THE DRIVER

Nobody worth anything takes the bus in LA. I dropped my fare, all nickels and dimes, into the machine too quickly and they got jammed in the slot. “The sign says ONE at a time!” the driver scolded me. I hesitated. “Fuck you, you fat fuck!” I said finally. She looked me dead in the eyes, she was angry, really angry, but she curbed it. She knew what she was doing. She had been called a fat fuck before.

She pulled the bus over and opened the door. “Get off my bus!” She barked. I said fuck you again. No hesitation this time. The second one is always easier than the first.

She said she wasn’t going anywhere until I got off with her eyes. I called her bluff and didn’t move. She called mine. She radioed her superior, which by the looks and sound of this fat animal, could have been just about anyone in America. She told whoever was on the other end of the radio that she had an “abusive passenger.” She looked right at me and stressed “ABUSIVE” when she said it. I think she thought it would rattle me. Abusive is a heavy word. She miscalculated. Every girlfriend I’ve ever had has accused me of being verbally “abusive.” I handled it with the same familiarity and ease as she handled “fat fuck.”

With less effort than I would have guessed necessary, she managed to dislodge herself from behind the steering wheel and announced to all the passengers that we weren’t leaving until I got off. She pointed right at me so everyone would know I was the one to punch. Then she calmly got off the bus and stood on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette. “Touché, you massive pig,” I thought, “Touché.”

The other passengers, filthy monkeys every last one of them, all started yelling at me immediately. “Just get off!” they shouted. “We shouldn’t all have to sit here because of you!” One of them reasoned. I looked back at all their dirty faces. It was me against everyone. I knew I’d come out on top.

I tried to make eye contact with the skinny old Mexican man, who was now sitting in one of the handicapped accessible seats, staring straight ahead, in my mind, trying not to look at me. The ingrate. He was the one who got me into this in the first place.

We had been waiting at the bus stop together for about twenty minutes. He was in his eighties I guessed, but he could have been anywhere up to the oldest man alive. He had worn out doormat skin. He was wearing a little brown suit. He had some kind of old-man tear-duct malfunction that made him look perpetually misty eyed in a bloodhound way. If you could draw cartoons and some one told you to draw one of a cute little old man, you’d draw something that looked like him. He was no more than 5’2 and weighed 75 pounds, about as much as one of the bus driver’s knees.

I let him get on the bus before me, which took a while. When he got up to pay his fare he struggled to get his senior pass out of his wallet. His hands were shaking. The driver glared at him and sharply told him to hurry. After a few more seconds of fumbling with his wallet she shouted, “SIR, YOU CAN NOT MAKE EVERYONE WAIT FOR YOU! JUST STEP INTO THE BUS!” He, as always, looked like he was about to cry. I wanted to dive at her throat. I tried to get myself to call her a fat fuck right then and there but I couldn’t get the words to leap out of my mouth. I froze up. As I often do.

As much as I enjoy doing the right thing by calling someone a fat gorilla or a mindless cunt when the situation calls for it, I’m not the most natural at it. I usually just stay quiet and then I spend the rest of the day wishing I had said something. On the occasions that I do say something, for an hour afterward, my hands shake like I was trying to get my senior pass out of my wallet. But courage isn’t doing something when you’re not afraid. It’s doing something when you are.

The passenger’s chants of “get off the bus” were reaching a fever pitch. It was becoming more threatening, but in an empty way. I looked back at their dirty faces again. I knew none of these walking trashcans had anywhere pressing to be. They just like it when the bus keeps moving. I was taking the one thing they had from them. It was time for me to go.

As I passed the old man on my way off the bus I said, “Last time I stick up for you.” in a joking tone. He just kept staring straight ahead, refusing to look up at me. He didn’t speak English, or he was brain dead. He probably hadn’t even realized that the driver had yelled at him in the first place. “Stupid old Mexican.” I muttered.

I walked down the steps and readied myself for the big showdown. I wasn’t nervous now. I was ready to work. She was standing there ripping streams of toxic smoke deep down into her garbage dump of a body. There was a time I would have said something about lung cancer. Not now though. I’m a lot more mature than I once was. “You want to be careful with cigarettes.” I said casually. “People say when you quit, you tend to put on a few pounds. You wouldn’t want that.” She glared at me in blubbery confusion before telling me to go fuck myself. She waddled back up the steps and shut the door in what, she probably didn’t realize, was defeat.

As the bus engine came back to life a guy sitting in the back gave me the finger through the window. I mouthed the words “FUCK YOU” to him as the bus pulled away. Then I sat down on a bench. She was nice enough, or legally obligated, to have left me at another bus stop. I looked down the street and saw there was already another bus, full of potential victories, coming, off in the distance. My Tuesday was officially underway.