Bus Portraits #2 and #3: Blind Rock Star; Tungsten Man

On the bus I take to law school, in a certain part of town, sometimes a blind man gets on who is so gorgeous you'd think he was a rock star, if it weren't for the guide dog. He looks like a cross between a young Michael Stipe and Andy LeMaster from Now It's Overhead. His labrador retriever is fat, kindly, protective. His wrap-around blind-guy shades only accentuate the rock star look. He sometimes smiles to himself in a way that suggests his thoughts are complicated and entertaining. It strikes me as so strange for someone to be gorgeous but literally unable to see the fact for himself, and unable to notice other people appreciating it.

Tungsten Man looked about eighty the last time I saw him. He's exceedingly thin, wiry, African American. He wears a nicely-cut three-piece suit and a hat (straw in summer, felt in winter); he carries a cane, and not because he needs it--he walks just fine--so I have to assume he carries it for style. He speaks in an antique southern accent like William Faulkner's (sound recording here), and the first time I saw him, he stopped me as I walked past on the bus and asked, "Excuse me, miss! Do you know who Crispus Attucks was?" Um, an African American guy, I said; something to do with the Revolutionary War, I think? "Yes!" said Tungsten Man, nodding approval. "The first man to die in that war!" He spent the bus ride asking similar questions to little ghetto kids riding with their mothers, trying to improve their knowledge of their own history, and sniffing in disapproval when they acted rude or boisterous, when they used bad English, when they failed to appreciate the importance of what he was imparting. Then he shared with me dire predictions about the growing power of China in the world economy: the key is tungsten, he explained. Through tungsten, China will control the world. This mineral is essential for dozens of critical industries: steel, alloys, and electronics galore... "And," he said, "apart from China, which has magnificent deposits of it, there is a shortage of tungsten... in this world!"