Don’t you like the new ones plying the Esda route now?

Yes, those. The ones with Claire De La Fuente’s posters on, mostly. The decidedly more modern, clean, and well-lighted ones—and you can tell they are with those huge panoramic windows. You can see right down the tonsils of people sitting by those windows because they never bother to draw the drapes on these buses now, ostensibly to invite you to ride them.

I look at these buses as I stand on the corner of Pioneer Street in Mandaluyong and I can’t help thinking: Those are fiery red tonsils.

No, those windows look like aquariums. Of the Quezon Avenue kind.

Yes, those. You go to the basement or the second floor of some building. It’s cold and the velour furniture is atrocious. They usher you down a corridor to a show window. Inside, drapes are automatically drawn to reveal a gaggle of girls sitting in what looks like a home theater. You can see them through the mirror, but they can only see bits and parts of you—and eye or an arm—through transparent strips in the one-way affair. They feign talking, watching television. A smile. A surreptitious check on the cleavage. Get me. Get me.

Well, if they got the show on the road it would probably feel like looking through the windows of these new buses. They would crawl by like they were on a conveyor belt, and you’ll see these faces looking out at you as you look in on them.

Which gets me thinking again: Who’d lose in this battle of staring: the one from the outside looking in or the one inside staring out?

I’m sure it used to be the ones staring out.

You’d take these long bus rides, always sitting by the window because you could see out onto the road and the procession of madness that unfolds. Buses then usually had smoked windows, and the drapes were crusty and somehow drawn but not drawn.

You could stare out but they couldn’t stare back.

If you were a couple you could neck and they’d have no idea.

If you were a pervert you could cup a breast and no one would notice.

Now they have these new windows and the people sitting by them are the ones putting on the show.

There’s a girl arguing with his boyfriend.

That one’s laughing like mad.

He’s about the cup the woman’s breast, the bastard.