildings where I always imagine T.S. Eliot's patient lying etherized. Where San Vicente veers off in a northward-sweeping curve to a cooler climate. (Flashback to another night when a driver on a lark followed that seductive curve north, and drove us silently to the beach, through the dark, cool onshore breeze. We riders were dumbfounded, but glad to be off Wilshire, the old tyrant; no one spoke a word -- we picked new stops on the improvised route, and walked ourselves home by different ways.)
VIII. Home Stretch
The bus driver tonight sticks to the route, and I'm not dreaming; I'm in the seedy part of Brentwood. There's the mini mall on Barrington, and the liquor store where I used to park my bike on the sidewalk and buy one Bass ale from the middle eastern fellows and their female companions. Still needing to pee, I feel the potholes of Santa Monica stabbing my bladder with abandon. We pass the Wherehouse and Jerry's Liquors, pass McGinty's, Berk's and Savon, Crown Books, Bagel Nosh and Vons, Callahans and I must mention the Liquor store of Norris E. Roberts. There's Lincoln with its homeless park, and copy shops on left and right, a seven-eleven selling lotto all night long, and Polly's old folks coffee shop, at last.
IX. Paso Lento
On the Wilshire Bus you ride to a destination that is incidentally yours; you pass by, and may touch the sequins drooping from the breasts of an aging whore; you clutch at the cold, stainless steel pole, counting street names like a prayer that you're tired of; you arrive at last, purified: the driver's washed his hands, and you have firmly grasped your briefcase full of thorns.
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