"Permiso....caballeros, vamos....siguen caminando..." The fare collector moves people to the back of the bus with his voice. Let's go, let's keep walking...I get as far as I can, holding my bag tight against my chest as I move, until I'm stuck in the middle of the aisle, surrounded by sweating Cubans. The handrail is just within my reach, but the crowd is so tight that I don't need to hang on. "Oye, rubia. Aguanta el hombro." An old man with a rust-colored guayabera and acupuncture marks in his left ear invites me to hang on to his shoulder. Towards the back there's a girl with long black hair, wearing a neon green shirt. Like me, she holds onto nothing, with several large women surrounding her, their bodies keeping her from stumbling as the bus coughs down Calle 23.

To my left is an old white woman in a sleeveless polyester dress with pink and green flowers on it, holding a large plastic bag of onions that continuously rubs against my left thigh. Three high school boys stand behind me, wearing their uniform white shirts and navy pants. Two are tall, with awkward patches of facial hair emerging around their chins. The third is stouter and his belly pushes into me, keeping me from moving backward throughout the ride. They all have a musky smell that makes a strange combination with the old lady's onions and everyone else's sweat. I wonder what the fat one is thinking about being squeezed in next to a turista.

At the next stop, the old lady pushes me into someone's scapula shouting, "Que me quedo en la proxima, mi amor." I'm getting off next, my love. I turn myself to look out the window, over two seated passengers. One is a painfully thin mestiza girl with a face like a humming bird. Her dark, stringy hair is tied back with a small piece of twine. Next to her is a man in his late thirties, dressed all in white. He stares at me. His carefully combed hair is only a few shades darker than his burnt orange skin and his blue eyes bulge at me from their sockets. A white guy wearing a Nike tank top stares too. He's about my age. Should they feel ashamed? No. I am the whitest, blondest thing on this bus. "¿Naciste asi?" I imagine them thinking to themselves. Were you born like this?

He keeps staring and I feel fortunate that he is not right next to me. Men love the bus here; in crowds this tight, they can lean into you, rub themselves against you, conveniently rest a hand against your ass. They touch your face, your skin, your hair, if not with their bodies, with their eyes, feeling around you like a blind person trying to form a cohesive image of you, who are you? The sweat drips off my face and onto my chest; it's not just the heat, it's that penetrating stare.

The bus stops and people begin to push. I grab a section of the railing, elbows and rib cages and asses squeezing me further in towards the man with the burnt orange skin, still staring, but I am hanging on, with the sweaty, sticky hands grabbing all around mine for one little piece of the railing. Like crabs clawing over each other in a bucket, as if this handrail will save us, as if we have no sense of space, no sense of respect for anyone, not even for ourselves, because any notion of respect has just been drowned out by the unavoidable fact that all anyone can fight for is this one tiny space on the hand railing. This is the only way any of us will ever get anywhere. What if someone threw up? Pissed themselves?

I crane my neck to look at the girl in the green shirt again. Her head hangs to one side, bobbing with the rhythms of the bus. Is she asleep? The bus stops again, near the train station, where several people get off. As the crowd in the back shifts, the neon shirt drops suddenly -- the girl has collapsed -- a woman screams "¡AGUANTALA!" HOLD HER! A young man grabs the girl under her arms and tries to help her stand up. She is limp, completely unconscious. Two high school girls give up their seats as people start to shout instructions. They lower her into the blue plastic seat, the screaming woman holding the girl's head steady. A small man with glasses and very little hair stands up in his seat and begins to shout, as a concerned murmur falls over the bus. "Soy medico -- dejen la cabeza abajo. ¡ABAJO!" I'm a doctor -- leave her head down. The passengers push away from each other, creating a tiny path for the doctor; a boy offers him a bottle of water. Everyone watches as he kneels and holds the girl's head down, wetting the nape of her neck with his fingers and rubbing her shoulder. He whispers into her ear as he lifts her head upright and she begins to open her eyes. Her face is whiter than mine. The screaming woman thanks God, stretching her hands up to the roof of the bus. "Dios poderoso..." she says to herself. Powerful God. The doctor kneels next to the girl, asking her questions and holding the bottle of water as she drinks.

"¿La puedes ver?" Can you see? The girl next to me asks.

"Si, creo que se queda bien ya." Yeah, I think she's okay now.

"Ay Dios. Imagínate."

The doctor sits with the girl and wipes the sweat from his brow as she drinks the rest of the water, other passengers still watching, one man smoothing her hair. My breath steadies and turn to look out the window. I can see the ocean now, crashing up against the malecón -- the sea wall that separates Havana from the north. "Allá," they always call it. Up there. The United States. Little kids are jumping off the malecón into the deeper parts, always climbing back up, somehow avoiding the undertow, all the jagged rocks, the pieces of broken glass. An old man lies on its cement surface, napping as the water sprays over him. A tiny breeze escapes through the window onto my face and I can almost feel that salt water spray through this entrapment, among these hot, breathing bodies. The bus rumbles fast now, down through the underpass. My stop is next.

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