The title of a 2006 comedy
drama film that includes unsimulated
sex and orgies, starring Sook Yin
Lee and loosely inspired by the DUMBA Collective in Brooklyn, NY. Shortbus in the film is a club/place/regular event where events similar to the DUMBA Lusty Loft Parties take place including film screenings and
gender blurring
sex/orgies. When Sook Yin's character Sophia enters this club and Justin Bond (the proprietor) is giving her a tour he cryptically defines Shortbus: "Everybody has heard of the
long yellow school bus. Well, this is the shortbus." There is no furthur explanation given and there is no bus are not prominent in the narrative. It is likely that the term implies sexuality as that is the focus of the film and the fictional club. However, it could also be some kind of
anti-thesis to the mainstream - as the characters are often
gay, transgendered or otherwise not straight. The shortbus is otherwise defined here as short bus: the smaller yellow bus typically used to transport disabled/incapacitated/differently abled people which is in opposition to a regular bus - get on the bus - that would signify the mainstream or straight culture. Or, maybe the shortbus is a term of disability or
slow learning in reference to the protagonist Sophia's problems achieving
orgasm - pre-
orgasmic. That would make sense for the film title but not the fictional shortbus club seen in the film which does not function solely for her purposes. Lastly, oppositional binary of shortbus being the inferior of the pair
long/
short masculine/feminine is similar to the joke in the name of the DUMBA collective - which is actually a feminised version of the the acronym DUMBO Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass.
