Sputterpub's Blog

“We’re none of us pleased with the current book,” Olivia reported (they’d just finished Amsterdam and agreed it was a trifle), “and we all aspire to write…so what the hell: let’s write a little.” She looked around the table and saw interest. “Let’s do…say, four pages? On: the people on the bus?” and they all nodded with increasing energy. Grinning. Almost laughing a little. Two weeks.

They none of them created great literature then (or later), but they all got enough out of the exercise that they agreed to continue it. Indeed, although each approached the bus assignment differently, all four pieces had a character in common: the sun-averse plain Asian woman with the ratty old refurbished straw hat. Judd’s piece was the strongest and named her Ming, so they all became interested in the woman and began referring to her by that name, even after they learned she was called Mildred, and was Korean, and was uninteresting.

They took turns assigning topics, or themes, or phrases, and that kept the process fresh for all of them. They rarely extended deadlines, so they kept producing, and they all developed a facility at writing. But they didn’t develop a verve.

Judd’s pieces were well-written but sentimental. Often about solitary sailors or athletes. Man’s man unemotional nostalgic voice. Once he ventured into hippie memoir, but his story about sex with the 14-year old sister of a buddy, when Judd was 25, was not well-received. Karin used the word “molester” even after Judd insisted that the young lady was more than willing and still remembered the episode fondly. Karin maintained that not even the victim gets a vote about the act, not when the victim is a child.

Looking at them as a whole, Karin’s pieces were usually about acquisition of wealth and security. She avoided the sex/love theme, even though she admitted to herself that she found Judd provocative.

Olivia tended to write about sex, sex, and then sex. There was invariably a character in her work who looked a bit like she did when she was young: thin and willing to strip. Olivia’s hints about her personal history had her driving a cab in New York while addicted to heroin. Her reminiscences were not detailed and not believed but they kept making it into her prose pieces.

Diligent Eliot produced work which showed how much went into it. He was a tireless researcher. He loved to edit. Sometimes he reduced his own words to near-obscurity.

They might have gone on without change for years. All four were likely to stay in the area, even if not on the bus route. But one ride home, when they just happened to be on board the bus together and without many other passengers, there was a mishap. It might have been a tragedy but they reacted well.

The driver had an acute and initial attack of angina. He had no history of heart disease. His chest seized like a rock and he couldn’t make his arms work. They were about 200 feet west of Treasure Island, accelerating down into the tunnel through Yerba Buena.

Somehow Judd understood what was wrong. Enough so that he raced to the front of the bus, pulled the driver onto the aisle floor, and assumed control of the big vehicle. Judd had never driven a bus but he was good with cars and machines in general; he figured it out.

Karin was right behind Judd and tended to the driver. She put her CPR training to use; the paramedics and even the doctors afterwards commended her.

Eliot didn’t react fast but he did analyze well. The event reinforced his conversion to carpe diem; in fact what broke up the group was his announcement that he was selling his hill house and traveling around the world. He expected to be back in about three years.

Olivia didn’t expect to be around when he returned. She had a full face lift and a neck-tightening after the almost-accident, and she left for places unknown. She said she was going to be an artists’ model and have a lot of lovers.

The bus driver recovered fully and went on to pilot many transbay routes. Sometimes Karin and Judd saw each other on one of them. Other times they arranged to get together, for tea or a meal. Eliot stayed in touch by e-mail, and they expected to see him when he returned. But the writing group was over.

Judd wrote a bit and did it better. More about what he knew than what he dreamed, his short stories showed up here and there in magazines.

Karin published a vegetarian cookbook. She composed 327 sonnets. Typing with her left hand only, Karin wrote this.

They spent at least two years passing books back and forth, meeting gradually more regularly, becoming more familiar. They all remember the evening they converted to writing.

