Well I had quite the afternoon in Seattle! I got up early to check-out of my hotel and travel to the airport in Seattle for my flight back to Detroit. Very sad to leave the Gay Men’s Health Summit – what a wonderful group of thoughtful, inspiring, and dedicated men. It’s important for me to recharge at these events, and despite the high cost this year (funds are tight for me as they are for everyone), it was totally worth a few weeks of ramen-eating.

I was planning to be lazy and take a taxi to the airport, but realized while sitting in the lounge area of the Summit that this was just not financially practical. It would cost around $40 or so – money I needed for food. I mentioned that to Marcus – a lovely Canadian ‘mo sitting nearby – who mentioned back that there was a cheap bus that took you to the airport for $1.50. Seattle is really cool because they have busses running underneath the city where a future light rail system will be implemented. Fabulous. I realized that if I left at that moment, I could make it with extra time. Marcus even traded me $2 American for my $2 Canadian, the only cash I could find in my man-purse. Thanks, babe!
Cash in hand, I made the trek six blocks to the underground bus station. How neat! It felt simultaneously futuristic and ancient. Busses. Underground. Weird! Anyholler, I asked the friendly security guard down in the depths for directions to the appropriate place to catch my bus. She informed me that there were two busses – the 174 and 194 – and “One takes 20 minutes and the other takes an hour and a half. Now, which one do you want?” She laughed, and pointed me towards the decidedly faster 194 option. In about 10 minutes, I was on the move.

The beginning of the bus ride wasn’t particularly remarkable for the most part. I was sitting across the aisle from an incredibly obnoxious, loud, and immature younger couple. The man may have been an Army veteran based on his camo outfit, but God bless I hope the Army never employed such an idiot. An older woman sitting across from me shared my misery in their company, as we constantly tried to avoid eye contact with the couple. At one point the woman in the couple (with a full moustache – no really, it was amazing) told the older lady that she “had pretty jewels,” to which the older woman gave a weak smile and thank you. She went on to say that “I used to have a beautiful three-stone diamond ring that my husband gave me,” with the man with her (her husband?) adding “It was platinum!” She continued, “But I sold it for seventy dollars,” while the husband mumbled that “it was appraised for $1700!” Weird.

About that time, the bus started to slow down, and then the driver quickly slammed on our brakes as we came to a jarring stop. The man in the couple next to me flew face-forward a few seats ahead, and generally everyone freaked out as they were thrown around the bus. I braced myself on a partition nearby, bruising my wrist a bit but otherwise unscathed. Everyone was okay, but no one seemed to know what happened. We had come to a complete stop, with cars whishing by us on the freeway. Immediately the obnoxious couple began speculating loudly as to what happened, and what that meant for us. “We rear-ended somebody. Gonna have to wait for a bus to come get us now. This isn’t safe. There are heavy, extremely fast moving metal objects flying around us.” The man became increasingly unruly, at one point standing up and yelling “We need triangles and cones! Triangles and cones! We need triangles and cones, and maybe a flare if we have one. This isn’t safe. Very heavy, metal objects flying around us. Triangles and cones! We need triangles (long pause) and cones!”

Anywho, news travelled to the back of the bus that indeed we had rammed into someone – but the driver never once made an announcement over the loudspeaker to let us know that. We didn’t know what was going to happen. So we just waited patiently – most of us, anyways. The woman in the couple was whining about how hungry she was. “I want a pumpkin pie milkshake.” Actually that sounded pretty tasty, but she went on to name a variety of foods she would have liked to have at that moment in time. “I’m so hungry,” she whined. 28 going on 12.

After maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, the bus slowly started moving again when we heard a loud BANG to the left of the bus. Everyone curiously looked out the left side of the windows, where we saw a trail of smoke in the far left lane. What happened? The bus kept moving, and after 500 yards we saw exactly what happened. A green SUV was absolutely destroyed, the entire front of the vehicle crushed, with some kind of liquid spilling out of the front while the headlights flashed and alarm sounded. I have never seen a car crash before, but this one looked pretty bad. The windows were tinted, and I couldn’t see where the driver was. Was he or she okay? Cars kept whizzing by, no one stopping to help. Someone at the front of the bus called 911, but otherwise I didn’t see anyone stop to intervene. I felt totally traumatized in that moment, worried for that person’s well-being but unable to get out of the bus to assist in any way, haunted by the million dollar question: Would I have stopped if I was driving behind the car?

Apparently a dump truck hit the SUV, a truck we saw pulled over (unscathed) a few hundred yards ahead, driver on his cell phone. I felt nauseous, sad. To be so close to a traumatic event is haunting. Proximity is everything. Somehow, looking through the smashed windshield of the SUV, I felt that person’s fear. My heart sank at the sight of the crumpled vehicle. Was that somebody’s mother? Brother? Maybe their lover?

Would I have stopped? Or – like everyone else – would I have just driven around the car, hurrying on to my important meeting?