No one is looking at anyone. We are strangers on a bus, and it is mid-afternoon on a weekday. Our alienation is a voluntary one, a shrunken sweater worn only for its familiarity. The two-by-two seats may as well be cubicles, cells, or islands. We drift alone, similar but separate. Each individual stares out his or her window into the slate bareness of a cold winter day. She is a young mother; the baby's face is buried in her elbow, a chubby little hand grasping the material of her sleeve. He is a professional wino; brown-paper-bagged booze nestled between his knees, the occasional stealthy sip. I'm a cynical student at the back of the bus, taking it all in, separate from the others because my tuition for one year is more than most Baltimore residents' annual income.   

We pass uniform houses that blend into each other as we go by and see people whose breath floats among them like ghosts. The bus takes a wide turn onto a one-way street and stops. He boards; I don't see it, but I can imagine the slow, pained steps aided by a cane, his chapped fists clutching a handrail for balance. Our heads turn the way dominoes fall until every last passenger is looking at him. He takes the first seat behind the driver, in the horizontal rows that line the first few feet of the bus. He is covered in duct tape.

He sits very straight in his seat and stares out the opposite window with a look of unnerving determination on his face. A living memorial, his jaw is set; his eyes hold a hardened truth, one we may never know.

The tape does not wrap completely around him in a King Tut way; it is strategically placed in a connective, accenting sort of way. A thin strip circles the soles of his boots. Corresponding pieces were applied to the upper parts of his shoes, connecting them to his pants. Duct tape is set around the cuffs of his coat, the brim of his hat, and places in between. I'm not sure if the tape is functional (Is it holding everything together?) or ornamental (as in the shiny gray "X" on the lapel of his coat). In addition to being outfitted in the sticky gray strips of cloth, the man has duct tape on the bottom and handle of his cane, as well as on the radio headphones he wears. The bags he carries are the only things that don't have tape on them.

The bus erupts into exchanged glances andwhispers that aren't quite whispers. The exchanges always end with eyes back on this man. Suddenly strangers become old friends, instant confidants with a common secret. They shake their heads knowingly or openly gawk, whispering speculations the whole bus can hear. Some people have seen
him before.

"That's the duct-tape man," they say.

"Is he homeless?"

"He can't be; he always got bags with him."

"That's a damn shame."

They call him the duct-tape man, shrinking down his life to an assessment of his appearance. It's unfair to a person, to this man, who for whatever reason chooses to be different. He knows the effect his appearance has on people, but he still ventures out of his house to participate in life. He doesn't shut himself away. Or is that why he wears the headphones? To shut out others' insensitivities, others who don't care enough to see through his torn and taped world? I almost hate them for their ignorance.

It scares me.

I see it in myself.

I ask "why?" instead of "where?" or "how?" I'm just like them, the shallow citizens of the bus, my judgments leveled at someone who didn't ask for them. Everyone stares, and they're allowed to, but this man is not a curiosity. He does not exist for our speculation. His life extends beyond the few blocks we know him. I don't know his story, but I understand what he does for us.

I turn back toward the window.

Two stops later, the bus stops and then continues on. We are passing a corner, and I see the man crossing the street. I didn't notice, but he has gotten off the bus. He is on his way home just like the rest of us. The energy that coursed through the bus while he was on it seems to have left with him. The passengers settle back into their indifference. As we pass him, I turn around in my seat to get one last look, but it's too late. He's gone.