5:35. waiting for the bus. 28°. I'm at the bus stop, but it stops 20' short. I get in the crowd, nearly last. a guy waves a woman in and says 'ladies first'. I'm last now, and when he looks at me and I say "it's all you, guy" and we all lump on the bus. The collection box is covered in a plastic bag; even the bus is having one hell of a Monday. This is the end of the verbatim part of the story.
Sat on the median, in the accordion seats. Feet aren't on the floor but I don't care, just want my book. It's been slow going lately; need to give it some love. The guy from the line wanders up and down the aisle a couple times, squeezes in next to me, all agitated and talking to himself. A little angry, he's cursing quietly but a lot. I asked him if he was OK. he shares his feelings about "these people" who look at him like he's going to bite. Maybe they're apprehensive because he's not well dressed, and on the large side (about 6'4" I guess). He's a little upset about it and starts getting a little more vocal, from polite conversation level to... well, audible.
I stop him there and tell him not to worry about it, and they're probably in their own worlds; in their heads they're still at work, or home with their kids and TVs already. They're not expecting someone to sit down next to them, that everyone wants to sit by themselves on the bus. He says he pays taxes and is entitled to ride the bus, that other people have no reason to shun him for looking for a seat. I bring up that everyone has problems they carry around and project around them, and we can't make a point of making all those problems our personal responsibility, because it's too much for anyone to bear. I say that if we're really lucky we solve a few of our own problems. Fixing everyone else's problems is like trying to drink the ocean.
He relaxes a bit and tells me that people's attitudes really affect him and goes on about how people are needlessly hard. I ask him if he's been in New York a long time, and he tells me he's been here his whole life, except for a long stretch of years he was in prison. I ask him if people were nice there and he said they were really scary. I jokingly said he should be used to people not being nice to him by now. But he was off again by this time- telling me about how he didn't do the crime, and the city recanted, 21 years too late and owed him a lot of money, like that makes up for his wasted years… he held out on a payment of $150K to try and collect $300K for wrongful imprisonment. The nearest seat behind the median opened up and he switched to take up more space, but continued. He was hoping to pay back his lawyer, the only one who never gave up on him. He told me he had a job at a tattoo parlor on st. marks pl., gave me a card and told me his name. All the while he was looking at a traffic cop who had gotten on the bus at 14th street. Looking, looking, looking and getting tense again. He did not take his eyes off that cop or relax until she went behind him and sat down, close to the rear door.
He shook my hand a couple of times even before I said I was getting off soon. He was glad to have met me because I helped him out and gave him some peace and helped him calm down. I told him I will probably never get a tattoo but probably know someone who does. He said that if I sent a friend he would remember how I was nice to him would give them a very good deal on a tattoo. He tells me he worked at my favorite bagel shop on earth for seven years when he was a kid, that he remembered the owner and how nice she was. I told him I was glad to have met him too and I hoped that everything worked out well for him- it was my stop. He thanked me again and shook my hand, and I got off the bus.
