Bookman speaks!

I have a confession to make. Though I am happily married, I have a bit of a crush on the Bookman.

The Bookman is one of the morning regulars -- I almost never see him on the evening bus, though I get off work at 4:30 and perhaps he's an 8-to-5er instead. But every morning, he gets on my bus and sits in the back, usually directly across from me.

He immediately takes out a book and begins to read. And while that's fairly normal behavior on a bus, I confess I took notice the first time I saw him do this, because the book he had with him was one I had read myself and didn't think anybody else had ever heard of. Since then, I've made a point of sneaking a look at his book every day, and, in the process, have made a discovery: it's my contention that the Bookman only reads when he's on the bus.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's just an observation I find interesting for some reason.

Why do I think this? Because the Bookman gets through about a book every 10 days to 2 weeks, and never any faster than that. This seems to me to rule out a lot of extracurricular reading. Unless he saves one book for the bus and reads another one when he gets home? Perhaps he saves the paperbacks for the bus, and reads hefty tomes in hardback when he's in bed at night?

Anyone for Tolstoy?

The Bookman is married, and he has an earring and a grizzled gray beard that I am especially fond of. But my favorite part about the Bookman is that he's gigantic. He's like someone from Brobdingnag, really. Not fat -- just extremely tall and broad-shouldered with large hands and large arms and large everything else. I love tall people. I'm a tall people. Tall people rule. And I also love the fact he kind of lumbers when he walks, and that people often have to shift a bit to the side when he sits in between them. The Bookman seems larger than life and looks exceedingly gentle, intelligent, and kind. This is my favorite type of older man.

The other day, I had my first verbal encounter with the Bookman, after weeks and weeks spent sitting across from him and clandestinely scoping out the insides of his bag every time he removed his book from it (yes, I am a disgusting bag snoop). He hadn't been able to get a seat that morning, and was standing by the back door (note: not in the stairwell, thank god, as that makes me bananas). It was time for me to get off, and I had to squeeze by him, and as I did, he turned to me and made a joke (which I won't repeat, as I'm trying to make sure no one I talk about here can recognize themselves). I misheard the joke, as I was listening to the Ramones on my MP3 player, which I guess I'd better quit doing whenever there's a chance someone might say something interesting in my direction. And the upshot of this mishear was that I didn't laugh at the Bookman's joke, but instead just responded, "Okay, no problem!"

He gave me a quizzical look, which I didn't understand until later when the joke was finally filtered correctly through my brain. But the next day, he caught my eye and smiled in my direction. I took this to mean that he either thinks I'm crazy and thus had better stay on my good side, lest I suddenly snap and lunge for his throat. Or else it means he thinks I'm cute in a quirky, nonsensical kind of way, and that he's rather fond of that quality in young, strange women he encounters on the bus.

Either way, he had a nice smile, and I hope to see it again soon.