Tales from the Bus...
In honor of the season, it's time for a terrifying new edition of Tales from the Bus.
In some ways riding the bus, in and of itself, is an indicator of the criminally odd. For instance, I ride the bus, and then I come home and clip hyena ears to my panzer cap and feed my rattlesnake while wondering why the hell I suddenly remember the lyrics to the Captain Vegetable song from Sesame Street. Coincidence? Of course, I've had an acquaintance disagree with me on this… during a bus ride to Goleta for our live-action roleplaying game. I rest my case. But on the bus there are those who have passed through odd and lost sight of it completely. They are guerrilla soldiers in a war with reality. You can know them just by seeing them… if you know how to see. They ride amongst us. They are… The Buslings.
Bubblegum Mickey: A puffy, middle-aged man boards the bus one day, wearing a white t-shirt one size too small. Plastered over its curvy surface is Mickey Mouse from Fantasia. In nature, some animals have bright yellow stripes or a red hourglass to warn you to stay away from them. On the bus, they wear Disney shirts. Quickly I stare forward and raise my camouflage of ignorance, but not before a clean-cut passenger on the opposite end of the bus makes eye contact with him. Wrong move. Spotting the weakest member of the flock, Mickey calls out his slightly defunct greeting to the only man who acknowledges him, across a 15 foot gap with a dozen people between them. The man returns the greeting sheepishly, and Mickey is now ready to spring his ambush. "Do you want gum?" he asks. "Excuse me?" replies the confused man… another false move. The correct answer to any question posed on the bus is automatically "no," unless that question is about knowing Jesus, for ever-present, ever-listening, the buslings lie in wait for the ancient incantations that will give them license to converse with the living. Now Mickey has justification to explain his gum, and physically closes in on his prey to do just that. Instinct takes over the man as he senses the impending interaction. "No! No, no thank you," he spits out before it's too late. Narrowly thwarted, Mickey soaks into the nearest seat to gnaw his gum in solitude. The man shall rejoin the flock and live another day. For the rest of our journey Mickey plays with his gum, pulling it out of his mouth and stretching it between his fingers, as if taunting us all with the Gum Which Was Not to Be.
Drum Solo: I saw him sitting at a distant bus stop bench. At first I thought he was having a seizure; franticly throwing his arms in the air and stomping his feet. Should I be calling an ambulance? But no, he was actually playing a set of imaginary drums; pedals, cymbals, and all, next to a small woman pretending to be someplace else. I came back in 10 minutes and he was still there, going full bore in the blazing sun. Lord knows how long he had been going before I arrived. I admit, I wonder what it must be like to have no shame whatsoever. I think the key is passing a certain threshold of obviousness where people just give up hope.
Unamolester: A squadron of young children clamor to the front of the bus. The lead child asks the driver to stop and let them off. "That man is touching kids" she says loudly, pointing to the very back. I suppose it's a sign of the times that children even understand what that means. I look back. Centered squarely in the aisle-facing rearmost seat is a man in aviator glasses who looks eerily like that famous sketch of Ted Kaczynski, but without the hoodie. He sits still, calmly, without any reaction as if the girl is pointing to someone else, despite that he is starkly alone at the back of the bus. The girl repeats her accusation about the "man who smells like beer," and adds that he put his hand on another girl's shoulder and shoved her. However, the driver's last stop is already about to come up, and when it does the children make a final appeal to the driver and scamper away with haste. Meanwhile the man silently rises from his seat and strolls out. Was it real? The children seemed excited and yelping; was it a game or is that just how children who can't grasp the gravity of the situation are? To be sure, I spy on him from the corner of my eye to see if he would follow them and try to do something (in which case I would need to beat his bitch-ass to death), but he turns into the bus station and disappears.
Bus Stop Greeter: I passed him near a bus stop on the street, and I immediately had to stop. He was clearly a hobo, but he wasn't about to let that drag him down. For at every poor cow-eyed tourist who got off the bus at this stop - his stop - he would shriek the most enraged obscenities at them, stamping on the sidewalk with absolute hatred, like he was going to kill them. It was so violent I put my hands in my pockets to verify that yes, I did bring pepper spray and a knife, and planned how I would use them after he inevitably ripped open someone's skull with his teeth and infected them with the hobo virus, turning them into a bloodthirsty hobo too. But no such thing happened, and as the last tourist fled his benchy domain his screams turned merely to seething murmurs. Say what you will, but I think this man provides a valuable orientation service for out-of-towners that you just can't get from a pamphlet.