It was a Thursday as usual. Late enough in the spring that it was still light at 7 p.m. when they met at Eliot’s house in the hills. They sat around his new wooden table on his back deck, a little chilled but pleased to hear the burbling of the creek that ran through his next-door neighbor’s yard. He served them hot tea, gooey dates, and raw trail mix. Olivia commented that she wished the nuts were salted and Judd said, with his blood pressure, he was very glad they weren’t.

The new table was patio-construction fir, round and well-finished, and it gleamed brown-gold under their arms. The benches curved too, and were backed with more wood and flat cushions in durable dark green fabric. It was a beautiful arrangement, and Eliot was pleased with it.

He’d considered the improvements for years. He grew up poor, and it was hard for him to spend money. But he had learned five years earlier that life was short, when he lost the love of his to pancreatic cancer, and he had to do something about the stress. He was a very diligent worker, compulsive about preparedness and other details, and it had gotten to the point where Eliot had heartburn many nights, and most others he awoke at 3 or 4 a.m. and started fretting about ways things could go wrong. So he took the plunge, spent the money, made a deck and a hot tub and a huge investment in attempts at yoga and meditation. He was almost relaxed at that table that night. Arms crossed over his narrow chest, right foot swinging almost freely from his right knee hung upon his left, he breathed the steam from his tea and almost grinned.

Judd sat next to him. He sprawled as much as the wooden furniture allowed. He imagined himself a cross between a jock and a sailor. He tried to keep his body loose, to live up to his 6’4″ frame.

Judd had fitness fantasies. He had high blood pressure and spent more time than any of the others around doctors’ equipment, but he was always imagining himself astounding them with his cardiac health. A stress test in which he went beyond where anyone else ever had. And then, return to a resting pulse of 48 in less then a minute. Yes. His heart an efficient machine, each beat sending a surge of oxygenated blood through the conditioned body. Ka-WUMP. (Pause three seconds) Ka-WUMP.

In fact, Judd had a fast raggedly pulse and a dismal recovery rate. In fact, he never worked out as much as he intended or walked as much as he needed. He longed to sail alone around the world. He seldom saw a boat. He wanted to love a thousand partners. He had been impotent the last three times he’d tried to start an affair.

He was insecure about another attempt, to say the least. But still, better off than Eliot. Eliot figured five years ago, after the funeral, that he’d never have sex again. He told himself he’d had more in his life than he expected anyway; he’d been lucky. But sometimes he felt a little wistful. Not lusty: wistful. Sometimes he caught sight of the shape of an ankle, the turn of an instep, and he was flooded instantly with that old acquisitive never-quenched passion.

Karin, sitting there quiet and apparently contemplative, felt not a particle of empathy. She wasn’t particularly attracted to any body part, and feet would be at the bottom of her list if she were. Karin was her own lover. Her secret was her masturbation, a solace she had discovered at age four, and indulged in since. She fondled herself so regularly and rigorously that she had a chronic wrist problem. The doctor thought it was her keyboard at work and made her employer furnish her station with all the latest in ergonomic components. Her coworkers thought it was compulsive computer solitaire; everyone who worked around computers knew the wrist weakness came from mouse antics rather than from touch-typing. Only Karin knew the root of the problem was her onanism. She tried to switch off to her left but it just wasn’t the same.

She was ashamed of herself. Always afraid someone would find out. That fear bloomed to include issues about apartment security and health. She installed four deadbolts, gave up meat, and took a CPR course.

Karin woke every weekday in a panic. The pink pills helped, but only later in the day, after she was up and around and had eaten. First thing in the morning, her only comfort worked her right wrist. She needed something more.

Olivia got the most action of the four, maybe because she made it. She liked to take her clothes off. She suggested. She was the one who blurted, “We ought to do some writing” that night. She had just draped her shawl around her hips and she was struck as she looked around the table at how old everyone looked. Eliot had a prissiness about him like a bookworm and Judd was starting to look craggy like the sailors he described. Karin’s face was getting that flat appearance, retreating into itself, from too much introspection. Olivia knew she looked better than any of them but she was glad she didn’t have a mirror then. She’d been displeased lately at what she saw in the glass. All that neck. It wasn’t a happy surprise to discover that, after a lifetime thin, her breasts could droop so much, her neck could look so stretched. She’d always taken such delight in presenting herself, like a present, to her selected lover. Her throat caught sometimes lately, when she saw herself for a moment as a desperate offering instead of a bountiful treat.

