I'll Perform For You

Last night a woman in her 50s got on the 704 as I was heading home. She had a fake Louis Vuitton bag with a not-so-matching fake Louis Vuitton visor in that annoying rainbow pattern. Her hair was bleached beyond repair--almost snow white, but kind of yellowed like old paper, the consistency of straw made into cotton candy. It was long and sort of fascinating in how unnatural it looked.

She sat in the center of the bus on an inward facing seat. A couple of stops later a man, who'd I guess to be about the same age, got on the bus and stood next to her seat. Suddenly the bus lurched forward and he toppled a little before he got a hold of the bar next to him. He must have bumped her because suddenly I heard her screaming, "You just hit me! You should say you're sorry!" He just stared forward and ignored her. Then she screamed, "Oh, fuck you!!" He stood there for another minute before crossing the aisle and standing next to the seat opposite her.

Almost as soon as he steps away she starts fanning her hand in front of her face as though something smells really terrible. She mostly looks silly doing this because everyone knows that waving your fingers in front of your face three times isn't improving the conditions for your olfactory system.

Then she pulled out a bag of some sort of dried fruit or nuts. She threw them in her mouth one by one as quickly as possible and chewed with her mouth open. "Smack smack smack." In case you haven't figured it out, she was hard not to watch.

***

On the second leg of my trip home on the 217, I heard a guy behind me on the other side of the bus saying, "Pssst . . . hey! . . . Pssst!" I tried to ignore him, but I had sort of seen him out of the corner of my eye so I knew I couldn't really pull it off. I turned to him and he asked me about my septum piercing. The general "does it hurt?" question, of course. Then he's asking me why I got it and if I'm into pain. When I said, "It's jewelry," he got defensive and all, "I know it's jewelry!" Gah!

Then he pulls out a bootleg DVD of The Dark Knight and says, "Hey, look at this!" I try to be friendly and all, "Oh that's cool!" And then, the awesomeness--his reply: "Yeah, you know, I could come over to your place and perform it for you. I could put it in your DVD player with my shirt off and, you know leave you alone and let you watch it and all and then when you were done I could help you out however you wanted, you know." Uhhhh . . . "No, thank you." "Do you want to buy a copy?" "No, thanks!"