A compassionate bus driver, all-I-can-lunch, a difficult meeting, and a diverse night out…

~Tuesday~  I caught the Wolfline #9 Greek Village bus at the corners of Gorman and Kaplan, and although the temperature was in the 70’s, the humidity was at 75%. Moist.

I would describe the university bus this morning as fairly full, but not crowded. The Asian guy I’ve portrayed a couple of times, who usually has on shorts and dress shoes with colored socks, was on board this morning, but today he had on long pants, which of course looked okay with nice shoes and colored socks. What hadn’t changed was his proclivity to be holding papers, glancing at them, looking away, and reciting out loud, but not at a high volume. Study notes? Prayers? Lines of a play? Who knows.

I like the driver who was driving this bus this morning. She is someone who cares more about customer service than following the rules. I remember one day last week, she passed a student who was not going to make it to the bus stop ahead, but was trying to, and seeing that there wasn’t anyone waiting at the stop ahead, she just stopped where the student was to let her board. I can just hear a city bus driver in this situation as he whizzes by her, “I can’t stop between stops.”


Our regularly scheduled weekly staff meeting from 9:00-10:00 was delayed to 9:30-10:30, and it consisted mostly of our manager sharing the highlights of her staff meeting with her boss and her peer managers. In other words, it was an uneventful meeting.

My colleagues Nick, Jen, and Jason invited me to walk over to the Clark Dining Hall to meet Garrison—who was going there directly from class—for lunch. We caught a Wolfline bus over to Brooks Hall and walked the rest of the way, as it started to drizzle.

As usual with campus dining hall eating, I overate, since they’re all-you-can-eat style dining. And I do. It was raining at a good clip for the walk back; three of us—of which I was one—had umbrellas, so it wasn’t bad for me. For Garrison and Nick, not so much. They were pretty soaked when they got back.


Once we returned to the office, Jen and I had to have a very difficult and most uncomfortable meeting, but we got through it without incident and I was relieved to have it behind me for the rest of the work day.

I caught the city bus home, and on the short ride of about 15 minutes, I got so tired of hearing this guy sitting up by—and talking to—the bus driver that I was compelled to tweet this on Twitter from my phone: “OMG. STFU. Diarrhea of the mouth.” On and on and on, telling the bus driver what a good guy he was, and why, and why that was important, and how he planned to get word to the driver’s management team about the fact the he was, and why that was important, and what he hoped the management team might do for the driver, and…

Shoot me now. They shoot horses don’t they?


I met Jen down at Flying Saucer Draught Emporium for their Trivia Night, where she met three of her (lady) friends to play. Upon meeting me, one said, “Oh good. A guy on our team. Maybe we can get some sports questions right.”

Jan said, “Uh, he’s gay.”

And I added, “Yeah, I swing a whole different bat.”

One of them quipped, “Oh. Okay, then. Maybe you can help us with any showtune questions then.”

Turns out that in one round, there were two or three questions about hockey, and the three girls definitely knew more about the subject than I did. Jen is a huge Carolina Hurricanes fan, and toward the end of the night, one of the other girls said, “We’ll, I’m half Lesbian.” I presume the half of her that isn’t a Lesbian is the half that has the boyfriend.

The trivia ended at around 9:00, and I made my way across the street and up a block to The Borough, where I joined a lot of my peeps, and had one drink and an order of cheese fries. I checked in with Alex to see if he was going to be out later this evening, and we made plans to meet at Flex at 10:15, which we did.

Bill showed up not too long after that, and we made our way over to Legends for the third or fourth week of the in-progress Porkchop’s Drag Race, which tonight was hosted by Mark K Mart instead of Victoria Porkchop Parker. This gig is modeled after RuPaul’s Drag Race, of which I’ve heard, but wasn’t familiar with, in terms of how it all works. To be honest when I first heard they were going to have a “drag race,” I didn’t even get the allusion to RuPaul’s TV show, and I’d pictured drag queens doing a three-legged sack race from one end of The Spotlight Theater to the other.

They had a drag show before the race part of the night started, which I enjoyed for the most part—that is to say, some performers more than others. I wasn’t a big fan of the whole drag race thing, as there’s a part where after each contestant does a short performance, three judges give them feedback, which is stuff like:

  • “Claire, you had a lot of energy, but that hair looks like, well… did you consider combing it at all, honey?”
  • “Girl, you need to be more careful with your wig. Your real hair was sticking out a little in places. Actually, your real hair is real pretty. You might consider weaving it in somehow and taking advantage of it.”
  • “Sister, your panties were sticking out in places; you need to pay a little more attention to that.”

Please do.


I dragged my ass home with my real hair gelled and my panties all tucked in—recalling a diverse night of forms of entertainment (trivia, people-watching, drag); types of people (straight, bi, and gay); and a variety of bars (Flying Saucer, The Borough, Flex, Legends); and even types of drinks (beer at Flying Saucer, and bourbon and Diet Coke everywhere else).

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