Bus Report #580

The man sat a few seats away from me. It was an early morning 38 Geary, still a little dark out, no more than a handful of us on the bus.
He had a lion's mane of yellow hair, a mustache and a beard stained a darker yellow. He wore a pea green fleece from the Monterey Aquarium and jeans so dirty they weren't blue anymore. His brown work boots were caked with mud. The soles were worn almost all the way down.
He clutched a Styrofoam cup of coffee in his shaking hands. I watched him lift the cup to his mouth to sip. I think I was holding my breath, hoping he didn't spill it. Steam emanated from the cup and the coffee looked hot enough to warrant the warnings printed on the lids.
The man had vein-blue tattoos that covered his exposed arms and hands. He had two gold rings on his right hand. They might have been class rings or something similar.
They seemed too gaudy for who he was now, though at some point they might not have been.
He had the puffy red face of a longtime alcoholic. Squinty eyes that seemed to stare at nothing.