Riding The Bus (In the Bronx)

I am riding the bus the other day, it is early morning; another bright hot summer morning; the Bronx seems to be all about buses, crowded buses, usually, but this morning this city bus is relatively empty; half full? I am sitting in the back along the side of the bus where the seats face inward towards the aisle. When you ride the bus as much as I do you find yourself picking out special places to sit; ones that are, can be sort of private as the seat way in the back is, way in the back corner (the seat even has a window!) but that seat is right over the engine so it can get hot and I have long legs so I have to crunch up a bit for legroom in that seat is in short supply; so while I do take the occasional back seat (I take a back seat to no body) it is not my favorite, especially not for long rides. My favorite seat and the one I am sitting in this morning as I said is in the back along the side and is actually right next to the seat all the way in the back with little leg room that is over the hot engine with the window on the right. This seat, the one I am sitting in today, when you sit in it, it has a stainless steel pole mounted on the side of the seat towards the front of the bus so I can lean on it when the bus stops abruptly (which the bus very often does (is it the brakes - or the driver or another wild cat or monsters in the street?)) and in that way the pole helps me not be banging up against the person next to me, this very sturdy shiny stainless steel pole lending a form of support and separation, and even a sort of privatization (in an otherwise dangerous jungle). What does also happen when you sit in this sideways facing seat is I get to look at the person sitting directly across from me, which sometimes is a good thing (sometimes a very good thing) yet often times not so good and anyway my face is usually buried in my reading. This morning however across from me something interesting, is happening (at least to me (hey come on it is early morning on a bus in the Bronx and I am on my way to the dentist (a Bronx dentist (is it safe?!)), anything to take my mind off the inevitable. Across from me are sitting two young Bronx black women, say pushing 22 years of age. One is talking to the other about what seems to be a mutual friend of theirs, perhaps an acquaintance is a better more appropriate term, although what goes for appropriate here in the Bronx is definitely a learned taste, and she is going on rather disparagingly about the absent young lady and about how this absent young lady thinks she is all this and that and how pretty the ho thinks she is with her (them) big fat fishy lips greasing them all up with shiny lipstick smacking them in front of some mirror and a man, and I must say, the woman speaking so unsympathetically of her absent acquaintance would be hard pressed to have lips, large fat fishy lips, fishier or bigger than the ones I am looking at right now but hey, it’s the Bronx, maybe it is possible for God in his infinite wisdom to make even biggier fishier lips (is it possible?), and at least she is keeping her curse words to a minimum and she isn’t talking about beating the hell out of her kid or her man or offing her PO or some ho. No, none of that for a change; no, what I am finding interesting, almost mesmerizing really is that while she is going on about this absent fishy lipped young lady acquaintance of hers, hurling compliments left and right, she is reaching into her very large bright purple leather pocket book and pulling out round colored chewable suckers, and you can imagine sucking and chewing on one of those suckers with her big bright large fishy shiny fat lips flapping on and on about this other fat fishy lipped bitch as she is unwrapping another sucker and dropping the colored cellophane wrapper out onto the bus floor– right in front of me! Now I know littering is no big deal in the Bronx (and I have seen it done other wheres as well) but I just don’t like it, maybe it is the Boy Scout in me or maybe I have that cleanliness mania they talk about (or someone, I am sure, is talking and thinking about right now). I am thinking, people like her litter because they have a beef (with me?) with the place where they live or with ‘the man’ (hey I don’t like ‘the man’ as much as the next guy in the Bronx) or something like that – and hey I hear you but – -and what about the children?! What do the children think watching their mentors (mentors?! eeegads) tossing wrappers and bags and – bags of garbage, - and bags of shit and garbage! Out the window! They do it here! What is a child to think?

Anyway even the growing pile of colored cellophane wrappers building on the otherwise clean bus floor not five feet across from me (it is a pretty clean floor, being fairly early in the morning although it is getting dirtier and dirtier by the minute as I watch her) is not the sight that is striking me, it is this other man, an older black gentleman sitting stoic in the back seat of the bus looking forward not three feet from her, facing her as the back seat faces those side seats in the back of the bus; he is on his way to work, I am pretty sure, and the reason I am pretty sure he is on his way to work is because he is dressed in a very clean newly pressed light green uniform and on the left breast pocket in front of his heart is the company patch APEX ALBRIGHT Cleaning Service, and then I got to thinking: Is this willful littering right in front of me, in front of this cleaning service man an affront to what he does and stands for? I mean he must take pride in his work; the condition of the uniform, the sharp crease in his trousers (and that crease is not one of those creases put in a pair of pants at a factory, no, this crease is put in the old fashioned way, the caring way with some starch and a hot steamy iron (on a very hot summer morning)), and yet he seems unmoved, I mean I probably seem unmoved too, I mean come on it’s the Bronx in the back of a bus in a really hot summer, people die back here (and not always from heat stroke) unless of course you consider being on the wrong end of a heater heat stroke.

No, he seems unmoved and unaffected and then I got to thinking maybe the people litter up here, or anywhere, all over the city really because, because it is a make work program; a guerilla, under the radar off book funding type of make work program. We know (I know) who litters and we know (ok I know) who we hire to pick up the litter and then all of a sudden I have this overwhelming feeling of, - what is the word – euphoria? – understanding, understanding the world and why people, at least these people, litter and why this man in the freshly pressed cleaning uniform is OK with that steadily growing pile of colored cellophane wrappers piling up directly in front of him on the floor and the work it is creating and she droning on about this fishy lipped bitch and all is right with the world as I am lurching and jerking my way to the dentist.

She is getting ready, bustling, her and her girlfriend, getting ready to leave and as the bus stops and she gets up to walk out I can’t help but feel, can’t help but wish for a soft tacky wad of light pink chewing gum melting on the hot bus floor to catch the edge of her fancy flat sandals and grab a sticky hold to the underside of that leather sole and curl about grasping a gummy grip to the side of her bare black foot so she would have something else to curse and complain about as she limps off the bus one foot pulling her, holding her back to an otherwise clean bus floor.