24th and Mission Station
On this late March afternoon in San Francisco, at the 24th and Mission train station, I can see the heat rising from the stone benches after baking all day. Two staircases, the left one reeking of urine, and an escalator pump commuters from the underground up into the warmth of the red brick courtyard. A man sits on a green overturned crate with an electric bass guitar cradled in his lap and a boombox and amp on either side. Though he’s facing away from me, I can see his shoulders and elbows jerking as he plays along with the track. I pause my music and untangle my earbuds from the straps on my bike helmet.
Several yards away, a young woman sits with her knees bent, back against a light pole, nodding along to the music with a smile. Another woman, much older but childlike, is pulled from her bedding and backpack in the corner of the courtyard by the driving groove of the bass player. She jigs and tangos her way to the action, and I am mesmerized.
The woman dances with no training, just the wisdom of her body and its deep-brain connection to the rhythm. She side-steps, back-slides, and jostles, leading with her butt for one step and with her shoulders for the next. She ducks and bobs, splaying her elbows and jutting a heel behind her, tossing her head back one instant and hunching forward under raised arms the next. Her face is joyful, her jeans sag in the butt, and her yellow long-sleeved shirt is perhaps browner than it once was. Song after song, her gnarled knuckles snap along with the percussive twang of the bass.
For a moment, it seems she has made her home exactly where she is. Her every footfall on the train station platform is a new home, for she carries it in her body. And I am witnessing her home speak, sing, dance in this public space. A point of transit for most of us, this is her base; a blur of motion for me, this is her static. The march through her plot might pass unnoticed by an executive while taking a bluetooth business call.
The dancing woman is joined by a tall male passer-by in black athletic pants, a black t-shirt, and a black satchel. His dancing is quieter: joy with the dampening pedal depressed. He keeps his elbows bent, his hands poised to snap near his chest, and his head bobbing. His shoulders and hips are the epicenters of his motion, such that he passes each song jiving in the same square foot of brick. Meanwhile his counterpart makes the train station her dance hall. Were her feet dipped in ink, the station floor would be a wild Pollock.
The two carry on their conversation of physicality; she is eager to engage him, her old body having borne perhaps years of homelessness, awakening toward the rhythm of his muscles. She is inviting, building bridges and sending flowers with her gamboling limbs. He is self-contained and unreceptive. He smiles, as he is not so concerned that he could tear himself away from the music and the sun. Her shameless passes bounce from his shapely chest and clatter, uncollected, on the brick, cold against the truth of their impossibility. The two dance side by side, disparate and inharmonious. The sound of their separation mixes with the bass line and elevates the music to cacophony.
“I hope you’re wearing your boogie shoes!” I text my girlfriend, whose train is slated to arrive any moment, “You’re going to come up into a dance party!”