Naked Bike Ride Knows No Boundaries
Looking back at a bad Couchsurfing guest
Looking back at a bad Couchsurfing guest
Jodie said a little prayer in the half-second between locking the door and desperately waving at the driver, who was already pulling away from the bus station. As soon as the bus started rolling, the traffic light in front of it turned red, and it had to stop again. She huffed a little thank you to the sky and threw herself into a run.
Jodie gave the driver a pleading look through the scratched plexiglass of the bus doors. One arm was hooked in her blazer as the rest of it flapped behind her, one arm was stuffing her keys into her purse, and her phone was squeezed in her armpit. The neon red-haired woman barely moved her head as she cast an eye roll and grudgingly released the hydraulics keeping the doors shut.
Jodie’s shoelace caught in the crack of the pneumatic bus doors. She had squeezed into the last possible Tetris shape of a space in the front of a Montreal city bus. She was uncomfortable, cramped, and already sweating through the several layers under the blazer she’d thrown on.
The hiss of gas releasing and swinging open the doors was Jodie’s biggest relief today, and it was only 9:07 am. She couldn’t believe she was late for her interview. She had prepared everything the night before. She’d neatly folded and stacked her clothes on the chair beside the bed. She’d lain her documents in a folder on the desk right beside the door. She’d even set three alarms in the morning at 7:30, 7:45, and 8:00 on different beepers around her bedroom.
She’d told her Couchsurfing guest the night before that she had an interview in the morning. When the guest struck up conversation within minutes of waking up and wanted to show Jodie pictures from his last naked bike ride through Seattle, Jodie told him about her interview again on her way to the bathroom. Jodie repeated herself a third time upon returning from the bathroom to start getting ready, but her guest insisted that these naked bike photos would only take a minute.
Jodie was getting frantic inside. But her strongly instilled values of hospitality prevented her from being rude to a guest. ‘I can still make it,’ Jodie reassured herself as she craned her neck to see the clock in her bedroom. ‘I gave myself extra time anyway,’ she repeated even as her heart started to race and she’d stopped listening an eternity ago. “I don’t want to hurt his feelings”.
Row after row of flesh mounted on wheels scrolled past her eyes, still sleepy from the morning. Occasionally the guest would magnify one of himself and describe exactly the route he took through Seattle, and what the reactions of the local people were.
Jodie had planned to leave at 8:45. It was 9:06.
The slideshow was still scrolling. “How many pictures does one need of naked people on bikes?” Jodie asked herself as her anxiety crested and her desperation finally won out over her need to be a self-sacrificing host. She cut in at her guest’s next pause for breath and apologized that she couldn’t look at any more photos. She threw her arm through a sleeve of her blazer, slung her purse wildly over her shoulder, kicked her feet into her untied shoes, and stumbled down the stairs and out the door where the bus was just pulling out.
Jodie caught her breath and stared into space. She’d gone from what would have been an early arrival to a job she wanted very much, to be a late and disheveled interviewee, sweaty, stressed, and certainly not going to get the job even if the interview went well. She may as well have missed the bus.
Meanwhile, her couch occupier, his need for morning attention sated, lay down on the futon and went back to sleep.