BACK OF THE BUS

Everyone rides the subway in New York. Only poor old cripples ride the bus. But I just moved from yuppies-everywhere Park Slope to yuppies-by-the-water-and-largest-projects-in-Brooklyn-everywhere-else Red Hook. I’m not too scared of the projects, but I don’t want to walk half an hour to the train. So: the bus. Once I saw a retarded guy in a safety helmet and once I saw my friend carrying a lot of foam and last night a white-beard told me where to find doughnuts and hookers near the Gowanus Canal. What would happen if I rode this crazy fucking demented bus around in a circle all day?

12:20 PM: Latina lady pants-suited in pink with hair dyed orange to “match.” Old black blind man dapper in a fedora and tweed. Out the window, waiting for the bus in the other direction: a black guy in a “Stop Snitching” shirt.

1:30: Latina teen all in pink with hair dyed … red. She can’t figure out how a Metrocard works. Now she’s agitated, stomping back and forth like it’s our fault.

2:04: The driver weighs about 400 pounds. On gets a Latino little person with greasy wavy shoulder-length hair in wraparound shades and a sleeveless “I [heart] New York” shirt whose arms are really muscle-y. Oh, nope: they’re just deformed.

2:21: Mr. Fat Driver goes on break. New driver’s hair is spotted white. I’ll call him Patches.

2:30: 19-year-old “elder” Sherman asks me to church. “You know we have a prophet here on earth?” The older elder (20?) has skin flecked with dried zit cream: white on white.

3:11: School’s out. Forty 12-year-olds are waiting. Two black girls start catfighting. Then: slap! Cops drag one off in cuffs while she puffs out her flat chest and screams.

3:16: “Chickenhead.” “You was talkin’ mad stuff.” “Scuse you. You ain’t gonna be cursing at her.” “When Juania catch her in the street by herself it’s over,” says one four-foot girl and slashes her hand across her throat. She bangs my seat and says politely, “Scuse me, sir.”

4:26: Mexicans are coming back from construction jobs drinking beer out of bagged bottles. They all get off, and it’s just me and a black guy in a skully passed out against the driver’s seat.

4:50: “Hello!!!” Patches yells at the drunk and bangs his seat. The drunk is startled and goes, “Sorry, sorry, sorry.”

4:51: Patches says: “That’s it for me, I’m done.” His bus’s sign switches to “NEXT BUS PLEASE,” and he pulls away.

4:51:30: The drunk wobbles down the street and back, mumbles, “Mumble, mumble, take a shit, mumble.” He picks his ear.

4:52: Mr. Fat shows up driving a new bus!

4:54: I board. Black women are coming home.

5:18: I ride around a while. My eyes sting and my mouth is dry.

7:05: I wobble home and take a shit, just like the drunk guy.

SAM FRANK

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