Stabby, the Lost Busling: I could've sworn I'd posted this one before, but apparently he's escaped my literary clutches all this time. I encountered him long ago, back when I used the Los Angeles bus "system." My computer remembers it like it was yesterday… The bus had made a routine stop, as it did semi-routinely, when there was a sudden commotion at the front. I couldn't see well from the back seat, but people were shouting and crowding together. The bus driver stepped in to break things up, and of the passengers was exiled to the back of the bus, with me. Taking my life in my hands, I initiated conversational procedure to ask him what happened. Apparently someone knocked over an old man while boarding the bus and didn't apologize, and this guy, mass-transit avenger, took it upon himself to mete out justice. Now, the guy who knocked over the old man also happened to be retarded, but Stabby thought that was no excuse, and he was about to "throw hands" with the 'tard if it weren't for that meddling bus driver. To emphasize this, he pulled a knife out of his pants. "Never leave home without it!" he said, and then flicked it open and closed while stabbing the air in front of him and making low-budget karate noises ("Hwaaaa! Chyaaaa!"). Yes: he was going to stab a retarded guy on the bus for second-hand revenge. I smiled and brushed my coat aside to show my own pocketknife, in part to imply sympathy and in part to imply threat. My stop came up soon, and I escaped without any undue handicapped violence.
Dubiously honorable mention
- The woman that another woman accidentally started a conversation with who wouldn't stop talking about her expenses and how awful everything in the world was, even as she received only monosyllables and nods in response.
- The elderly woman who talked to. Herself in. Gaps about her digest. Ive Functions. At some point she realized she was on an extremely wrong bus and had to get off in a minor panic.
- A slightly wobbly, cross-eyed man rambling in alternating Spanish and English to no one about the days of the week. He would enthusiastically chant the names of random streets in an equally random inflection and selectively replace 'D' sounds with 'Zs' (e.g. "Canon Perdido" becomes "Can-an Per dee-ZO!"), while sitting next to a woman with a face like an angry ham.
In some ways riding the bus, in and of itself, is an indicator of the criminally odd. For instance, I ride the bus, and then I come home and clip hyena ears to my panzer cap and feed my rattlesnake while wondering why the hell I suddenly remember the lyrics to the Captain Vegetable song from Sesame Street. Coincidence? Of course, I've had an acquaintance disagree with me on this… during a bus ride to Goleta for our live-action roleplaying game. I rest my case. But on the bus there are those who have passed through odd and lost sight of it completely. They are guerrilla soldiers in a war with reality. You can know them just by seeing them… if you know how to see. They ride amongst us. They are… The Buslings.
Bubblegum Mickey: A puffy, middle-aged man boards the bus one day, wearing a white t-shirt one size too small. Plastered over its curvy surface is Mickey Mouse from Fantasia. In nature, some animals have bright yellow stripes or a red hourglass to warn you to stay away from them. On the bus, they wear Disney shirts. Quickly I stare forward and raise my camouflage of ignorance, but not before a clean-cut passenger on the opposite end of the bus makes eye contact with him. Wrong move. Spotting the weakest member of the flock, Mickey calls out his slightly defunct greeting to the only man who acknowledges him, across a 15 foot gap with a dozen people between them. The man returns the greeting sheepishly, and Mickey is now ready to spring his ambush. "Do you want gum?" he asks. "Excuse me?" replies the confused man… another false move. The correct answer to any question posed on the bus is automatically "no," unless that question is about knowing Jesus, for ever-present, ever-listening, the buslings lie in wait for the ancient incantations that will give them license to converse with the living. Now Mickey has justification to explain his gum, and physically closes in on his prey to do just that. Instinct takes over the man as he senses the impending interaction. "No! No, no thank you," he spits out before it's too late. Narrowly thwarted, Mickey soaks into the nearest seat to gnaw his gum in solitude. The man shall rejoin the flock and live another day. For the rest of our journey Mickey plays with his gum, pulling it out of his mouth and stretching it between his fingers, as if taunting us all with the Gum Which Was Not to Be.
