I do not know under what category this story will eventually be placed under by the folks at literotica. It is a primarily a Romance, but please note that it involves two women. Placing this in the Lesbian Sex category might be accurate also, but perhaps a bit misleading, since the sex is secondary to the story.
It is a story about a very lonely woman and her life. This people actually exist, but I don't know anything more about them than riding on the bus with them for a few years, observing and fantasizing. I hope that if you give the story a chance, that you find the time you invested worthwhile. Either way, as always I appreciate hearing from all readers.
The story takes place in the Capital District area of New York State and begins in the very late 1980's.
***
Chapter 1. In the beginning: Fall 1989.
This story had an innocent enough start, I suppose. So innocent that I don't even recall when I first encountered Mac. I guess that if I didn't always walk around with my head down while trying to avoid making eye contact with the rest of the world, I would remember things like that. All I do recall is that in the fall of 1989 we got a new bus driver for the express route which took me home from my job in downtown Albany to my place in Schenectady.
Mac was the driver's name, and I guess I began to first notice Mac when she started to call me by name when I would get on the bus in the afternoon. I'd climb on with the rest of the herd and swipe my card through the meter box until it made an approving sound.
"There you go, Sad Eyes," Mac would say afterward. "Only two swipes needed. You're an expert at this new system kiddo. They ought to let you run a class to teach everybody else how to do it!"
Sad Eyes. That was the name Mac had assigned to me. As soon as she had started driving for us, she had assigned her own names to all of her regular riders. They were usually names that seemed to have some sort of meaning, like Brandywine for the name of the street one woman got off at, or Pony Dude for the man that got off in front of the OTB parlor. Sometimes the names had no meaning, or at least they didn't seem to. No matter. When Mac gave you a name, you were stuck with it whether you liked it or not. It seemed most did, because she was very popular and everyone seemed to like her.
Mac. That was what everyone called her, even me eventually. Not a very feminine name, but one she seemed to embrace happily. Mac was a woman, one of the very few female drivers the transit company employed at that time, and she was excellent. She was courteous, safe and reliable, just like the plaque that held her nameplate claimed she would be.
It was no easy job, negotiating city traffic at rush hour in a bus, but she did it and did it well. She didn't take any crap from anybody either. I remember her handling a drunk that got on the bus one afternoon and started causing trouble. When the fuss started, I felt scared for Mac, but by the time it ended it was obvious that she could handle that jerk with no problem.
It was my custom at that time to sit toward the back of the bus and hope no one would sit next to me. If I got to sit alone, I would keep my head buried in a book until I got to my stop. If I got stuck sitting next to someone, I'd close my eyes and pretend to be sleeping. Either way worked for me.
As time went by, I began sitting closer to the front, since that's where it seemed that the action was. Mac would be holding court while she drove, regaling the passengers with stories about things that happened during the day or giving a running commentary on the drivers around us that sometimes seemed intent on killing us.
Since I got onto the bus at one of the earlier stops, I began sitting at the bench up front, right opposite Mac. Not that I would join in the conversation or anything, at least at first, but I could hear what was going on better and it sort of made me feel that I was a part of things. Plus, it made it quicker for me to help Mrs. Rogers when we reached her stop. She's an elderly lady who needs someone to make sure she doesn't fall getting off the bus, and I had started helping her a while back. It was no problem for me, and after she got safely off I would just slide over into the front seat she had occupied and ride with Mac to the end of the line, which is where I got off.
That's when I started getting to know Mac, by sitting upfront in the place just vacated by Mrs. Rogers, and listening to her. Eventually I actually began conversing, which might not seem like a big deal to you, but then again you don't know me. I'll bet you know someone that's a whole lot like me though.
My name is Abby, short for Abigail, and I was born in 1958 in Watertown, New York, one of the coldest places in the world, hidden in the northern part of New York. My mom still lives up there, and I don't know why, because everybody else that age seems to be moving to Florida. My dad passed on a few years ago and she's still up there, all alone. No matter what I say, she's intent on staying there. It's home, she says.
Not for me. I left that cold and barren town after high school, determined to make my mark in the world. I went to college for a couple of years at SUNY Albany, got a government job when I got tired of school, and here I still am fifteen years later, still working at the same place, with one little promotion to show for it all. I live in a small one bedroom apartment in the Stockade area of downtown Schenectady.
I'm tall and skinny, my nose is too big and I have what look like horse teeth to me. I'm flat-chested, devoid of self-esteem and afraid of my own shadow. I had a nightmare of a date about nine years ago which was the last "romantic" thing that's happened to me. I'm a loner and I guess I got my wish alright, because I've made my bed and I'm lying in it. Alone.
How's that for a biography? How many people do you know that can summarize their lives in so few words? Believe me, that's pretty much it, and I didn't leave all that much out either. Certainly none of the highlights, that's for sure. I am without doubt the most boring person in the world. Painfully shy, impossibly insecure, yours truly, Abby.
...
Chapter 2. Spring 1990.
"Dear Abby, Dear Abby my feet are too long. My hair's falling out and my rights are all wrong."
That was what I was greeted with when I would get on the bus in the afternoons by the time that the Spring of 1990 rolled in. It was a song by John Prine, as Mac explained to me, and I was learning the entire tune because Mac would sing some different lines every day as I would board.
I loved the way she sang, not because she had a classically great voice or anything, but she had this raspy drawl that reminded me of Janis Joplin. Anything that reminded me of Janis, I loved, because as far as I was concerned I was her doppelganger, lacking only the talent.
Not to mention the good sense to know when to pack it all in, I occasionally thought to myself. But the part about being a classically unattractive woman who was in a lot of emotional pain? Well, that part I could relate to well.
Being sung to as you boarded the bus was not exclusive to me on the good old 55X, but for some reason it made me feel good. Plus, there weren't many people on the bus when I got on, so there weren't that many people for me to be embarrassed in front of when I would blush.
It got to be that the ride home was the highlight of the whole day for me. At work it seemed like I got an inordinate amount of work dumped on me because of the people that didn't show up or were too lazy or incompetent to do it themselves. The bus was great fun, almost like a rolling sitcom of sorts, with me being one of the cast of oddball characters.
While riding I would marvel at the way Mac would be able to handle the bus in the worst city traffic with the greatest of ease. Then, when the bus would get on the interstate to get us out to Schenectady, she would really step on it. How I wished I could drive like Mac, or like anybody. I had tried to learn when I was a teenager, but I was way too scared to handle it. My lack of nerve just about killed my dad, who was trying hard to teach me at the time, and who ended up leaving his fingerprints permanently embedded in the dashboard.
There was this long sweeping ramp when you got out of Albany, and Mac would take the turn pretty fast with the wheel turned to the max. With warmer weather, Mac shed her blue uniform jacket, and in her short sleeved powder blue uniform shirt, I would watch as her biceps would bulge while she turned the wheel hard. It amazed me how a woman was doing what was always considered a man's job, and doing it so well.
One time Mac's shirt sleeve rode up while she turned the wheel, and I was startled to see Mac had a tattoo around her bicep. It looked like it was a tattoo of a chain, and it seemed like it went all the way around her arm. That was really neat, and every once in a while I would catch a little glimpse of it and smile. I was going to get a tattoo once myself long ago, but I chickened out in the end.
Mac also had a tattoo of a rose on the outside of her right ankle that I could see if her pant leg rode up and she wasn't wearing socks. I wanted to ask her if she had any more tattoos but I never could summon up the nerve. Besides, she would probably think I was weird to want to know that, and I didn't want to alienate one of the few people who seemed to like me.
...
