It Goes Deeper Than Race

By the time I had endured through most of the fiasco which was a further attempt, made today,

Japanese "mochi" cookies were in the food pantry box, out front; just as I had the reading of "The Japanese Art of Decluttering" on my menu...

to take the #62 bus out to Bullard Road and to make it there before the plasma place closed, I was in pretty good spirits, back in the Quarter.

First off: today there was an older black man on the bus, which was operating at about 50% capacity, with one person in every one of the two person seats; myself included, as I was there in one of them, representing Caucasians; and mostly just reading a book called: "falling leaves" (sic) by Adeline Yen Mah.

Then, when the bus was already about 7 minutes behind schedule because of a slowing of the traffic on Rt. I-10 which has been becoming almost a regular thing, lately; there was a commotion a couple seats ahead of me in the opposite row.

A 70-something black man had, I would have to guess, at least fallen asleep; or perhaps passed out. Maybe he had stopped breathig and/or his heart had stopped.

I am skeptical about the latter two contingencies because the lady in the seat alongside the old fellow started to yell for some kind of medical assistance, alerting the driver that this particular old black guy, who was kind of a smallish man, with some of that shrinkage attributable to his advanced age, and the loss of muscle mass which is purported to go with that -though I've seen quite a few individuals belie that particular belief...and plan to be one of them; but I digress.

So, the bus, which was already 7 minutes behind schedule, but could still have gotten me to the plasma place on time, had there not been this "medical emergency," reported by the passenger; and perhaps having thereby bound the driver, by duty, to call an ambulance, which would show up about 45 mintes after the bus had sat there; with the patient patiently waiting to be rescued. This was at a stop nearby which was a store that did not sell beer, I might add.

The next #62 bus came along; indicating that that one had fallen one whole bus behind, in regards to being on schedule. And, it came too late to get me to the plasma place. By then, a higher-up looking guy (because of his white button up shirt with some kind of official looking badge on it) had come along; who directed all us passenger to board the newly arrived #62; as the ambulance had not yet arrived for the guy, who was by then sitting up and chatting away with the people who had been wiping his head off with towels and feeding him water out of a bottle in a manner which must have reminded him of being a new born baby. I think, by then, he had snapped out of perhaps a nod off from perhaps even fentanyl; but seeing, as he did, after kind of coming to after almost an hour of waiting for an ambulance, how he had delayed a whole bus full of people, I think he began faking the seriousness of the instance of "going out" that had befell him.

"Turn that flag right side up!!"

By then, I had already made other plans. And, without having muttered: "Man, I'm out 50 bucks because of your fake-ass bull***t!" loud enough for the guy, or anyone else to hear me; I approached the white shirted guy with the badge and asked him if he would give me a transfer so I could just reverse direction and go home because at that point I had no hope of making it in time to where I was going.
"Sure," he said, and then led me to the cockpit, where a heavyset black lady who has been a bitch to me before, poked a button on the machine, and out came a transfer; which she handed to me; a transfer which would turn out to be useless.

All this is back-story to me being back in the Quarter after the equally cantankerous heavyset black lady piloting the #62 in the opposite direction, told me I would have to pay, after the transfer that had been provided me, through the agency of a higher up in a clean white shirt, wearing Khaki's and with a badge on his shirt.

I told this particular heavy-set driver where I had gotten the transfer; yet, she didn't budge. I'm sure she had heard about the medical emergency and, I at least thought that given the extraordinary circumstance of some old black guy "going out," would, at least let me ride on a transfer that heavyset driver #1 might have just pressed the wrong button on, when issuing.

So, I had to pay; but then when I got off, I went into the Quarter instead of hopping the next street car home. I found a very fat roach of some dank weed, confirmed that Tanya doesn't play on Tuesday nights by walking down Royal a ways, and then I basically am home smoking the roach,not having had my state of mind skewed towards the negative by having had what happened happen.

There was a young couple of what appeared to be lesbians in the Quarter, walking towards me to whom I tried to make light trivial conversation. They looked at me the same way that 80% of black people look at me out there; so I'm thinking it is either deeper than race; maybe because I look straight; or that it is race but includes some white people hating other whites upon the sight of them....

I'm just glad I have an extra day's expenses laid up, for just such a scenario. As it is I'm not busking because of breaking a string thaqt had already broken once...   

"Now I Hate All Black People; Just Because Of You!"

The post title is what I ultimately said to the old kind of skinny black guy after about his 118th "F*** You!" directed at me.

See the jackass. See The Bus. See Daniel board the bus.

The first 100 or so were uttered during the ride on the #62 bus.

I had been responsible in curtailing the busking activities right around sundown. I don't even think we were there to see it darken enough for me to have utilized the spotlight.
So, I was up and ready to catch a #62 bus on a Sunday; a day that they run less frequently. I have squandered 2 bonuses from the plasma place -awarded if you show up twice within a given week; because of oversleeping to the point where a dash across the street to make sure I caught the very next one; and then an anxiety ridden street car ride where, in a nightmare, it would have to let on a person in a wheelchair at every stop from Sacred Heart to The Joy Theater....
Well, on this Sunday which just ended; I was there in time to see the #62 parked and it's perhaps driver, out of the bus and on the sidewalk talking to another person in a florescent green Regional Transit Authority vest...
One was a heavyset black man, big boned, not overly fat just kind of large; and the other was a black lady who might be as young as 28 or so, and she told me not to put my transfer into the machine, saying what sounded like: "I'm still trying to find out if I'm going."
So, I went on the bus and sat down, without putting the transfer in. There was a man whom I described in the first few paragraphs sitting in the front-most seat and apparently very agitated about something; for he was talking rapidly and in angry sounding tones. He was probably in his sixties; and if he looked good for that age it might be because he has stayed in shape by regularly making gestures and pointing his finger and cussing, as far as I could make out.
He had a very strong accent which is probably one of the regional ones that you could hear spoken if you drove like 72 miles out of New Orleans and towards nothing major in particular.
I couldn't make out any of what he was half yelling.

