I don`t know if or why then I would have expected it but the driver was fat. Fat as in overweight, dissolved contours, no chin, short arms no legs, you know: fat – a fat busdriver. The shuttle. So the picture was framed, but let me instead say that the guy had a weight-issue, not to rule out that the fat guy – the driver – could be an okay person. But if he wasn`t so fat and didn`t wear those shorts and hadn`t had his socks pulled all the way to his knees, if his Hawaii-shirt had been a little cleaner and just a little less tacky – a little more original, the picture might have been hangable. If it hadn`t been for the music. The white westcoast collegefunk, which I knew but luckily had forgotten about, like I entering California noticed that I also no longer remembered the lyrics of the Eagles “Hotel California” – anyhow: this funk, characterized by an overkill over a squeaky hornsection – I mean have there ver been anything more expendable than saxophones, no less saxophones solos and chases – so if it hadn`t been for the music and if it hadn`t been for his hair – had it only been shorter or had he only been younger the picture might have made sense. If it hadn`t been that he was such a talker – smooth, relentless and indifferent – constant, I might have been able to actually conversate him, but noone talks one these terms, a 16 hours flight ripping the logic of your aaparatus apart – the lingvistics, tying my tongue, a general alck of interpersonal interest, I might have tried. If only the 14 years he told me he had done this job had tought him that, then communication might have been an option although non-communication is also to be considered communication. If only he would have mirrored that I might. If it hadn`t been at 3 at night on 70 miles pitchblack frrewayride from San Francisco to Santa Cruz and everything looked alike, if he hadn`t said: “Hey, I think it`s so groovy that people come here from like…other countries..” I might have given him the benefit of the doubt, but no: I could speak but I would not talk. First you are an asshole until proven differently, and if that doesn`t happen – hey, you`re an asshole. I trhink that`s was what I was saying, silently. And I think it`s a natural reaction.
But there, in the bus, I would not talk, and even less when he looked at me and called me a “showstopper” and I looked at him and said “I give up” and he replied “But man, you havn`t even tried” – there, I had to crawl to the back of the bus to catch some shoteye, and he cranks up the stereo in the middle of a saxophonesolo, and right there the picture was all done. He is the first blow in a stupid ass storm.