Tuesday, June 13, 2006
conversatin’
Immigrant protest day promised an unusual commute downtown. Market Street would be blocked by a parade and the weirdness just seemed to be flowing upstream, right into the Richmond. When I got to the stop where I board, there were lots of people already waiting impatiently. Among them, a harbinger: a middle-aged man, neatly dressed in white shirt and pale linen trousers; he had pissed himself prodigiously and stood, legs akimbo, drying himself slowly in the fresh breeze. Please, I thought, don’t let me be stuck riding next to him.
It took another ten minutes for the bus to come. Though it wasn’t a Limited, it didn’t seem prudent for me to keep waiting, so I got on - as luck would have it, right behind Mr Peepants. Unwilling to endure his immediate proximity, I pushed past him when he decided to stop and occupy a spot halfway back. Moving to the rear of the bus, I found lots of spaces to sit. There was even that most propitious seat - one row before the back bench, with the wheelwell footrest. I took it, noticing that on the bench behind me - directly behind me - was an older man sprawled comfortably, wearing jeans and a light jacket. He seemed to be a typically sketchy rider of the 38 regular line. Next to him was an empty seat, and next to that, in the middle, sat a sullen, sleepy teen. Then another empty seat, and a distinguished elderly gent with rich dark skin and a whiskery white beard in the far corner.
Across the aisle, a little ahead of me, on an inward facing bench, were an attractive young man and woman who’d boarded at the same stop as I had, both in white pants and white “Brazil” t-shirts. They spoke animatedly in Portuguese, riding along with us in their own little linguistic world.
The bus started rolling and quite quickly I smelled something sour: the stench of the 38 rider. It was a heady combination of powerful BO and cheap alcohol - gin, I guessed, or maybe vodka. Within a few blocks I’d figured out it was the guy right behind me. Oh, joy. If history was any guide, he’d be there all the way downtown.
After seven blocks, ol’ Tinkletrousers got off the bus. Now I could see it had all been a ploy to get me to sit near the stinky guy. He was certainly putting out a powerful stench, but that was apparently just the beginning. Now that I could see the extent of the machinations that the fates had been willing to undertake to toy with me, I suspected that this guy had even more to offer than just a trigger for my olfactory gag reflex.
As Mr Whiz exited, two young women got on, light of frame and pleasing to the eye. They strolled all the way to the back bench and one quickly took the furthest seat available from the reeking drunkard. The only seat left there for her friend was the one between the old stinkpot and the slumping youth. She recognized the questionable rectitude of them both, and stood, vacillating: should she take a seat between the sketchmeister and the slumberthug, or remain standing, like a pud?
The old drunk dude cut through the confusion. “Aay, yawanna cumovahea?” Everyone around internally drew back, uncomfortable and anxious. Conversations paused, even those in other languages. The old guy’s voice was garbled, as if mashed with a pharmacist’s pestle; his breath was 90 proof. Nobody moved. “Ohgwan - ahayn gunnabychu. Doanchuwanna sidugetha? Cumonguy, yuotta slydit ovahea.” He was now urging the teenager two seats away to rouse himself and move closer, so the two women could have adjacent seats. I began to exchange little glances with the other riders.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the kid slumped into action and shifted over. The woman still standing installed herself in the newly vacated slot, cheek and jowl with her friend. “Thank you,” she said demurely.
“Ha! Tainuttin. Peeplwanna sidugetha. Peeplegotta c’oparay. Weyallin th’buztugetha. Ha!” He mumbled cheerfully at her over the lap of the young guy who was again apparently comatose. His drunken stumbling words, on their own, were not evidence of any particular incapacity, but I could sense, as he paused for a few moments, that he was just gathering steam. And indeed, soon enough he started mumbling again, low and steady, in a stream of unintelligibilities that seemed to involve his money, his baby, his babymama, shooting hoops, and people just being friendly and getting along - a rambling monologue that slowly built in tempo and volume till we were marinating in his boozy exhalations.
A big tough-looking guy got on at Diviz and clomped back toward us. He had a patchy beard and wore a maroon jersey with a big gold 8 on it, and he planted his ridership down across from the Brazilians, with whom I had been exchanging looks of mixed amusement and discouragement. The big guy quickly sized up the situation, taking in the scene with hooded eyes, and scowling at the guy behind me.
