dirty realism.
The last empty seat on the 6:53 AM Greyhound to Boston was next to a guy in his early thirties, wearing sweatpants, a hoodie and a black baseball cap put on backwards. He was occupying the window seat and was rocking back and forth.
I took the aisle seat next to him.
As I sat down, he briefly turned towards me, looking past me.
He then turned back, towards the window.
The bus pulled out of the station. We had three hours ahead of us to get to our destination.
I put in my earbuds, turned on some ambient music and leaned back in my seat.
I closed my eyes, I wanted to get some sleep.
I’m not sure if I’d actually fallen asleep and was woken by the rhythmic movement to my left or if I’d never managed to doze off in the first place. In any case, soon enough, I was wide awake, staring at the headrest of the seat in front of me.
“Can I take your portrait?” I said to the guy sitting next to me.
He turned towards me again, looking past me once more.
He said nothing and I took that as a yes.
I pulled my Olympus out of my pocket, cocked the camera, set the focus and took a picture of him.
“Why did you take my picture?” he said.
I didn’t quite have an answer. On general principle? Because I’m a photographer? Because I had time to kill? Because he looked out of the ordinary? Because I wanted to understand his world? Perhaps be admitted into it?
“Because you are very much like me,” I said.
He did not acknowledge my response in any apparent manner.
The rocking continued, as if he was attending his own personal rave party.
“Can I see the picture?” he said. He was speaking to the six-lane freeway to his left.
“No,” I said, “This is an analogue camera. It has film in it. There is no LCD display on the back.”
He kept looking outside, admiring a strip mall in the distance.
“Aha. Analogue. No display. Cannot see picture,” he said.
— xxx —
I spent three weeks in Boston, on business, then rode the bus back home.
It took me a few more weeks before I finished the roll that was in the Olympus.
And then some more before I had it developed.
The photo of the guy came out blurry. No surprise — there had been little light aboard the bus. And his constant rocking didn’t allow for a steady shot, either.
I hardly recognised him in the photo.
Not that I remembered him all that well. Who was that guy?
Who is that guy?
I was lucky he didn’t want to talk to me. I appreciated that.
We observed and respected our boundaries. Understanding between us required no elaborate discussion. We accomplished what was there to be achieved during that trip without unnecessary politeness. Limits and limitations were satisfactory. The blur in the picture, in fact, was pleasing. Too much clarity would not have been welcome. False starts at conversation would have been catastrophic. Not recalling faces, not disclosing names, keeping interaction to a minimum — the building blocks of a solid image. Things not to be understood should be kept just that.
— xxx —
I had the photo printed on cheap paper in large format and blue-tacked it to the wall in the basement, above my industrial-sized freezer. Often, when I go downstairs to fish out a frozen TV-dinner from the box, I stand before the photo, contemplating it, and several minutes pass before I realise that my fingers are going numb holding the icy block of food.
