Riding the buses, you often see the same people you’d seen a few days earlier. I have nicknames and assumptions about two dozen or so regulars, and one of my favorites is a boy, white and about 10 years old, who rides alone, with no parents or guardian. To me, he’s Mame.
I’d been sitting on a bench at the bus depot, waiting for my ride home, when this little kid approached me and said, “Hey, mister, do you like my fingernails?”
“Well,” I said, “I haven’t given your fingernails much thought. Let’s see ’em.”
I could already see they were painted blue and green and sparkly, but the wisecrack gave me a moment to gather my wits and pretend to be a responsible adult and such rot.
He held his hands higher — ordinary little-kid hands, but with fake extenders glued on so the nails jutted out an inch, colorful and glittering. My dad would’ve been aghast, but usually I’m not my dad, and I was tickled by the idea of a 10-year-old boy wearing flamboyant nails. “Spectacular!” I announced, and his eyes twinkled almost as much as his fake nails. “But how do you pick your nose?”
“Like this!” he yelled, as he pulled the nail off his right pinky, and jammed that finger up his nose. He was so dang cute I wanted to tussle his hair, but you don’t do that with kids who aren’t family, and anyway my bus was coming. I laughed, and waddled toward away.
That was the first time I noticed Mame. Since then, I’ve seen him at the bus station now and again, but we’ve said nothing more.
Once, he was sitting on a bench, reading a book, and you don’t often see kids reading books in 2026, so I maneuvered into a position where I could see the cover: Boyfriend Material, was the title, with a picture of two studly young men. Hmmm.
Another time at the station, the boy was wearing ordinary clothes but an old-style straw hat with a peacock feather in it. Hmmm.
He earned his nickname a couple of weeks ago at the station, by skipping along on the concrete and singing the theme from Mame (“You coax the blues right out of the horn, Mame, You charm the husk right off of the corn, Mame…).
We’re way past Hmmm. The boy’s not even adolescent, but he’s clearly gay or gonna be. Gayer than some grownup gays I’ve known.
♦ ♦ ♦
One fine day at the Burien Transit Center, I stepped aboard a northbound #99, and sat in my favored seat (front left, second row behind the sideways seats). We were at the start of the line, and I was expecting an ordinary and uneventful ride, but then Scene Stealer sat in a sideways seat in front of me.
This is someone I described a few months ago. He or she, ‘they’ in the new vernacular, was wearing colorful but gender-ambiguous clothes, a green wig or dye job, and a massive quantity of gray and black greasepaint striped across their face and on their hands. With the rest of their skin covered by clothes, this person’s gender and race were uncertain to anyone but themself — and you can’t be more subversive than that without planting a bomb.
Nothing defines people more than race and gender. Whatever else you know about anybody, the very first thing you know is “He’s a black man,” or “She’s a white woman.” But here’s someone proudly of no race, no gender.
I was wearing my “Arrest the President” t-shirt, like that’s edgy? Ha!
Across the aisle from Scene Stealer, a middle-aged man in a suit squirmed uncomfortably, offended or possibly nauseous. He studied the mystery opposite him — almost literally, his opposite — then turned away and looked out the window. He couldn’t keep his attention elsewhere, though, and soon he was again staring at the gray, difficult-to-describe adult in the sideways seat.
The man’s distress was obvious, and I was enjoying it and perhaps wanted more. “Hey,” I said softly to Scene Stealer, and when they glanced at me I offered an enthusiastic thumbs up. I wanted both of them to know that any disapproval was not unanimous.
They (meaning only Scene Stealer) shook their entire body in happiness, we traded smiles, and I almost pitied the enhanced bother on the man’s face across the aisle.
But nobody said anything, so this episode was ending, right? Well, not yet, because that’s when Mame, the little gay boy, came skipping up the aisle and shouted a happy hello to the painted trans- or asexual human. I hadn’t noticed the kid was on the bus, but was he ever!
“I love your look,” he said to them, and they started talking. They were strangers who became friends within a block.
At my destination a mile or so later, I rang the bell and stepped off, and the Scene Stealer and the gay boy were still talking. The boy was awestruck, like a kid in an old movie meeting Mickey Mantle.
On the sidewalk I smiled, maybe laughed, and thought to myself: You never know in the big city, and nothing’s more beautiful than “You never know.”
8/6/2026
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