Not for reading.
Image taken from toothpastefordinner.com
Your Stop is Here
God, I hate riding the bus.
So many fucking queers.
I sit at the very back of the bus because I don't like people looking at the back of my head. I don't know if anyone really does that. I can't ever see them. I'd have to turn around and look and then I'd be a goddamn queer, too.
People are always staring at you in a way that is so goddamn eerie. With their eyes half-closed and their eyebrows perked up in the middle of their head - like you're some sort of green alien shit or something rotten they don't want to smell. Their noses perk up - I hate how they do that nose perk up thing.
There's some white guy sitting at the back of the bus talking really loudly to some blonde chick in a velvet track suit. He keeps one hand tucked neatly into his sweatpants and fumbles around at his crotch while the other hand cracks its rough knuckles on the seat cushion beside him. He strings off a list of fags and also niggas out of just one side of his mouth.
That must be the cool side.
No, it looks good, keep talking like that.
It doesn't seem like that girl is even listening to him. She looks a little too busy zipping and unzipping her track suit top so that just that right amount of tit spills out.
God, I hate girls.
The bus driver freaks the shit out of me. His hair is a knotted greasy fro-mullet and his eyebrows run up just in the middle. He smiles and he looks like a goddamn child-molesting elf. His voice sounds like a chick on steroids with a lisp.
If I had to drive buses, I'd start smoking ten more fags a day so I could sound like a fucking robot over the intercom.
There's always that weird old chick on the bus, too. Her fat spills over the sides of her thighs in disgusting slabs and the skin on her neck looks blotched from being stretched so tight around all that flabby bulk. I don't think she can turn her head for all the fat bunching up around her chin. Her eyes bug out in tiny black beads that sit nearer the sides of her head than the middle. She sits close the front and scratches her polyester pant legs with the chipped nails on her middle fingers. She always grunts something under her breath when people walk past her to get off the bus.
She's always on the bus. I wonder where someone like that would need to go every day. And what the hell is she saying under her breath? I feel her vile bug eyes following me even after I get off the bus.
Sometimes I look at people and wonder how they can stand to be themselves. How can you stand being so goddamn vile? How can you listen to your voice and stare at track-suit's tits and not want to shove your head in a wood-chipper? I wonder how they can sit there and look at the world and expect it to treat them like the fucking Pope when all they do is fondle themselves on the bus and grunt and stare at the back of my head.
Goddamn queers.
The Girl in the Green Dress
Hey, you.
Remember that one time we sat on the couch together? I don't think you knew my name then, but I could hear you laughing at what I said to Jaimie and her mom. Your knees are bony and you look really small under your baggy jeans when you sit down and sink on the couch like that.
I always liked really skinny boys anyway.
Remember that time I asked you what you thought of that poem I wrote for our English class? You said you thought I was a genius and I felt silly in my head like I'd just poked my nose into a jar of rubber cement and taken a deep breath in. I can't take compliments very well, but I get depressed without them.
If it doesn't make you smile I don't even want to write it.
Once I heard a song on the radio you sent Jaimie on a tape. I smiled because I thought of you laughing in your room listening to the tape but then I felt sick because you'd sent it to her instead of me.
She's really your friend. You don't talk to me that much anyway.
I still like to think of you smiling and laughing in your room with that music.
I bought a new pair of shoes because I thought they looked like shoes a girl would wear if she wanted you to notice her. I thought of a girl in a green sun dress and white pumps and I thought of her red lipstick and short haircut curling in around her cheeks. I think you'd notice her walking across the street from your work so I bought the shoes. I want to be her so you'll look out the window and wonder where I'm walking to. I want you to feel like a silly little boy taking my order when I walk into the cafe with the dress licking my knees and my bottom lip tucked into my mouth. I want you to get nervous when I smirk at you under my bob haircut and cat-eye glasses. You'll straighten your tie and wonder if I can tie cherry stems with my tongue.
And I can.
But I'm not her yet. It feels like a secret.
When you say something clever you smile and tap your lips with your fingers. I don't smirk. All I do is laugh quietly and stare at my lap. I can't look you in the face because then you might figure it out. You might catch me staring at your lips or our eyes might meet like the part in that old movie with the girl who goes to Paris and the man who falls in love with her by mistake. Then you'd look at me and see that I'd sit here and listen to you tell me clever things for hours and never get tired of it.
I want it to happen but not by mistake.
The pumps are sitting in their box in the middle of my room with the toxic little freshner packets tucked into the soles. I have the green dress and a day off on Friday. I got the car from Jaimie so I could drive downtown and shop for perfume and red lipstick in the morning then stop for tea at the cafe in the afternoon.
Jaimie says you always take a break when she drops by, so I hope you'll still want to take your break if I stop in instead of her.
I'm listening to that song again. Jaimie let me have that tape you sent her, she didn't like it much. I don't know how that is. I like it just because I know you sent it.
And I can see you in your room just smiling and laughing with that music.
And I shove my white pumps under my bed and start to feel sick again.