Let me tell you about last Saturday night. After a dreadful trudge through heavy rain and half an hour on the subway, I finally made it onto the loathsome shuttle bus that runs between the Lorimer Street and Montrose Ave stop on the L line. Riding the shuttle bus was one of my most vivid memories from the summer: it provoked in me an irrational but disturbing anxiety, a tendency towards claustrophobia, and a ferociousness that was useful only in pushing and shoving my way off the bus. But the drudgeries of the shuttle bus could by no means amount to suffering, and perhaps that was the worst of it – that because it became more of an occasional annoyance, it had the power to frustrate an otherwise “so-so” day, tip the balance from “blah” to “sucky.” In this way, perhaps the frustration was meta-cyclical: I hated that such a banal occurrence could peeve me so much.
While waiting for the shuttle bus at the Montrose stop, I always tried to anticipate how crowded the shuttle bus would be. This entailed a Family Feud-esque process in which I would make a mental list of all the possible reasons for going into Manhattan and then assign a probability to each reason based on the day of week and time of day. I figured around 9 or 10 PM on a Saturday night, there would be a lot of Bushwick/Williamsburg hipsters going out to party. 2 PM on a Sunday – people waking up hung over and going into the city for a lazy day of consumerism. 7 AM on a Monday morning would have been work, except that I don’t recall shuttle buses ever running at that time (and I was never up at that time anyway). The best time for taking the shuttle bus was probably Sunday morning when most people were still asleep (and when I say “most people” I am referring to the mostly sub-30 demographic that populates the L line). You could tell on Sunday mornings that most people on the shuttle bus were going to church because they were all dressed nicer than usual – flannel shirts traded for collared shirts, rompers for nice A-line skirts – you know how them L-line hipsters roll.
Besides the conventional hipster fixtures on the L line, there was always a generally predictable population on the shuttle bus. At least 20% of the shuttle bus crowd were middle-aged Hispanic men, many of them wearing baseball caps. Another 20% were high school kids, several of whom always wore excessively baggy pants and obnoxiously bright high-tops. If a group of them got onto the bus together, they were usually tossing around strings and strings of cuss words and talking dirty about some girl. I remember specific instances – the conversations have been seared into my mind. Chances were that there was at least one pregnant woman (or with child) and at least another individual, usually youngish, who carried a fashionably miniature dog in one of those nylon dog-bags. The most memorable of all these people, for me, was a a tall African-American man wearing a black and purple baseball cap, a track jacket, and jeans. I remember him most clearly because when he opened his mouth and started to talk, I caught a glimpse of his yellow gem-studded grills. Yes, this was in fact my first up-close and personal look at authentic grills. It was quite exciting.
Now returning from summer past into Saturday night present, I found myself at the Lorimer Street stop in a resigned state, having nixed the idea that I was going to try to stay dry in the pouring rain. I put my umbrella back into my bag and convinced myself that I felt slightly freer not having to deal with a contraption that had the potential to poke someone’s eye out and that perhaps the rain drenching my hair and coat would feel nice and relaxing (No, this did not happen). One advantage of being 5′3″ is that I can squeeze myself between people quite easily, so I was able to make it to the front of the crowd waiting for the shuttle bus, ensuring that I would make it onto this shuttle bus and not have to wait for the next. I timed my ascent onto the bus quite preciselyt: not too early so that I would be in one of the seats at the end of the bus which would make it very hard to get off the bus and not too late so that I would have to stand in a very uncomfortable position. I picked an aisle seat that was close to the bus doors and sat down, glad to be out of the rain and another step closer to reaching my destination.
But lo and behold – at this point, I spotted a trio of literally zombie-like individuals (or dressed as such) step onto the bus. Two sat down directly in front of me so I didn’t see much of their visage except the crusty cornstarch dabbled on their necks (which I guess are supposed to be resemble guts or cuts or some sort of injury?). The last – the bloodiest and most zombie-like of them all, stood right next to me. However, because the bus was rather crowded, his clutching the metal pole as support meant that he was standing OVER me rather than just adjacent to my seat. I studied this man carefully, as I do to most people in my close proximity: a skinny, gaunt-looking man, with glasses, several piercings in his ears, head covered entirely in blood, and some sort of blood-covered dove/bird attached to the side of his head. While the visual stimulation of his get-up seemed intially to be an interesting and lively ending to my night, I noticed that as the bus started to move and he began to ever-so-slightly rock back and forth, his hair and face, which were also wet from the rain, began to drip.
And where do droplets of bloody water go but down?
As I sat in my seat impatiently awaiting the end of this ride, I suddenly had the sensation that it was raining inside the bus. I looked up at zombie-man and then down again and noticed a red trail on my cardigan and skirt. I looked up again and glared , certain that my glare was so intense that eventually zombie-man would have to make eye contact with me. And he did – my glare was that intense. I looked him in the eye, then looked at the blood dripping, then looked him in the eye again.
At this point, he realized what was happening, and with absolutely no remorse said to me, “It’ll wash out, don’t worry.”
I continued to glare at him.
“It’s fake blood. It’s just corn starch and food coloring,” he said, as a seeming retort to my persistent glare.
Funny thing is that he did not change positions. He continued to stand over me and drip his cornstarch-food coloring blood all over my garments, and I, trapped in my plastic orange seat, could not move to dodge the droplets. My only power lay in my glare, which I’ll finally admit is not much of a weapon.
When I finally got off that shuttle bus, I was relieved – yet somehow, I could not shrug off the little wrath that had bubbled inside me during that 10-minute span.
Since then, I’ve channeled my anger towards zombie-man into anger towards the shuttle bus, which I know is the kind of annoyance-derived anger that will probably never subside. Because at the end of the day, when you don’t really have much else to be angry at, shuttle buses are sufficient objects on which you can unleash any/all irrational wrath. Yes.
