Bus Stop

Yup. I've still got it! When I was waiting to catch the bus tonight, a woman hit on me. Seriously, she totally did.

Here's what happened. For those of you who don't spend time in Downtown Cincy, there are strange periods of nearly absolute abandonment interspersed throughout quite busy periods during the day. One of these moments of near-zombie-apocalpyse-type desolation is between 4:50 and 5:05 during weekday afternoons at the Saks bus stop outside Carew Tower. Before this time and after, the bus stop is really quite bustling but during this time it is nearly vacant for almost a full 15 minute span. I know this because I've waited through this period several times.

Today, at very nearly 5 o'clock, I walked outside of Carew Tower jamming to Radiohead on my iPod and joined three women standing at the bus stop. They were all talking very closely huddled and I assumed they were friends. I was standing possibly twenty feet from them and really paid them very little notice at all. After a couple of minutes, a Southbank Shuttle picked up two of the three, leaving me now with the remaining woman who proceeded almost immediately in my direction and said something to me. I had no idea what she said. As I said, I was jamming. I unplugged one earbud.

"I'm sorry?" I said.

"You listening to an iPod?" she asked me. She was in her early to mid-20s, neither attractive nor unattractive really, and looked to be of vaguely Hispanic descent, though this could be wildly wrong.

"Yup," I said.

"How much are those?" she asked. I was about to be mugged.

"About $299, I think."

"Ahh," she said, "I'm meeting someone downtown. He was supposed to meet me here at 4 to buy me a dress and then we were going out tonight but he never showed up. He just wants me to help him pay rent, but he doesn't even bother to buy me anything any more" - I know what you're thinking here because I was thinking it too and, though I have no proof of this, I don't think she was a prostitute - "what do you think about that?"

Because there weren't really words to describe what I was thinking at this point, I said nothing, overtly aware of the one earbud still dangling from my ear. I imagined Radiohead leaking from the earbud dangling down my chest, pooling around my ankles and sliding into the gutter to be carried to the river and onward into the sea . . . . .

"Huh?" she said. "He's just using me, isn't he?" I have no idea what she meant by this and then she played her trump card. "I should have known this would happen, because he's Jewish. I've dated Jews before and they always treat me like this." NOW I was fascinated.

"Yeah," I said. "That sucks."

"What sucks?" she asked me.

A pause here on my part, not knowing how to move our conversation forward. "You know, that he'd be using you and all. Because he's Jewish," I said.

That must really have been the correct choice on my part, because at this she nodded, smiling, and said, "Yeah, I'll never date Jews again, or Italians either because really don't know WHAT they want. I dated a German guy once and he treated me really well though. And a British and an Irish guy too, and they both treated me real good. What are you?"

Wha-? How does one respond to this. . . . . I knew where it was going now - seriously considered saying I was Chinese, but decided that that could in some way be mistaken for charm. Sticking with the truth, "Scottish," I said.

Priceless! "Ahh," she said. "I've never dated a Scottish guy before. I bet you'd be real nice to me. But I bet you're married though, huh?"

". . . . yup," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "All the good guys are."

Now, this conversation could have ended here and I could have walked away creeped out enough as it was, but continued to tell me how she had a two year old son that she had "left" in foster care and how she guessed she would have to leave him there because all of the guys she ended up with seemed to like smoking and drinking and, since she didn't want her son being raised around a smoker, she would just as soon he stay in foster care. This was delivered in a sort of strange monotone dramatic monologue, interspersed with pauses to ask me what I thought of this and my replying with "Ewww, that really sucks" because really, what DOES one say in response to this?

Where am I going with this? I don't know. I could take it in several directions I guess. Perspective wise, I make a joke about her being weird, make an issue of how "creepy" she was, point out the fact that she was probably just a very troubled person, or try to elevate this to the fact that there are people like this literally just wandering around downtown. I'm not sure how to explain it any better than I have. I didn't give you everything. There were other things she said that, for the sake of this record, really don't matter. Just things about how she has the freedom to drop what she's doing here and move back to California or Florida, etc etc. I don't know.

I don't know.