March 23, 2006

Bus Chick: Transit Authority
Feel the Luh

by CARLA SAULTER

With spring in Seattle comes Daffodil Day (I just put mine in the vase on my desk) and a marked increase in instances of bus luh. Bus luh, for those of you not yet versed in the vernacular of our city’s bus-riding subculture, is a bus-based interaction between two people who are attracted to each other. Though the interactions vary widely, participants are always:

1. Riding on or waiting for a bus.

2. In love, lust, or very deep like.

3. Engaging in some sort of physical contact.

The physical contact runs the gamut. There is relatively innocuous (if slightly irritating) pseudo-touching between people who have yet to acknowledge their attraction. I once sat next to a pair of teenagers who spent the entire ride to KeyArena play-fighting. I had to duck more than once to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. Then there are the more advanced levels. Back when I still worked in Redmond, there was a couple who rode the 545 with me every day. Even though they lived and worked together, they still felt it necessary to engage in full-on makeout sessions — interrupted occasionally by giggles and loveyoubabys — throughout the ride across 520.

The most common form of bus luh is young bus luh (high-school kids proud to have finally found someone who likes them “that way” and happy to be together without direct adult supervision), but it comes in many forms. There are the 30-something men who ride my morning 27 and who look and dress so much alike I thought they were brothers — until they kissed goodbye two weeks ago. There is the older couple from Bellevue with season tickets to the symphony. They ride downtown on Friday nights, holding hands like newlyweds all the way across the bridge. There is the young man who escorts his pregnant girlfriend to her appointments at Harborview, whispering softly in Spanish as he sits next to her in the front seat, his left arm draped protectively over her shoulder.

On a Saturday evening 14 ride this time last year, I witnessed one of the more memorable instances of bus luh. At one of the stops on Third Ave., a pretty young woman was waiting alone. The driver stopped and opened the doors, but instead of letting her on the bus, he set the parking break, climbed down the steps, and embraced her. She grabbed his hand and led him to a bench in the shelter, where they kissed—long enough for the light to change twice. She then handed him a paper bag (presumably of food) and watched while he hurried back up the bus steps. He waved at her as he closed the doors and stepped on the gas, announcing the next stop over the PA as if a bus-stop rendezvous with one’s sweetheart were the most natural thing in the world.

In fact, it is. n