But he got off the bus shortly after I'd sat down and his departure was made with such a din of hard to make out language that I thought he just may have been disgusted by the stoppage of the #62 and was just going to walk somewhere instead of waiting for the 2 drivers to decide if it was "going" or not..

There was something ominous in the way the lady driver has said she wasn't sure she was going. Did that mean there had been yet another traffic incident on I-10 and a decision was being made as to whether to run the bus at all? I was in danger of squandering yet another bonus if the #62 were to skip the run.
In the seat across from me was a small backpack type thing, along with a shirt; a kind of dress shirt, but one probably with some silk woven in, like the Caribbean hued print on it would also suggest. I had a shirt like that a long time ago; and I think the point of them is to a large degree aimed at the activity of dancing, cheek to cheek style; and the guy wearing the shirt that probably has some silk woven in will feel extremely smooth to the woman's touch.
But, I actually had the notion to grab the bag and dancing shirt and yell after the guy: "Hey, you left this," or something.
But then I thought about how he had been yelling and how the only words I could make out hadn't been necessarily positive ones. After hearing him for about 5 minutes, I started to better understand his strong dialect; and made out little fragments like: "I ain't no ho," and then a "bitch" here and there. That helped me make out more words, reverse engineering a language by applying the same process that had changed his "I ain't no ho" into the way it came out of his mouth, I could start to piece together sentences.

The #62 did run. And along the entire 35 minute duration the old guy never stopped his regular cussing, and his abrupt "F*** You"s
There were at least a dozen other people on the bus, none of which ever even turned their heads towards the guy. I might have made a mistake by making eye contact with him at one point. I might have been thinking about actually trying to talk to him in the hopes that were I to stay grounded in the present moment, he might pick up on the vibe and I would have cast a demon out of him ala Jesus.

But, I figured: Neah! the downside is too much to contemplate. I just sat and read more of "The Unbearable Lightness Of Being" blithely unaware that the mentally challenged old guy was mostly directing a tirade at the only white guy on the bus. By the end of the ride I had added "long haired faggot" and "I'll kick your ass..." and a few more phrases to my vocabulary of a language spoken at least 60 miles outside the city.

Well, fast forward to me coming out of the plasma place after having made it there and donated. I had the usual slightly drained feeling, made worse by the temperature which felt like 100. And there, up ahead of me a couple hundred yards, hobbled along an older black man. 

At one point he went off the path and sat down in the shade. As I approached him, I wondered if he had just donated plasma and if the scorching heat might have made him light-headed or something. I sort of bent my steps so as to draw nearer to the old fellow and ask him if he needed help, basically. 

And at first I didn't recognize him; I didn't put the shirt I saw on the bus together with the one this guy was wearing. So, not recognizing him, I politely asked him if I was sitting in the shade because he didn't feel well, and if he needed help, etc.

Then, he basically started to yell at me; and his voice, I guess made me realize that he was wearing the shirt that he had been carrying around earlier.

I will say that the one shirt like that that i had wasn't very good at hiding sweat; it tended to form dark, very visible wet spots; in the fabric that probably has some silk woven in.
I just walked off, marching to the beat of his "F*** You"s. I was more upset at myself for not having recognized the shirt (a quarter mile away would have worked).
"I don't need no white boy...." (to help him if he's ever suffering from heat stroke, I guess he meant).
Before I was too far away, and trying, I guess, to fight fire with fire, I said: "Now, I'm going to hate all black people; just because of you; is that what you want?!? Would that make the world a better place?!"

And so that is the story of the run of the #62.

At one point the situation was very reminiscent of the recent incident in New York, where a guy was threatening passengers and an ex Marine type guy restrained the guy; to death, some claim. I wondered if we had the same type of guy on the bus. It occurs to me that a lot of the other dozen or so passengers might have been understanding every word the guy was saying. They knew he was just spewing hatred upon the only white guy on the bus and were actually doing a good job of not getting involved, nor tipping me off with some kind of glance that might say; don't let that old man bother you; (he just hates white people) type of thing...
I am also hoping that in a quieter moment the guy will think: Maybe I am representing my entire ethnicity through my thoughts and actions...
And he will become a new man. He will walk up to me, and hand me the silk shirt as a gift and offer me a thousand apologies; one for each "F*** You."

Reminder To Self Re: Wish List

 Since a phone these days is like the oxygen pack that astronauts used to never leave earth without; I have my sights set on getting a replacement for the battery in my phone which lasts about 20 seconds off a full charge (and is swollen as if the stuff inside it has expanded).
This would give me an important tool, should I decide to take a journey during July to busk my way up to Massachusetts to visit friends and family (at some point "while they are still alive" will need to be appended to that intention).
Elizabet, the semi-deaf woman who lives in Building C, said she would take care of Harold for a few weeks or, alternately, offered to get me a pet carrier so I could tote him along with me.
I tend to shy away from the latter option as, Harold is really not the best company as a pet. He only meows when he wants something, and is just as likely to scratch and claw his way out of my grasp at the sight of a nearby dog or should there be a sudden loud noise.