So I was finishing out a quick phone conversation and getting ready to board the 102 for home when a spindly black teen-man clambered down the steps and got in my face.
"Wait up, people's comin' off," he commands, not that I need commanding. Wait for the people to get off the bus, then climb on.
Looks like a full bus. So I wait.
"Got any smokes?" he asks.
"Nope," I say. "Sorry."
"You not got any smokes, or do you not want to give me any?" he asks with a loaded "Fuck you, Whitey" tone.
Stay my fist, Lord. Stay my fist.
"Look at my mouth," I say. I stick out my gum. "I don't smoke. I chew gum."
I reach in the bag... for some gum. But before I get it...
"No need to get in my face about it, just askin," he says.
Bullshit, kid. You were more in my face than the half-gallon of pus and gore I had in there with my Michael Moore-sized boil. At at least antibiotics cured that little blister of goo.
Fuck it. Fuck him. He'll mouth off to someone who doesn't have self-control one day.
Someone who reaches for something other than gum.
I get on... people are standing, but there's an empty seat near the back. A girl's in the outer seat of a pair of seats.
When I see this kind of shit, it pisses me off. Especially on an SRO bus.
I walk up, she's oblivious. "Excuse me?" I ask as politely as I can.
She semi-pivots for me to slide in. The person in front of her had their seat back reclined way back, so it's a bit of a twist, but I drop into the seat, I then give my silent prayer as I always do.
"Lord, don't make me kill every motherfucking one of these cocksuckers. Tell 'em to behave and play nice, and may we get Downtown in one piece."
She eventually gives her seat up for some guy carrying a baby. Amazing.
Turns out she's from Canada, as I hear her chat with the jarhead next to her.
French Canadian. Blithering how Canada's great and dancing around her opinion that America isn't. Jarhead's polite.
After that, I tune out, write up my 100 word story for the day, and ponder the changes to templates I'd need to do to prepare for my indoctrination into the Pajamaheedin.