Last night, I had a surreal episode (I love it when life turns surreal!) I was using some precious free time to do a load of laundry at the laundromat. I have an amazing amount of work at the moment, and had been working straight through from Tuesday/Wednesday to Monday morning, with the exception of a booksigning I attended on Saturday -- more on that later. When I was finished with my laundry, I was waiting at the bus stop with my bag of laundry for quite awhile (I always feel like an idiot carrying my laundry around, but there is no other way to get it done, other by hand, in the shower, and I'm not that desperate).

Anyway, I was sitting on the bench, at like 11pm, when this guy comes and sits down on the other end of the bench. He was wearing a gold suit. Pants, jacket, and shoes, all spray painted shiny gold. He has one of those rolling luggage things with him, and an umbrella sticking out of it (both not gold). I try to discretely look over, not staring, and I notice that while his face is clean, he has bits of glittery gold paint stuck to the curved indentations of his ears. I figure he is one of the street performers who pretends to be a statue, after his shift.

After a minute or two, he reaches into his suitcase and retrieves a textbook written by someone with the last name "Rufle" -- an unusual name by all accounts, by I only noticed it because it is the last name of my best friends. Intrigued I couldn't stop stealing little glances.

After a few minutes, this random guy walks up to the bench, addressing the man in gold.

"Hey, gold man, did I miss the number 4?"

I thought he was being impertinent to address a stranger like that, but the man in gold responded.

"Since I've been waiting here, no buses have come by."

The other guy looked a bit befuddled.

"Well, did I just miss the number 4?"

"What did I just tell you? Since I've been waiting here, no buses have come by. That means no 8, no 42, no 13, no 19, and no 4."

"Oh." The concept dawned on the guy. "I'm sorry, I've had kind of a big day."

"That's alright," says the man in gold.

"So how are things going?" At this point, I begin to wonder if the two are more familiar.

"You know, same old day."

"Yeah. I had a big day today." I guess the dude was fishing to tell something.

"Really?"

"Yeah, I got married today!" And I was right! He wanted to tell someone, but the dude didn't look like he just got married that day.

"Oh wow!" I still can't tell if the man in gold knows this guy. I felt like I should have said congratulations or something, being that the conversation was happening two feet from me. Hawaii is a different place where it's okay for complete strangers to have in depth conversations, but it still felt like I might be crossing the line, so I stayed quiet.

"Yeah, it was really spontaneous. I woke up this morning and asked her to marry me. We went down to the department of health to get the marriage license, then after that we happened to walk by the courthouse. I said, 'let's go in and see if the judge will marry us' and you know what, he did! It was really quick."

"Wow! So where is she now?" I was thinking this too -- you'd think they'd at least spend the day together after getting married.

"Well, she had to write and essay or something, and I needed to do my thing. But I'm going to meet her now." The number 4 bus had arrived.

"Have a good honeymoon then." I was beginning to like the man in gold's undercurrent of dry wit. I don't know though, maybe a spontaneous no-frills marriage has a better chance of lasting than one that is a big, expensive to-do. Anyway, I could not determine whether or not they actually knew each other. Very odd!