Five-Hour Fantasy

So I'm back in Ottawa. Been going back and forth a lot this year because of Mother. I still haven't entirely gotten over how much she's aged since the operation. Oh, she still acts the same - driving me up the wall as usual, but her hair's gone white, she's lost weight, and there are so many wrinkles which I hadn't seen before.

I've generally enjoyed those five-hour bus trips between Ottawa and Toronto. They're opportunities to daydream and fantasize, often of the hot guy that I end up sitting behind. Last time, it had been the construction worker. He's had massive, rippling back muscles and a sexy country accent. The time before that, it had been the red-head with spiky hair dyed blond. But this time, Lady Luck must have been feeling particularly mischievous. For lo and behold, who was to get onto the bus but an old high-school jock?

I plopped right into the empty seat next time him. He didn't recognize me - Not surprising since most people who meet me for the first time don't think twice about it - so I knew the ball was in my court, despite not knowing his name. He was one cute Asian, that was for sure. We looked together at the darkening night and the rain that was coming down. I didn't say a word until we stopped at Scarborough Towncentre:

"Hey, you go to U of T?" This was usually a safe assumption. Except that this time it wasn't.
"No, I'm graduating this spring from Carleton in engineering."
"Oh." Pause. "What are you doing in Toronto, then?"
"I work for the Ontario government."
"In what, specifically?"
"I'm a project coordinator. It has to do with E-Government."
I'd heard that phrase before, but I didn't know where. I suspected we had little in common. Oh well. I decided to pull my wild card anyway.
"May I ask which part of Ottawa you're from?"
"The South." Green light.
"You didn't by any chance go to Merivale, did you?"
Shocked expression. Bingo.
"Yes... What's you're name?"
I told him. He could see him wrack his brain but come up empty. "I thought I recognized you. What's yours?"
"Colin Chan." A light bulb goes on in my head.
"Oh. You're a year a year older than me. I guess you're 22, no 23?"
"Yeah... I'm surprised you remember me."

We talk a bit more, with him politely asked what I was doing, but I could tell he wasn't the talkative type. Still, silence isn't always a bad thing, even amongst strangers. Because it was dark and I had nothing to do, I did the most logical thing: take a nap. Greyhound seats really aren't that comfortable, and I tossed and turned until I belatedly discovered something. If I positioned myself in a certain way, it would almost be impossible for his arm to avoid touching mine unless he did so deliberately. And if I positioned my face in a certain way, I'd be close enough to see him without him seeing me... in fact, I could even smell him. For the next hour I let myself enjoy the changing pressure on my shoulders...

About half-an-hour before we arrived in Ottawa, I made the motions of "waking up" from my "nap". While we didn't talk much afterwords, I felt as though something had changed. Though the ackwardness was still there, it was somehow less intense. It was as though, having slept together, we'd broken through some kind of barrier. As though we weren't quite strangers anymore.

It was raining freezing rain in Ottawa and some places glistened in the orange street light like sheet metal. As I said good bye to him at the bus terminal, I couldn't help wondering if, had we been in a different place and time, we might even have become friends.