#bus rage

After watching this oily, rat-faced little weed on an SRO bus give some polite young lady shit when she asked to sit in one of the two seats he was taking up, I asked him, pleasantly, and with a smile, if he’d paid for two seats.

He said no, and proceeded to call me cow, cum streak (gross), whore, and just about any other mediocre, unimaginative, Adult Virgin thing you could call a woman. Told me to drink bleach ‘for my country’ (Alt-right wannabe? I think so), then he said I’d better ‘shut my slut mouth before I got beat’.

As a woman, a Feminist, and a liberal Democrat, I am generally so full of impotent rage that this just filled my dance card right up with ‘oh, Hell no, you did not’. I leaned forward in my seat (bench seats on this bus, that face each other) and told him, pleasantly, and with a smile, to bring it, I’d tear his head off and shit in his windpipe. 

I don’t know what kinds of women this asshole is used to, but he was not expecting this. I’m not a small person. I’m 5’10”, lots of piercings, and fully sleeved (lots of skulls, I love the Scary), and built like an East German gymnast. I’m told I’m pretty intimidating (my Bitch Face is never resting, it’s always very active) so I’m fully capable of defending myself against some mouthy little creep like this, but this was 75% bluff. I might look like an extra from a Mad Max movie, but I’m really, mostly, a Disney princess, and I don’t want to fight with anybody.  

I think he believed me, I don’t remember what else he said, my God I was mad, but he backed down pretty quick, and I went back to perusing kitten videos on my phone. Through this entire exchange, no one else said a word. No one stepped up to defend the girl who just wanted to sit down, or me, the bus driver said nothing. Sad, and yet, completely unsurprising.

Now we’re sitting in traffic, facing each other, and I can see him twitching. The girl who’s been sitting next to me the entire time can see it too. I ride to and from work every day with these folks, and who knows what they think of me now. Just another fruitcake, I expect, in the end I suppose it doesn’t matter, but that my normally beautiful manners are in tatters, and that makes me sad.

So I lean sideways toward this girl, and before I can apologize she says ‘I’m so sorry, I hope you don’t believe what he said, you’re really beautiful.’ Honestly, this little bit of kindness left me more emotionally upset than his threat of physical violence. Wobbly voiced, I laughed it off. His sorry little jabs don’t mean anything to me, like my mum used to say, ‘It’s like being dog-bit, you have to consider the source.’ But that’s an insult to dogs, in this particular case. 

Its a sad world we live in when we’re more moved by kindness than by violence. I think about that a lot.

Anyway, we had a chuckle, she was really sweet, and when my stop arrived, I got off the bus unmolested. But now I feel like I’m going to have to watch out for this wheezing bag of dick-tips. My brass knuckles are going back in my bag, and I’m going to be looking over my shoulder. But man, if he knows what’s good for him, he’d better not.

Please, look out for one another, y’all, it’s so important. If someone else, even one or two people on that packed, packed, packed bus had stood with me, maybe that sad little turd would think twice about being so awful next time he’s tempted.