There is a guy I often see on the bus who looks just like a Joseph Schindelman illustration of an Oompa Loompa:
He's a bit bigger, though, and generally doesn't wear a skirty little tunic.
The bus is sort of an extra-public space, in that you are trapped in sustained and especially close proximity to your fellow riders, who have nothing much to do but notice what you are up to, or how much you look like you are about to test a piece of experimental hair toffee.
A couple of weeks ago I watched a youngish woman across the aisle put on a particularly full face of makeup over the course of the ride home. Several different layers of stuff, most of it the color of her skin, which made it all extra fascinating somehow, as she rubbed and buffed and prodded her face about in perfect comfort: two different kinds of concealer, liquid foundation, pressed powder, some kind of cheekbone highlighter in the same general middling brown, eyeshadow similarly the color of her eyelids, brown eyebrow pencil, brown eyeliner, brown lipstick. She finished just as the bus pulled in to the station, too, very impressive.
More recently the same woman was checking something on her iPhone, the drop-down menu of internet search terms rendered in large, clear type:
SIGNS OF BACTERIAL VAG
SIGNS OF BACTERIAL VAGINOSIS
Oh, hello! How are you? Have you met my friend the Oompa-Loompa Man? I think you'll have a lot to talk about, what with the Whangdoodles and Snozzwangers. Oh look, it's my stop!
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