I close the door in their face.

I walk over sick bodies on the sidewalks.

I pick up mentally ill, medically fragile people in my vehicle and I leave them in unfamiliar pockets of the city.

I ignore the calls of help from a barely clothed man laying on the greenway, covered in his own waste. 

You see, I’m a bus driver in America.

I am ordered to not board people who are a possible biohazard, because it costs the company I work for $300 to trade buses on the road. I had an older man fall asleep on my bus early one morning and woke to find that he had wet himself. He apologized and left, embarrassed. What bus is going to get him back home for a fresh change of clothes? Is there someone he can call? Or will he just have to wait for his pants to dry enough that no one will notice?

We used to have state run hospitals and facilities that cared for people with mental illness and other various physical and cognitive disabilities. Those places also practiced eugenics and over medicated and abused their patients. There was a time when a husband could have his wife committed if she wouldn’t have sex with him, or didn’t keep up on the housework, or, you know, maybe he just wanted to spend more time with his mistress. Teens were committed for being “promiscuous” or not wanting to attend church with their family. 

Instead of creating safer, better facilities for these folks (the ones who actually needed help), we shut them down. Instead of changing the laws and requiring ACTUAL reasons to get help for a loved one, now we cannot do a thing. And no one is willing to help. 

So here I am. Driving a bus for someone who doesn’t know where to go, and booting them off when we get to the end of the line. Yet another unknown starting point of their day. 

That barely clothed man covered in feces? He was laying in the greenway of one of the many hospitals in the city. His hospital scrubs were stained brown and a wheelchair lay on its side just 3 feet from him. After he was wheeled out from the hospital to fend for himself, he watched as buses drove by every 7 minutes and hospital staff walked to and from work. Deep from his gut came emotions that I have never experienced in my life, as the one place that could help him had just publicly rejected him. 

So yes. I treat homeless people like shit. Society has written them off as non-humans, blocking our view of the scenery that we are entitled to. They shit on our sidewalks just outside our $3K a month lofts and it pisses us off. They disturb our happy hour of microbrews and tapas on the sidewalk patio. They don’t have to do anything specific, just being present ruins our appetites. The piles of trash along the freeways and sidewalks streets—they put it there because they have no sense of respect. 

Yo Yo Ma once said in an interview (I’m paraphrasing) that the worst thing that could happen to a human is the loss of one’s dignity.

We are all contributing to the overwhelming loss of dignity, and we need to open our eyes and recognize that something needs to change in America, and it needs to change fast! We need to demand this from ourselves, our neighbors, and all the way up to local, state and federal government.

We have seen exponential growth of homelessness and addiction, so many of that population should have been cared for since the beginning. But after all of the facilities have closed, we now see those faces on the streets and sleeping in bushes. Scores of others are joining those same ranks.

Without proper mental health resources, even folks who have a loving family who is doing their best to help, are left unchecked and lost to the streets. 

Every now and then I think I get a glimpse of my brother when I drive my bus through town. I want it to be him, because I haven’t seen him in years and I hope he’s okay. But I know I won’t say hi. This handsome, brilliant man who spent time in Africa helping HIV/AIDS patients and had plans for medical school, is now a scary, angry man who refuses help from anyone. There was once a time that he was arrested and got a 72 hour hold in the hospital. We all visited and his medication and brief moment of stability allowed him and I to have a conversation about our favorite authors and the different kinds of trees all over the world that we dreamed of seeing in person. 

But now, years after that big brother/little sister moment, he’s the reason our city isn’t pretty anymore. He’s the reason we are getting more rats in our $700K 2 bedroom houses. He’s the reason you can’t enjoy your Prosecco in the summer sun.

I wouldn't call his presence intimidating; perhaps instead distinct. He was dressed trimly, in dark clothes that fit. Imagine approachable, thoughtful eyes, long dreads running the full length of his back, and that clean, blemish-free skin which makes guessing an age impossible. His confident bearing seeped out of his person in an uninsistent, many-splendored way no young person can realize. From that alone I guessed he had to be over forty. 

"Oh, come on," he said loudly, turning to me to add: "Tell him to put his mask on."

He was referring to the man in the back corner, also black American but younger, with a very different air: unbathed and unkempt, in a beanie and dirty green rain jacket, aloof, the dismissive pride in his slitted eyes offset by food particles in his beard.

I got on my microphone and said in my usual conflict-averse manner: "Alright, let's try to put our masks on if we have 'em."
Mr Dreads paraphrased me more directly, calling out: "Put your mask on!! You!!"
As Mr. Beanie continued staring blankly forward I added on the mic, "I'm talkin' to my buddy in the back–"
Who grudgingly acquiesced. "Okay, okay." He gave a condescending grin, his ego unable to give up the last word. Oh, egos.

It was the nonchalant attitude. The poorly calculated smirk. The man in the back found nothing worthwhile in virus protection and made that clear with his body language. He gave no sign of having much experience following directions or considering the needs of others. His shame was his lack of shame, his rock-solid beliefs that, from the outside, smacked of antipathy. 

More likely he felt, as a number of street folk I've talked to do, that the virus is a hoax and therefore no mask is necessary. This is different from ignorance due to party affiliation; my street people are either apolitical or progressive. It's not that they don't care about others. They feel short-shrifted by a society and government that clearly doesn't care for them, and has made endless false promises in the past. Why would they feel obliged to trust it now? Follow its rules now, after how it's handled them for so many years? Seattle's current government behaves towards its underclass as an abusive parent does its children. And if you have any sense at all, you know never to trust your abusive parent. Your body makes that decision for you. It's a reflex. 

That resistance combined with an untrained ego is what I imagined informed Mr. Beanie's decision to smirk, to put his mask only halfway up, leaving his nose exposed. Did he even know he was issuing a challenge?

2. Appearances

"Over your nose! Do you understand what the fuck this is? Three million dead!! My friend is in..." Mr. Dreads' righteous fury morphed into helpless, inchoate anger. His mouth twisted at the juncture of unformed words, gestures trailing into restless emptiness. It's a feeling shared by many Americans now: what words could I possibly find to bridge the gap so my views will get through, my views which are so obvious to me and so alien to the person– relative, parent, coworker– right in front of me? 

It is the sensation of helpless exhaustion. He collapsed in a chair up front, staring forward. 

Mr. Beanie: "Alright, alright!"
Mr. Dreads looked over. "Over your nose!!!"
Mr. Beanie adjusted the mask accordingly, before immediately letting it fall again. 

Our friend at the front exhaled. From within his own world, he exploded. The bus may have had ten-plus other (very white) riders, but only two men could speak now, and in this moment only one did. All could hear his words, spat forth in vehement despondency.
"GOD! I wish I could go one day, just one FUCKIN' day, without bein' ashamed to be black."