Thursday, August 28, 2008

Phat Farm Fresh

I didn’t usually ride the bus with anyone - fellow riders shared the space with me but not my company, by apparently mutal consent.  But this particular Wednesday I’d met up with Dave after work and he hopped the 38 to join me for my ride back home, where his wife and kids were waiting with mine for us to bring in some pizzas. By the time we boarded, the seats were all occupied; we eventually found our way to the back and stood a little aft of the rear stairwell to sway and chat our way home.  That’s a pretty good spot for keeping an eye on things, to the extent there are things upon which one’s eye might be kept - and on the 38, such things are not unheard-of.

We’d gotten well out toward the westside when a small posse boarded at the exit doors by which we were standing: four kids, no older than high school and some younger than that, dressed in regulation trademark t’s and oversize jerseys, all with sagging jeans; they ran along the sidewalk to the stairwell with the glee of children getting away with misbehavior.  Three, anyway, scampered up the steps; the fourth came more slowly and laboriously, elephantine in both movement and proportion.  Morbidly obese, he gulped air in exhaustion at the effort of catching his ride; his knees seemed to buckle in toward each other.  Sweat beaded unattractively on his swollen forehead.  His supersized t-shirt read “Phat Farm.” I thought the phrase had never seemed more accurate.

The big boy made it halfway up the three steps and then stopped, glaring skeptically at the crowd in the aisle.  With something less than perfect dignity he sank down and took a seat on the stairs, panting and wiping his brow with a massive hand.  The kids who’d come on with him stuck around near him, standing at the head of the steps in postures of studied casualness.  The three of them together probably weighed less than he did alone.

They all began to converse in the staccatto patois shared by youth around here regardless of their ethnicity, but shortly the big kid’s cellphone rang and with an expression of supreme inconvenience he fished the communications lozenge out from a pocket of his voluminous trousers.  That expression intensified as he glanced at the caller ID, and he began the conversation peremptorially and without pleasantries:

“Wotdefokyouwan’?  Yeah I’m busy, man I’m out.  I’m OUT!  Cuz I go out sometimes!  Cuz my dad sed I could!  FUCK!  Well I can’t!  I CAN’T!  FUK YOU, bitch!  FUK!  Cuz I got stuff to do!  STUFF!  FUK!”

The conversation continued in a similar vein for a few more minutes, expostulations and expletives in a thin bitter broth of pure negativity.  I couldn’t ignore him - he was too big and loud and immediate - but I couldn’t follow the conversation either.  All I could really tell was that I’d have hung up on him quite a bit earlier than how long he took to terminate the call with a curt snapping shut of his phone.  Disgust was inscribed unmistakeably on his enormous platter of a face as he crammed the phone back into his pants, and sweat still trickled in humid rivulets down his cheeks. 

The bus made its usual stops, lurching and shuddering into brief stillnesses; the crowd of riders circulated regularly and the rear exit doors were in steady use - or one of them was, anyway.  At each stop the friends of Phat Farm, as if by unspoken compact, hauled out and held the door open for departing passengers from curbside, then hauled back up and in again to their established spots for
the next segment of their ride. Phat Farm never moved, except to shake his head, sneering, and to cradle his beaded brow in his hands. 

Dave and I watched it all with shifting emotions.  I didn’t think much of PF’s behavior, and hoped he’d leave the bus before I had to circumnavigate him, but he was going nowhere (other than where the bus was taking him in the grandeur of his sour passivity).  Eventually we reached our stop and stepped out down the exit.  I tried to minimize contact with Phat but couldn’t help noticing, as I passed him on the other side of the stairwell, the acrid scent of his grimacing, perspiring enormity. 

Off the bus and back into the relatively fresh air of 6th Avenue (and when a KFC/Taco Bell’s offgassing is “relatively fresh” you know the alternative is pretty bad), Dave and I shared our thoughts.  “At first he irritated me,” Dave admitted, “but then I realized that he couldn’t have gotten any further on the bus if he tried.”

“You’re right,” I agreed, “and the strain on his knees was too much for him to ride standing anyway.  But still, I didn’t care for the way he spoke to his friends, or whoever called him.”

Dave countered, “He probably gets treated like that himself.  I can’t imagine it’s easy for a kid that big.”

“Maybe,” I replied.  “The kids with him didn’t treat him badly.  I’ve known some pretty big people.  Some of them were full of bitterness and some of them weren’t.  I can’t help but think that some of his anger is expressing itself in fat, and and some of that fat is expressing itself in anger.”

“Maybe,” Dave concluded equivocally.  Then we picked up our two pizzas and carried them six easy blocks home, where the wives were waiting for us with cold beer.  Supper was delicious and the kids frolicked gleefully.  We left Phat Farm to his own grotesque devices.  Priorities, people.

(typed on my brand new laptop, and remotely uploaded with > new wireless connection.  Damn but this is a cool millenium.