Thursday, November 13, 2008

Feel Me

I hopped the bus a little late last week and had to sit way in the back, but at least I still got an in-facing bench.  The back is where the action is, I told myself - where the young people congregate and excitement is born.  Whereas my old halfway-back seat is where the crabby grannies demand that I get up to give them the seat I’ve just gotten all warmed up for myself.  It was for the best, I told myself.  And then for some reason I took out my notebook.  Premonition is a funny thing, sometimes. 

Down in the raunchier part of town (and I mean that in the not-nice way), three thugs boarded.  All were young, maybe early 20s; all were dressed in jeans and sweats and seemed in excessively good cheer.  One wore wraparound shades; one had gold braces on his teeth; and one had big glassless frames on his face.  This glassless guy was really having a good time.  They were all laughing and grinning but glassless was loud, too - shouting, hooting, gesturing broadly and calling witness to heaven, or at least to whomever would listen to him, which was everyone in that crowded bus’ audience captivity chamber.  We were stuck there with him and I was going to hear everything he said, whether I wanted to or not. 

The three stood in the stepwell for the rear exit for several minutes, and the way they all huddled together with heads down roused my attention.  I suspected what they were doing but I couldn’t see clearly… but within a few moments I could tell by smell.  I was pretty sure no one had loosed an angry skunk on the bus.  That meant that the powerful scent of pine and biology that permeated the air was most likely caused by dank chronic.  That’s right, conservative blogosphere: I think these guys were rolling a joint.  Right there on the bus.  I didn’t know whether to chastise or applaud them but I chose the discreet path and kept my mouth shut and my eyes on my notebook.  They were having fun but I didn’t know if that could be counted on in the long term. 

Shortly after they had finished their craft project, glassless stepped up out of the stairwell and started waving his handicraft around.  It looked like a tiparillo, one of those skinny cigars that used to be advertised on television, but this time it was all made out of marijuana.  Glassless was shouting louder now, howling out his glee in the narrow bus aisle; his friends were content to smile and nod and shake their heads at him and at each other as he reached regular crescendos of hilarity.  He kept calling out to them, “my brothas,” “my cousins,” that sort of thing.  He kept introducing his ideas, and then self-confirming them, with the phrase “Can ya feel me?” He shuffled through his voluminous pockets, pulling out and examining what appeared to be dozens of small ziplock plastic baggies stuffed with dark green buds.  And as much as anything else, he talked politics. 

He was really excited about Obama, and he made no bones about it.  He shouted out how “the white - SO CALLED - house is appropriately placed.  It’s not in the middle of no nice condos and neighborhoods and shit; it’s in the ghetto.  It’s the capitol of the ghetto and it’s surrounded by niggas!  It’s all niggas up in there!  Tha’s why it’s appropriately placed!  Ya feel me, my cousins!” He insisted “Barak Obama my daddy but he don’ know it yet!  He went and got with my momma and she didn’t never tell him!  And now he’s got me and I gonna walk right up to that white house and bring all my shit!  Time to play some cards in the Oval Office!  Time to throw some craps in the ballroom, ya feel me?  Ya feel me, my brotha!”

He went on and on, with crudeness and profanity, waving that enormous joint around and threatening always to light it up right there.  His friends said nothing, egging him on with their smiles, but bothering no one.  But glassless, he was classless, and he made a lot of people uncomfortable.  And elderly woman with her two granddaughters sat near me and was complaining quietly to herself, about how it was disrespectful, that there were children present, that they didn’t know how important it was that a man of color had been elected.... she herself was of an age to have experienced institutionalized racism in person, and I saw the pain in her eyes as she saw young black men behaving so fecklessly.  “Don’ laugh, girls,” she impotently admonished them.  “He’s just nothin’ and nobody.  You know we don’ talk like that a-tall.”

But in the end I don’t think that glassless was as impertinent as he sounded.  He didn’t have a vocabulary for it, didn’t have the experience to make a cozy context for it, but I think he was genuinely proud to be able to disclaim about Barak Obama.  In his way he was paying homage, though he didn’t exactly know how.  But with that blunt fatty between his long delicate fingers, and those ridiculous empty frames surrounding tired eyes that had seen entirely too much, he couldn’t hold back his joy and he shared it with all of us as best he could.  “I don’ need to look up to no rap star no more - “ he crowed, “ - fukkin’ rappers are idiots.  They can go back where they come from.  I be lookin’ up to the presiden’ now.  I got somebody real to look up to.  You can feel me, cousins.  Feel that one.” And really, I think I could.

So, that was a bit of fun.  Now for the hovercraft full of eels:

In the Presidio, not far from where we used to run Cosmo off leash, there’s a forest rehabilitation project and all sorts of earthmovers and trail-layers.  But just 50 yards or so farther on, we found some little houses built of windfallen twigs in the downhill lee of larger trees.  Some were mere pup tents but some were pretty damn elaborate.  It was chilling to see them there, waiting for the return of their solitary dispossessed occupants, so I took a photo and perpetuated the discomfort:

Here’s Zach playing at one twig tent that had been started but not built up very far:

Changing gears quickly, here’s a photo of the nastiest sign I’ve ever seen for an open bar.  I think it’s in the window of the “Date Rape Tavern.” And yes, it does change colors randomly. 

Finally, as a burst of optimism at the tail end of what has turned out to be a somewhat glum post, I offer this: the sun setting down the Bush Street canyon, from my Market Street bus stop. 

Those days of sunlight when I leave work are now well behind me.  I think it’s time to hit that road and call it my own.  Have a delightful administration, now - ya feel me?