Drum Solo: I saw him sitting at a distant bus stop bench. At first I thought he was having a seizure; franticly throwing his arms in the air and stomping his feet. Should I be calling an ambulance? But no, he was actually playing a set of imaginary drums; pedals, cymbals, and all, next to a small woman pretending to be someplace else. I came back in 10 minutes and he was still there, going full bore in the blazing sun. Lord knows how long he had been going before I arrived. I admit, I wonder what it must be like to have no shame whatsoever. I think the key is passing a certain threshold of obviousness where people just give up hope.
Unamolester: A squadron of young children clamor to the front of the bus. The lead child asks the driver to stop and let them off. "That man is touching kids" she says loudly, pointing to the very back. I suppose it's a sign of the times that children even understand what that means. I look back. Centered squarely in the aisle-facing rearmost seat is a man in aviator glasses who looks eerily like that famous sketch of Ted Kaczynski, but without the hoodie. He sits still, calmly, without any reaction as if the girl is pointing to someone else, despite that he is starkly alone at the back of the bus. The girl repeats her accusation about the "man who smells like beer," and adds that he put his hand on another girl's shoulder and shoved her. However, the driver's last stop is already about to come up, and when it does the children make a final appeal to the driver and scamper away with haste. Meanwhile the man silently rises from his seat and strolls out. Was it real? The children seemed excited and yelping; was it a game or is that just how children who can't grasp the gravity of the situation are? To be sure, I spy on him from the corner of my eye to see if he would follow them and try to do something (in which case I would need to beat his bitch-ass to death), but he turns into the bus station and disappears.
Bus Stop Greeter: I passed him near a bus stop on the street, and I immediately had to stop. He was clearly a hobo, but he wasn't about to let that drag him down. For at every poor cow-eyed tourist who got off the bus at this stop - his stop - he would shriek the most enraged obscenities at them, stamping on the sidewalk with absolute hatred, like he was going to kill them. It was so violent I put my hands in my pockets to verify that yes, I did bring pepper spray and a knife, and planned how I would use them after he inevitably ripped open someone's skull with his teeth and infected them with the hobo virus, turning them into a bloodthirsty hobo too. But no such thing happened, and as the last tourist fled his benchy domain his screams turned merely to seething murmurs. Say what you will, but I think this man provides a valuable orientation service for out-of-towners that you just can't get from a pamphlet.
Stabby, the Lost Busling: I could've sworn I'd posted this one before, but apparently he's escaped my literary clutches all this time. I encountered him long ago, back when I used the Los Angeles bus "system." My computer remembers it like it was yesterday… The bus had made a routine stop, as it did semi-routinely, when there was a sudden commotion at the front. I couldn't see well from the back seat, but people were shouting and crowding together. The bus driver stepped in to break things up, and of the passengers was exiled to the back of the bus, with me. Taking my life in my hands, I initiated conversational procedure to ask him what happened. Apparently someone knocked over an old man while boarding the bus and didn't apologize, and this guy, mass-transit avenger, took it upon himself to mete out justice. Now, the guy who knocked over the old man also happened to be retarded, but Stabby thought that was no excuse, and he was about to "throw hands" with the 'tard if it weren't for that meddling bus driver. To emphasize this, he pulled a knife out of his pants. "Never leave home without it!" he said, and then flicked it open and closed while stabbing the air in front of him and making low-budget karate noises ("Hwaaaa! Chyaaaa!"). Yes: he was going to stab a retarded guy on the bus for second-hand revenge. I smiled and brushed my coat aside to show my own pocketknife, in part to imply sympathy and in part to imply threat. My stop came up soon, and I escaped without any undue handicapped violence.
Dubiously honorable mention
- The woman that another woman accidentally started a conversation with who wouldn't stop talking about her expenses and how awful everything in the world was, even as she received only monosyllables and nods in response.
- The elderly woman who talked to. Herself in. Gaps about her digest. Ive Functions. At some point she realized she was on an extremely wrong bus and had to get off in a minor panic.
- A slightly wobbly, cross-eyed man rambling in alternating Spanish and English to no one about the days of the week. He would enthusiastically chant the names of random streets in an equally random inflection and selectively replace 'D' sounds with 'Zs' (e.g. "Canon Perdido" becomes "Can-an Per dee-ZO!"), while sitting next to a woman with a face like an angry ham.