The 40
Tonight I will tell you a story of the guh-guh-ghetto-est of all bus lines in Southern California.
The Metro Local Line 40 bus goes east to west (and back again) on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It runs nearly all night through some of the sketchiest, lowest income areas of South Los Angeles, Hawthorne and Culver City. So at 4 in the morning, you're riding with gangstas, ex-cons, hard working folk, hardly working folk, underage drinkers, lovers, narcs, the homeless, 24 hour fastfood joint managers, pimps and, yes, hos.
There's a lot of silence punctuated by snores, screams, sighs, sobbing and other things that start with "S" and end badly. It's so trashy you just have to laugh. You won't be able to help it. The schadenfreude doesn't creep in, it pays fare and rides with you, all night long. Then it starts singing loudly about women and booze.
I was on the 40 really early this morning when a tall black woman sashayed up the aisle in a coat, jeans and rainboots, and tried to give me a lap dance. She just pointed her butt at me and tried to grind down on my lap.
It happened in slow motion in my head, addled as it was by lack of food and sleep. I heard someone's footsteps clanking on the floor towards me from the left so I pull my feet in to let them pass without looking up. A boot-clad leg swings past my shins, the body attached to the leg does a quick left turn and suddenly a butt comes into view. I'm not going to lie, my brain on automatic reacts a certain way when a female butt makes an attempt to sit on my lap: it clears the way and just lets it happen. It's a good thing that I can still trust the WTF centers in my brain though because they usually move faster than the rest of me. My right hand shot up and lodged in her lower back stopping her from getting any closer to my junk.
All I could muster at that hour and level of bewilderment was "Seriously, go sit down somewhere else."
It actually took her an uncomfortable amount of time to give up on trying to go all Lil Kim on me. Imagine that tableau for a minute; I'm sitting there with one outstretched arm keeping a fully dressed woman from inexplicably trying to buttshake me into the threadbare bus seat.
She walked away without a word after a few seconds, sits down at the back of the bus. She gets down a few stops after, at which point the bus driver laughs out loud and exclaims, "Only on the 40!"
After the incident I wondered, of course, what exactly the fuck. Was she high? Drunk? Crazy? Just looking for a good time? Weighing all the evidence, I have come to the hypothesis that she is a freelance stripper. She's an entrepreneur. If beggars can illegally panhandle on the Metro, why can't out of work exotic dancers, pimp-slapped just as badly by the bad economy as any trade worker, try to make a few extra bucks on the commute. I mean, come on, the poles are BUILT IN.
The Metro Local Line 40 bus goes east to west (and back again) on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. It runs nearly all night through some of the sketchiest, lowest income areas of South Los Angeles, Hawthorne and Culver City. So at 4 in the morning, you're riding with gangstas, ex-cons, hard working folk, hardly working folk, underage drinkers, lovers, narcs, the homeless, 24 hour fastfood joint managers, pimps and, yes, hos.
There's a lot of silence punctuated by snores, screams, sighs, sobbing and other things that start with "S" and end badly. It's so trashy you just have to laugh. You won't be able to help it. The schadenfreude doesn't creep in, it pays fare and rides with you, all night long. Then it starts singing loudly about women and booze.
I was on the 40 really early this morning when a tall black woman sashayed up the aisle in a coat, jeans and rainboots, and tried to give me a lap dance. She just pointed her butt at me and tried to grind down on my lap.
It happened in slow motion in my head, addled as it was by lack of food and sleep. I heard someone's footsteps clanking on the floor towards me from the left so I pull my feet in to let them pass without looking up. A boot-clad leg swings past my shins, the body attached to the leg does a quick left turn and suddenly a butt comes into view. I'm not going to lie, my brain on automatic reacts a certain way when a female butt makes an attempt to sit on my lap: it clears the way and just lets it happen. It's a good thing that I can still trust the WTF centers in my brain though because they usually move faster than the rest of me. My right hand shot up and lodged in her lower back stopping her from getting any closer to my junk.
All I could muster at that hour and level of bewilderment was "Seriously, go sit down somewhere else."
It actually took her an uncomfortable amount of time to give up on trying to go all Lil Kim on me. Imagine that tableau for a minute; I'm sitting there with one outstretched arm keeping a fully dressed woman from inexplicably trying to buttshake me into the threadbare bus seat.
She walked away without a word after a few seconds, sits down at the back of the bus. She gets down a few stops after, at which point the bus driver laughs out loud and exclaims, "Only on the 40!"
After the incident I wondered, of course, what exactly the fuck. Was she high? Drunk? Crazy? Just looking for a good time? Weighing all the evidence, I have come to the hypothesis that she is a freelance stripper. She's an entrepreneur. If beggars can illegally panhandle on the Metro, why can't out of work exotic dancers, pimp-slapped just as badly by the bad economy as any trade worker, try to make a few extra bucks on the commute. I mean, come on, the poles are BUILT IN.