on boarding an Israeli bus

Right now, I can't help but touch the stranger ahead of me.  The bodies behind me push me forward, into his broad back.  I want to apologize, but he looks Israeli and is probably used to it.  I'm sorry, though, random sort-of-hippie-looking man with the fife and violin case, for being all up in your space and breathing down your neck.  I marvel, as I stand (my backpack over my stomach, pressed into hippie-man's waist) staring at his knit vest, at how physically close we are without apologies . . . closer, actually, than I would ever stand to most of my friends.  I feel the breath-- the rising, falling ribcage-- of the large-ish woman behind me, and somehow it nearly moves me to tears.  Without thinking, I place my hand in the middle of hippie-man's back, lean my head toward his shoulderblade.  I needed, somehow, this secure over-warm mass of pressing bodies.

Then we move, lurching forward as one overgrown amoebic creature, and I lose hippie-man and his woolen vest and the woman behind me.  Now, at the foot of the bus-stairs, a soldier-man (plainclothes) and another woman (my mama's age) find ourselves in gridlock, smashed into some kind of impossible sandwich.  Wordlessly, without eye contact, even, the soldier-man and I push the woman forward, hands under her elbows, semi-hoisting her up into the bus.  I force my way behind her, clutching the stair railing to claim my spot.  You seem annoyed, solider-man, or so I gather from the way you grab the railing on either side of me and push right against my back.  The mama-woman shifts back into me, and I all but topple back into soldier-man.  His chest, stomach, hips catch me, steady me, but I can't slide away with a mumbled apology, as all my cultural instincts command me to.  Instead, I am forced to wait there, pressed against his body, depending on him to keep my balance.  I can feel his muscles flex and move against my back as he shifts his balance.  At home, I would be irritated, nervous, even incensed, at this closeness.  But here, I'm not.  In fact, it's bringing me strange peace.

So I stand still, feeling the life throb through us all, all together, and hear the breath of the mama-woman ahead of me and memorize the muscles of the soldier-man behind me.  Both of them now feel less like strangers.

I know, once on the bus, we will find our own seats, carve out our own spaces, avoid each others' eyes.  But for now, we're forced to need each other, and our need leads us to a strange temporary intimacy.


I think I prefer the strangeness to the awful defiant independence.