The Drummer

A thirty-something guy gets on the #15 for morning rush hour. He's wearing a blueish/purple shirt and dark dress pants (what we city-slickers know as slacks). His hair is a tussled nest of a pale red hue, and he might have a pale red semi-moustache, but I'm not close enough to tell if it's just a protruded upper lip, or genuine facial hair.

He also sports the ubiquitous headphones of the bus rider. I can hear no music from them. But then he does the strangest thing I've seen yet on a bus: he pulls out a pair of wooden drumsticks, turns on his portable cassette player (yes, a cassette player - it is way too big to be an MP3 or CD player), and joins in with the band, air drumming. The music is spilling out past his tiny ears and seems to of the blues variety, with a pounding, pleading bass and the strained tones of an intimately plucked electric guitar.

His seat of choice is at the very front corner of the bus, sitting in the sideways seats. This is as close as one can get to a stage on a bus, yet he's clearly not performing for us, as his posture's all wrong for a performance. He's also quite aware that the 20 or so other passengers have taken notice of him and his unorthodox motions and are giving him puzzled looks. His eyes try not to make contact with us, but he can't help it; they flicker from the world outside the bus to those of us who haven't decided to ignore him, and back and forth several times. He desperately wants us all to stop staring.

It seems obvious that he's a real drummer, for his rhythm and technique are solid. From snare to tomtom to high hat to cymbal, he's hitting all the right contacts and is maintaining proper timing with the blues riff still escaping from his headphones. But it's also obvious that he doesn't want to be practicing on a bus. Yet he does it anyway, despite our amused stares. His feels compelled to air drum on the bus, and it doesn't seem to come from the deep seated passion of a music lover. It's more like he has an impending deadline.

But he's starting to surrender to the beat more and more as the song builds towards it climax, and in his growing abandon, his drumstick accidentally tings one of the internal bars supporting the framework of the bus, sending a single chime reverberating across the rows of vinyl seats. Just as suddenly, he reigns his external passion back, like a startled gopher darting back into its hole.

The song ends, he slides the drumsticks into his bag, turns off the walkman, and stands up.

There's his stop.