Angels in Disguise: Informants

I almost missed that bus. The one to Ferndale with the man who was drunk or suffering from mental illness.

I ran on, and sat down without looking first. After feeling satisfied at making it on time, I had a slightly grubby and calloused hand stretched out to me. "What's you name?" he asked. "Nice to meet you." He smiled broadly, and I saw only 3 or 4 teeth, discolored, all on one side, and pointed into little ivory-rust darts . The woman to my side was reading a mystery novel. She kept her head down. The people in the back were making fun of the guy sitting directly across from me. Repeating what he said, and rolling their eyes and laughing. I soon noticed why.

The guy would not quit talking and then would talk to himself, or try to intrude into someone's space by asking in a demanding tone, "Where are you GOING?" "What are you READING?" "Are you an AUTHOR?" (I said no, I just liked to write) "I would like to say I knew a real author, then I could tell everyone that I met one on THIS BUS!" I tried to ignore him, like everyone else, at first. I closed my eyes and put my head against my hand. Others were shaking their heads and scrunching their faces in disgust, or raising their eyebrows.

He leaned over to the man next to him, several seats down. "You! Give me some of those!" This M.I. man made a motion of grabbing a plastic baggie and stuffing candy into his mouth. He made a grotesque sound, like gargling. The other man looked at him sideways, holding his plastic baggie neatly and popping sugared gummy fruit wedges into his mouth. "HEY! YOU!" said M.I. man, "YOU'RE RICH! You don't need that! Give it to me!" He said to everyone who didn't want to listen, "That man OWNS a 7-11 store. He's rich and he won't share." The 7-11 owner was a slightly built man of Eastern Indian ethnicity, talking animatedly to the bus driver about his son, and trying to shrug off M.I. man. M.I. man looked directly at me, eyes boring into me. He had a very large head, and was darker from the sun but either white with a little Native American or maybe full Native American. He was huge in stature.

I started feeling bad for him. Everyone else on the bus flatly ignored him or more dramatically, shook their heads and looked at eachother and made "I can't believe this" gestures. I felt the same, but I felt badly for him too. He targeted my attention again, and said, "How old are you?" and "Where do you work?" I don't know what I said, but I asked him if he had family in the area. I forced myself to look him directly in the eye, which was difficult. I kept my face attentive but firm-blank. He said he did. I had heard him mentioning, to everyone, that he had daughters in college. "Where do your daughters go to college?" I asked. He calmed down. Stopped and became quieter. He said one was studying to be a doctor and then he said the other one was studying "seashells" which caused others on the bus to laugh and I was cringing inside as well. Okkaaaay...I thought. But then he rounded it out and made sense by saying she was studying something that sounded to me like marine biology. I listened. Then I asked him how many kids he had. He looked at me and his eyes suddenly gave out, gasped almost, and watered. "8. I have 8 beautiful daughters." He said they had different mothers. Tears began to roll down his face and he let them fall. His lips stuck together in a gummy way and then he said, "I have 8 beautiful daughters." He said this over and over.

I almost began to tear up myself but I forced myself not to. I thought about how his family must feel, and what might have happened to him along the way in life.

Everyone on the bus was quiet. No one made fun of him anymore. He asked me where I lived and where I was getting off and I told him I couldn't say because I didn't tell strangers. He said, "I want to thank you. For this." He meant, I think, listening to him and treating him like a real person. "I won't forget this. There was a reason I got on this bus, and it was to meet someone like you." He kept thanking me and wanted to shake my hand several times. I shook his hand again.

When he got off (before me), the woman by me leaned forward and said, "How was THAT?" I said, "Stressful! I'm a little stressed out!" It was hard to know what to do, and to maintain eye contact with someone who is difficult to even look at. I told her, "I just thought he deserved respect, like everyone else, I mean, who knows what he's been through." I shrugged. Then I thought about him, as a child. Then, tried to think of him as a baby being born at the hospital, new and complete, with teeth ready to cut, and skin that was soft and sweet. It wasn't easy, but I tried, and I guess I felt I am still redeeming myself from denying a homeless a bagel. I thought about the scripture of entertaining angels unaware--not that he was, or I think so, but the principle in general.

I think now of a guy from jail in Canada (which is where I was for allegedly being an "illegal immigrant", which was B.S.), coming off of heavy drug use. Writhing and moaning and wanting to sleep but unable. I couldn't sleep, and didn't, except for 2 hours, for 3 days. All I could do to hold myself together and be strong, was sing. The entire time, or talk to someone. It was the only way to keep my mind off of my son enough to cope. The guy coming off of drugs would say, "SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I want to sleep!" and then a few minutes later, "Sing me a song." I would say, "What do you want me to sing?" and he would say, "Arms of an Angel". I sang Sarah McLaughlin's "In the Arms of an Angel" over and over, because he liked it and it helped him calm down. SHUT UP!...Sing for me...Sing!

I don't know who was carrying whom. Hahaa. I always laugh when I think about it, because it was funny in a lot of ways.

All these experiences, even some seeming trite and small, build perspective and compassion for others and help one to see how the world responds to these people as well. Some of the most conceited and self-assured individuals are also the most cruel--looking down on others because of the way they look, dress, or what social strata they are currently in. Feeling they have permission to be rude because those kinds of people will never benefit them in any way, or return favors. (I'm not nice either, but if I get angry, it's not at those who are vulnerable but those who abuse their positions or power.)

I like to think, and DID think, when I was in jail in Canada, that instead of this being the worst thing in the world, it was giving me insight into many things I can later write about. The Canadian system, immigration laws, politics, defamation (of course), 9-11, and the stories I heard from others who were either in jail or the immigration detention center. Most people don't know, and don't want to know, exactly what it's like or how the immigrants are treated, but I even know what it is like in one of those vans, and the detention center, and how those other people were being treated. I thought, an undercover reporter couldn't do better than this. In mistreating me, or going along with what the politics and authorities in Washington state were telling them, they made decisions that I suppose they felt would punish me, and yet at the same time, they were opening a door.

They opened a door into their own world, and I made observations. They wouldn't allow pencils or anyone anything to write with, but I still took note of what it was like and what was going on. All of these things put me in a position to understand both the upper class policies and the way immigrants are treated in general. I wasn't even an immigrant, I was there legally, and had gotten in legally, as a visitor. But when politics enter the picture, rules change.

Some of the lousiest jobs have got to be undercover work in these places, but at the same time, you're going to gain a lot of information too, about the way policies play out, not in theory, but in practice. I'm sure those who do this work have their share of regrets about humanity at times. One thing I've learned, is how groups of people, under peer pressure, can be bullies. The whole Nazi thing is a frame of mind--mistreatment of others for power or revenge, or just self-satisfaction is not that uncommon. Even I have gone along with something I knew was wrong--taking orders to not give someone who was hungry, some food. Simply because I was going along with what the person at a higher end of the totem pole told me to do. And because I respected and obeyed "authority". I didn't know how to challenge authority, when what they were doing was immoral, until later in life.

Everything is up for grabs. Whether it is to document what things are like, in non-fiction writing, or to use material to enhance fictional writing, each experience I have that is unique and not common to most, puts me in a position that others don't have. I've been places they haven't been, and wouldn't want to be, and yet I'm the better for it--smarter, and knowledge is always power, and probably the only kind of power that threatens money.