The Wheels on the Bus

I would be all for doing this sign business if it was a real sign that I could get posted somewhere along Sunset Blvd. so that I could see it on my commute to work. It would say, "The Lord Is Telling You to Learn to Drive."

It's true. Just as soon as I remarked to my mother that "the public transit situation is working out a lot better than I'd thought it would," it started to get a whole lot of shitty. I'm sure I cursed myself by making such a remark. You know how it is. Saturday morning, I'm not going to lie to you, I was in a little bit of a weakened state to begin with, due to the late-night movie-and-Two-Buck-Chuck marathon. I left the house extra early to get to work, meaning I allowed 80 minutes for the trip instead of 60, because the bus isn't as frequent on the weekend and I didn't want to miss one, wait 20 minutes for the next one, and end up late. I work for the male Leslie, so it goes without saying that lateness is frowned upon.

You know what? That's a really stupid phrase, "it goes without saying," because in order to use it you have to say the thing that is supposedly implied, so it does not at all go without saying.

Anyway, so I got on the bus, which was packed and I was lucky enough to get a seat, but the ride seemed to be taking forever. I'm pretty sure the driver stopped at anything that was a bus stop, and not just the stops designated for that bus, so it had been almost 45 minutes and we weren't even halfway down the stretch of Sunset between my house and the Fairfax stop where I catch yet another bus that takes me the rest of the way. I had my iPod on, so as not to accidentally imply that I would welcome any sort of interaction with anyone else on the bus, so I didn't initially realize there was quite a hubbub up in front of the bus, but soon enough, everyone was staring and gaping so I had to take notice. Up front, there was this old guy in a windbreaker and one of those straw Arnold Palmer golf hats. He didn't look like a homeless or a mental but he was ranting at this other guy sitting up front, this black guy in dress slacks and a button-down shirt, spewing all kinds of racist things, things so awful that I can't even type the dialogue with euphemisms in place of the words he used. When I craned my neck, I saw that not only was this guy not provoking the old man in any way, but he was also sitting with his two kids, a boy and a girl who looked to be about 5 and 6. This didn't go on much longer before the bus driver pulled the bus over and announced that "this is not the way you speak to people on my bus. This is a family wagon and if you can't comply with that, then you can get off my bus and wait for the next one."

Unfortunately, the bus driver was also black, so all this did was cause the old golf hat man to unleash a racist tirade on him, at which point the bus driver, with the help of a couple male passengers, had to physically extricate the old man from the bus. All this took about 20 minutes, and that, coupled with the bus' unnatural slowness, caused me to be 15 minutes late. The excuse, "sorry I was late, there was a racist that had to be ejected from the bus" was not met with a lot of sympathy or belief. 

As if the trip to work wasn't bad enough, on the way home, an old man insisted on touching his leg to mine aggressively and when I noticed that he was also rubbing his crotch I elected to move, but alas, I was in the inside seat so I had to pass in front of him to get out of it and he scooted forward so that I had the whole Fight Club dilemma of crotch or ass. I decided on ass, and he touched it on my way out of the seat. 

Sunday (which was Pride, as you may have been aware) there were a couple of wasted, foul-mouthed, beer-swilling guys sitting in the back of the bus. They were not gays, so they had no excuse for the public drunkenness, and they were commenting on the body parts of every woman who got on the bus. They weren't even drinking out of paper bags or anything, they just had their Heinekens right out in the open! Where, I ask you, was the kicking-off bus driver then? I love feeling like public scrutiny and perhaps assault might be possible on my morning bus ride. In all my years of riding the subway in New York, I have never been so skeeved out than by those three trips in that 48-hour period.

So obviously, this is a sign. And you know it's always good to do what the Lord says (is it a capital "t"? The Lord? Whatever)

*Puerco*