shame is so in this season

the wheels on the bus go

round and round, muthaf*cka!

so there i was, sitting quietly near the front of the M103 after a long day of sloth and gluttony (my favorite of the seven), when some dude in a copper colored 1976 ford grand torino pulls up alongside at prince and bowery, honking madly, screaming wildly, and looking dastardly. he says some gaspable and unrepeatable racial remark to our bus driver and then that's when all hell broke loose, or at least as hellish as nolita could ever be. perhaps his extreme idiocy was fueled by a bottle or two of the 12 cases of kendall jackson he had strapped to the roof rack of his station wagon of dreams, or perhaps he really was just. that. stupid.

the light turns green. we roll alongside the wagon, driver window to passenger window. our lessthanlevelheaded bus driver shouts right back. i couldn't make out the words - i guess a quick temper tends to fuel stuttering and general unintellibility. and then, loud and clear, with an "eff this, you effin crackah!" he throws a soda cup at the grand tor-wino. it magically goes right in the open window, splashing on the seat, the dash, and the dude. naturally, there were more curses to follow. the dude then stops his car at delancey (where the bus stops to let a quite frightened slight of a lady off, leaving me the second to last person still riding this pre-hate crime funbox). the dude comes around and starts banging on the driver's side window, which had been hastily shut in anticipation. you could still hear the n- words and the other phrases to be found in the dictionary of death wish? say this!

upon closing the doors, the bus driver starts to roll away. the dude scrambles to get his car moving so he can continue this fight. we're neck and neck again when the bus driver decides that his comeback to the menacing car is to shout "crackah!" over and over. and over. and... well, you get the point. so now this dude, now ballsy behind the wheel, thinks that his best defense is a good offense. which would work, if he wasn't so damn stupid. he's now swerving around in his lane, taunting us with a cut-off fake-out. if someone were to watch this aerially, i'm sure it would be quite amusing, as both of our vehicles were playing this game of unidirectional chicken at no more than seven miles per hour.

eyes and ears intent on the dude, the bus driver inadvertantly ignores my stop requested for grand, but i really wasn't in the mood to say anything drastic.

the verbal tirade continues between the two. and honestly, i've never heard a more base argument. it was just so... general. neither bothered to cover more than the color of each other's skin. i mean, there were plenty of opportunities - from the way the dude was dressed to the laughable contents of his vehicle, our bus driver had a plethora of material to choose from. name calling is just so junior high and frankly, a bit pathetic.

so the dude finally mans up and cuts us off diagonally, stopping his car about halfway between hester and canal. we're forced to stop. and as much as i wanted to stay and watch the climax and denouement, this pre-fall weather that we've been having is just too nice for being called into court as a material witness. so i gently tell the large vein in the bus driver's forehead "i'll just get off here" and scamper off into the depths of c-town.

crazy.

posted by erica @ 2:33 PM