His monologue continued for a few more stops. Then, the sleepyteen did something dramatic that totally changed the social physics at the back of the bus: he got up and left. Now there was just open air between the old rambling drunk and the lovely young ladies. I felt him shift in his seat and focus his frayed attention on the nearer one.
He opened with, “Hauyaduintheahunni?” A collective gasp was substantially suppressed. I locked eyes with the Brazilians and with the older gent at the far corner. The young woman, the object of the lush’s attention, remained wisely silent, looking steadfastly ahead. Her friend’s revulsion, however, was almost palpable.
“Aayhunni, yuuokay. Thasokay. Yuudonneedabe tokkinnohau. Iain gunabychu. Thas’awri. Iain’nuthin. Buhreeleynau, wuddaya wuhn’me tuhdu. Ay’jus canvusatin’. Ayjus lykta canvusayt. So - unh - wheayagoin?”
She then made her single, fatal mistake - I could feel it through the back of my head: she made eye contact. I suddenly felt the tide turn. The sot shifted in his seat. “Whuzzat? Wheayagoin?”
“All the way downtown.”
“Whuzzat? Hy’stree?”
“No, all the way downtown. Market Street.”
“So-okay, hau ol’ahya?”
A brief pause. This was a very sudden shift into a highly personal matter. Destinations, those were public knowledge. You couldn’t hide where you got off. But your age? That was something altogether different. Then: “Thirty.” An answer. An honest one. Older than I’d expected. Her friend was outraged.
“Why you tell him that?”
“A. A. A. Is’okay. Is’okay.”
“No it is not okay; you stinky an’ gross an’ it’s no respect to even talk to you.”
“Nau, tha’s jus’mean. You sayinthiz, an’ih jus’tuh hurmi. Hur’mifeelinz. S’jus’hurfuh. Hurfuh.”
“Well, I’m sorry.”
“Thazokay. Thazzokai. Aaa, Ste’yun!” He’d turned his attention to the big guy with the maroon jersey, the jersey with Steve Young’s number on it.
They big guy glowered at him. “Do not be givin’ me no crazytok now. Now is not the right day an’ I’m the wron’ guy. Jus’ keep yer crazytok to yerself.”
“I juz’lyk Ste’yun...”
“NO crazytok. Now it ends.”
The drunk dude fell back in his seat and sighed odiferously, and then suddenly realized: “Aaa, thizi Hy’stree. Ahm ge’en ovhea. Lemme thru. Lemmethuu.”
Everybody eagerly got out of his way. He stumbled to the already-closing doors and pitched himself forward into the stairwell, punching his way through with clumsy grace. The air in his wake smelled like plastic-bottle vodka and ass.
The rest of us looked discreetly around, relaxing our vigilance a few degrees. I leaned slightly forward, sensing a fraternity, and spoke to big #8: “Good answer there, about the crazytok.”
“Yeah,” he replied, “you gotta stop these things quick or they get outta hand.” I nodded a concurrance and he sat back - but soon he leaned forward again, toward his neighbors across the aisle. “Y’all Brazilian?,” he asked the couple in white. They looked briefly at each other, sizing him up. Unscented, freshly laundered and respectably shod – he could be dangerous but he seemed safe, so the woman answered affirmatively. “I was in Rio last winter,” he confided with enthusiasm, “for a jazz festival. Saw Gilbero Joao and Luciana Souza. Man that Gilberto is the shit. He be like the Brazilian Sinatra.” They then continued to speak together cheerfully for some time, about music and geography and heredity and the slave trade and politics and weather, till the bus had to stop and let us off way out at Taylor because of the demonstrations.
We stepped down in front of the Columbia Hotel (the first choice for all your SRO needs) on a portion of O’Farrell street that partakes equally of Union Square and the Tenderloin. Three men, reclined on the sidewalk, greeted us. They leaned against the grimy hotel wall, shaking dirty cardboard cups, scratching, and mumbling to each other through their respective whiskers. Passing them, I yanked the brim of my cheap generic baseball cap down against the sun.
“Nice hat!,” one of them shouted at my back. I turned and gave him a grim grin, and a hand gesture that was both acknowledgement and dismissal. I’d had enough crazytok already that day. Plus, I was still quite a ways from work and it looked like I’d be late. But at least, as I’d anticipated, I had been well-entertained.