[Ed. note: This is almost a week overdue, thanks to the ridiculous summer cold I caught. Lucky for me, seating is timeless!]

Let’s talk express. Let’s talk hard facts and numbers. Or let’s just talk about rear ends, because that is all I remember from my first experience with Muni’s Nx bus.

With all of the nightmare-laden nights I have experienced lately, I am beginning to ponder the efficacy of a routine nightcap. Nothing too heavy, mind, but something that will knock me the hell out until morning. Last night’s theatrical production was a garish parade of grotesquely-exaggerated characters from my past. They weren’t doing nice things like sitting quietly on a luxury shuttle, either.

By the time I left the house, I was astoundingly late, the type of late that could not be recovered from gracefully. Since I live in a neighborhood without ambient taxi traffic, that was not an option. The new N-Judah express bus was, though; it would take me most of the way to work and I could theoretically find a taxi for the last tiny bit.

The Nx was already 90% full when I boarded. By the time we reached the last stop before the express portion, I was wedged in the aisle with nowhere to move. My butt was smushed up against someone else’s butt. It was not an entirely unpleasant feeling, while being completely unwanted, leaving me in aesthetic limbo. If I haven’t already mentioned this, I am fairly claustrophobic, which means that I don’t just start punching people if I am in a crowded space, but it requires many deep-breathing exercises and meaningful stares at the nearest exit.

It only took the bus twenty minutes to get downtown from 19th Avenue, a blink of the eye in traffic terms but an utter eternity in butt-smushing. Before boarding the Nx, I considered myself worldly when it came to public transit, but I lost purity-test points on that ride. I never did catch a glimpse of my posterior partner. Was it you? Don’t ever tell me.

HIDWtS Rating: At least it wasn’t the T-Third Toucher.

[box type=“shadow”]I ride a shuttle to work. It is a really nice shuttle and the first time I have ever had this luxury, causing me to overthink pretty much every aspect of it, especially where to sit. And now I overthink where I decide to sit in every open-seating situation, so I’m writing about it in a series called How I Decide Where to Sit.[/box]