They formed a small, intimate, incompatible set. Like a family. Mundane/miraculous. Magnificent/toxic. They made a writing group.

They found each other through their commutes. All rode the FS from San Francisco to North Berkeley, an unupholstered transbay bus that only ran every half hour or so, only during the morning and evening commutes, so they became transitorily familiar with each other even before they conversed.

They didn’t have much in common except their commutes. They weren’t all in relationships or property, in money or need. But they were white and roughly of an age. Each read and wanted to write.

It started with a series of casual comments. Most often they saw one another on the 5:20 p.m. from the terminal home. They all liked the back end of the bus, where one was more likely to get room.

Two men, two women. Judd was big and expansive, and Eliot was compact. Karin was brunette and modest; Olivia was brassy both ways. Usually they didn’t talk on the bus; this was just how they looked. Judd tended to sit in the middle of the back seat so he had room to stretch his long legs, while Eliot sat sideways over the back wheels, leg crossed knee-over-knee and chest curved around whatever big book he was reading. He was almost Japanese in his ability to take up minimal space. Karin liked to sit facing forwards but near the back door of the bus, where she could exit quickly if need or desire arose. She tried not to resent it on the rare occasion when another passenger took the seat beside her, but she didn’t like it; it made her feel pinned in position and she usually thought the other passenger was taking up too much of the seat. Olivia always flung herself and her scarves and bags sideways upon a seat, and then arrayed her stuff for the ride. Ostensibly relaxed she nonetheless was in frequent motion, crossing and uncrossing her legs, tucking them under her and stretching them out again, fingering her streaky hair and rotating her neck; somehow everyone on the bus knew not only that she rode it but how she looked and moved.

People usually didn’t talk on the ride. Except for the frequent and inane cellphone hemi-logues, the passengers enjoyed silence. Some dozed. Most read. But occasionally there were comments about traffic or sunsets, and those could lead to a nodding or name-exchanging habit. Sometimes one passenger touched a sleeping fellow’s hand when the bus came to the sleeper’s customary stop, and after a quick “How far are you riding?” and a disoriented “What? Huh? Oh thank you! I’ve been dozing all day,” an acquaintance was born.

So it was with Judd and Karin and Eliot and Olivia. They rode, they read, they commented, and that led to book reviews and exchanges, to a reading group, and finally, when they each understood that the other three also aspired, to a regular biweekly writers’ group. Five pages every two weeks. And they had to find something positive to say about each of the three pieces from the last meeting. It took a bit of stamina.

As well as anyone can remember, the group started when Karin was reading The Bridges of Madison County, in hardback, and happened to recommend it to Eliot. Olivia overheard, and she was wearing five scarves that day, so it was a cold-weather time of year. All four of them were on the bus and no one else was in the back a few weeks later when Eliot made his disparaging review of the little book. He’d hated it. He said he despised that sort of emotional manipulation. He spoke softly but even so Karin was embarrassed. She felt as if by happening to recommend it she became responsible for the style and for Eliot’s loaded reaction. Judd felt protective and Olivia became interested. Someone suggested a third and fourth opinion. Judd and Olivia would read the book too, and they’d all meet two weeks later to discuss it.

Nobody liked the book except Karin. After Judd panned its dialogue and Olivia exclaimed against the heroine’s dishonesty (Olivia was cynical but she hated that woman for not allowing husband and children a chance at the truth), Karin justified her response by pointing out that the book was set in her home state. She figured she liked it because it reminded her of old landscapes but, really, it was the new anti-depressants. Karin had just started taking the pink pills the week before she read the book and, while she noticed herself smiling with sentimental warmth at any TV featuring children or animals, she forgot herself and her attitudes when she read. She liked to read.