BUS STORY # 207 (Portrait # 8: Dancer)

Happy Feet!, originally uploaded by busboy4.

He’s hand dancing in the empty space by the middle exit door. 

Wiry but well-muscled guy with a black tank top and a Dallas Cowboys star tattooed all over his right neck. Requisite cube of glass in each earlobe, and earpieces wired to an iPod somewhere below my line of vision. Black leather fingerless gloves on both hands, looking elaborately laced, and making it easy to follow the amazingly fluid, ever inventive patterns of hand dancing to an inaudible sound track.

Mesmerizing. 

His eyes are closed. Sometimes his lips move, but just a little, and not for long. His expression is pretty much unchanging. No facial air guitar histrionics, just a mellow into-it look while his hands do all the emoting. 

At each stop, his eyes open and his hands drop, and he steps out of the way. After everyone has exited at his door, he steps back into the space and begins again. 

Then his hands disappear. I can see his head bouncing up and down, and I realize he's dancing with his feet now. I lean out into the aisle and catch a glimpse of black sneakers moving in place. 

I have no idea what he’s listening to, no idea what music of the spheres has freed him from the mundane world on this particular morning, but I do know whatever it is has pulled me away from my mundane world as well.