The Transporter Couch

For several years in the mid-1990s, a clean, casually-dressed elderly man would stand in front of the downtown Portland Radio Shack, the one on the bus mall. He would be there almost every day, on work days, and he would be there for hours. I know, because I watched him.

He had a hard time walking, but I never saw him walk there. He would just be there, around one in the afternoon, or even much later. He would face the display window and smoke. I never saw him start, so I don’t know how he started, but a cigarette was early in the process.

He’d drop the cigarette and crush it with a foot. The fingers of his left hand would crawl into his slacks’ front pocket and stop before the last knuckle entered. His right hand would hang there, a little ahead of his body. His shoulders would droop and his head would hang down. This took longer than you would expect.

The index finger of his right hand would start to stick out, or rather the rest of his fingers would curl. This finger would start to twirl a slow, inverted whoop-dee-doo motion, eventually bringing the whole hand into the circular path. At some point I rarely saw, he would start pointing up. His hand would be circling, I’d be watching him, and then I’d notice his hand was frozen, still below his waist, but point upward. It would bounce for a while as if to tell his his drooping head it was time to start looking up. Then it would start a slow stabbing motion upward.

It would take fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour to get to this point, and another ten to fifteen minutes in its ascent. The finger would stab upward and his head would nod up from staring at the sidewalk. The finger would go up above his shoulder and his head would start to nod back. Finally, his finger would be stretching into the sky. The strain would take his left hand out of his pocket and have it swinging below in counterbalance. His back would arch, sometimes wildly impossibly backward. Sometimes his left hand would swing. When I first started watching, this is where I would feel uncomfortable and walk away. After a while, this is when mypulse would start racing. His finger frozen in the air, this old man connected whatever he saw up there with whatever he was down there, and he could hold on to it. He could stay there in the middle of the sidewalk on the bus mall, in front of a hundred passing business people and punks and hold on to it until he was done with it.
Then he’d stop, just straighten up, and look at his reflection in the display window. He’d pull out a cigarette. Light it. And slowly let the finger of his left hand go back into the pocket. People would start passing by closer. He would turn, and go into the fast food restaurant next door.

I never spoke to him, never followed him, never saw him interact with anyone. I never knew what he was doing. I don’t know where he went. I just know that when I watched him, I wanted to be him, like when I would see motorcycle stunt riders or animal trainers when I was a kid. If only I could see what he saw, and have the courage. If only I could be him for those few hours everyday and take that with me.
Even now, when I’m alone downtown, and can get to the Radio Shack. I walk by, pause, and look up and feel my pulse jump.