"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."