Friday, May 09, 2008
The Wet Fish
It is a wise fish who knows it is wet. some kind of famous damn proverb.
It was a humorless ride on a well-packed limited bus. Most of us were office and retail drones, jealously husbanding whatever strength we had left for the home stretch, cautiously entrusting each other to make it an easy ride for us all. Among us were a scattered handful of tourists - tall slim eurotypes, well-dressed with good skin and clear, cynical eyes. A pair of them took the floor in front of my in-facing bench, holding gracefully to a single steel pole and exchanging silently voluminous glances back and forth that made me feel crass and underdressed.
I was reading a fat paperback and, optimistically, had omitted to insert the ‘buds to my iPod, in view of the apparent discretion of the ridership. It was a nice change to immerse myself in the white noise of the bus engines instead of stuffing my ears with syncopated plastic plugs. Of course, it was not to last.
At Kearny there boarded a ragged man. He was tall and his belly swelled out dramatically above teetering legs and below a narrow chest and shoulders; a silvery van dyke spilled down from his grizzled chin over a ratty red sweatshirt, the beard seemingly as much spittle and food as hair. In the side pocket of his crusty cargo pants he’d secreted a plastic bottle that had once held soda but clearly, by the fumes that emanated from his every pore, now contained some low form of spiritous liquors. But his eyes were bright and cheerful and he came on board as if he were arriving at a frathouse reunion. To say the least, he did not fit in - and the least was the least that he said.
Swaying dangerously, he waded through the other standees, causing the elegant tourists in front of me to raise their eyebrows judgmentally. The shabby man didn’t go much further, stopping just a few feet past us on the other side of the long bus’ articulation, which was itself equipped with a pair of seats to either side. On those seats, opposite me and to my left, were sitting a young man and woman with stolid business-ready grimness etched deep on their features, clad incongruously in athletic garb: fresh sweatshirts and running shorts cut high on the thigh, their faces now gone from dour preoccupation to horrified revulsion. I hadn’t barely noticed them before, but the shabby man who now teetered beside them trained his bleary focus on them directly. “Heh - how ya doin’?” he cheerfully inquired, but received no response. “Ay com’ on, we’re all in this together, right? Right? He wouldn’t take “no answer “ for an answer. Each word he spoke filled the air with boozy vapors. The woman in the running shorts locked her grimace even more firmly in place, her eyes glowering with disdain and aggravation, even as the shabby man kept tossing off conversational gambits. “Y’r goin’ runnin’?”
The man in the running shorts then did something remarkable: he turned in his seat to the lush standing behind him and answered the question. I couldn’t hear the answer but it was clearly just what the shabby man had wanted to hear. “Tha’s righ’? Fantastic! Fantastik! Tha’s great!! You know, I usta run track! High school champ!” with this he gestured with knowing dismissivness to his ruined physique, his filth-stiffined clothes, his general uncleanliness. “Hah!,” he laughed crudely, looking around the bus for confirmation. Finding none, he roared it again to the ceiling, “Hah!!”
By now I was fishing in my coat for the iPod again, unwrapping the ‘buds and readying myself to put a layer of sound between him and me. The sophisticates before me watched this operation with bemused approval. “Good zhoice,” the female half of them said, with a tacit, knowing nod from her confrere. All three of us glanced down to the voluble drunk. “I’d thought to leave them out this time,” I superfluously explained, “but it doesn’t seem such a great idea now.” The gym-short woman, beset by stench and blather, and further antagonized by her friend’s inaudible conversational goading of the drunkard short me a glance of icy rage. She couldn’t see anything to do but to ride it out for the time being. She wanted out, but she didn’t know exactly how to get there.
We were pulling up to the Powell Street stop, just three down from where he’d boarded, when the drunk snapped to attention. “Powell Street? Tha’s me! I gotta get out! Aw, I won’t have time to get to th’ door...” The bus was just creaking to a halt, the doors weren’t open yet - but there were a lot of people blocking the way. “Sure you can,” both the shorts-wearers assured him, a desparate hope barely masked in their voices. “Yeah?,” the sot looked fore and then aft, assessing his options. His past athletic prowess again aroused, he was rising on spindly legs to the challenge. “I won’ be able to make it back there,” he assessed frankly, looking back. “Try that one,” the shorts-wearers urged in an excess of helpfulness, pointing up the aisle in coincidental synchronization.
“Yeah, right,” said the driunk decisively; “G’by now have a good’en” - and with that he locked his wavering gaze on his destination and started pushing forward, bellowing “Comin’ Out!” to encourage those in his path to clear him some room as if they needed any encouragement. The frenchies in front of me wore a shared expression of relief and disgust as he made his odiferous, boisterous way past us.
He reached the doorwell as the doors began to slide shut on him, but he reclaimed some of his erstwhile athleticism in a diving reach to stop them. Repulsed as if by anti-magnetism, the otherwise apathetic commuters in his way leaped aside to give him access to the exit.
Laughing, roaring, tumbling, he blustered his way down the stairwell and out to a stretch of sidewalk lined with pricey boutiques and galleries and a five-star hotel. I glanced up to the french couple for a fraternal exchange of smirks; but they were having none of it, staring pointedly at their cuticles. The couple in the trackshorts were already spatting in the aftermath of their disparate responses to the wino. I didn’t need to put on the iPod anymore. People were going to leave each other alone from here on out.
A burst of hilarious laughter drew my attenion from those restful thoughts to the milling crowds outside. One man was its source - the newly-exited slob, who stood monumental at the busy bus stop, the foot traffic ignoring him as best they could. His arms were raised triumphantly overhead and his pants had fallen down; they lay in a heap at his ankles and his exhausted jersey barely covered the uppermost portion of a pair of wrinkled, overworn old black boxers that hung to mid-calf. He hooted his mirth to the impassive faces of the bus riders seated just a few feet from him on the other side of the impenetrable protection of a window. “Come on!,” he enjoined them. “Laugh!! It’s funny, isn’t it?!!”
And it was. So I, alone of all around me, did. Not only that, but it felt good, too.
