Cosy Pitch

Yesterday, while riding the bus home, I entertained Tyler with a work-related tale of horror and budget crises involving a stupid Master Use Permit for the building I work in and the Metro bus system. Naturally, it was a slightly long story as it involved two different inept factions of our local government. Tyler didn’t shush me even once, so either he had fallen on his job of keeping me in line while out in public, or I was not speaking loudly for once. However annoying I might have been or not been, it only took to the halfway point of my story arch before a man sitting across the aisle interrupted me with an exaggerated sigh usually aimed at bimbos loudly bitching to their boyfriends over a cellphone. As I don’t fancy myself a bimbo, I don’t own a cellphone that I feel the need to scream into for the duration of my bus rides, and I wasn’t bitching at my boyfriend, I took a mild offense to his treatment.

“I guess someone isn’t enjoying my story,” I said to Tyler before immediately continuing to rattle off my increasing horrors with Metro.

It didn’t take long before I noticed a ranting undertone competing with my story. I continued to speak, but looked in the direction of the ranting. It was the same man, who was scooting erratically in his seat and waving his arms. I caught some words about the “bus system” and “government” and realized that he was subjecting the innocent bystanders seated near him to an unfounded hatred for me. The fact that he felt the need to torment the woman quietly seated in front of him and the other older woman quietly seated behind him caused something deep inside my mind to twang.

“Excuse me! Do you have a fucking problem?” The words flowed out of my mouth uncontrolled, as often happens when I’m incensed with anger towards a stranger. I caught a wave of movement from my hazy peripheral vision as all the bus riders turned towards me to watch. “‘Cause if you have a problem,” I continued, “you don’t need to torture your fellow bus riders.”

“Is that what you think-” he began to counter, but my irritation had overrun the floodgates of reason, and there was no stopping me.

“I’m not talking that loud. And if you have a problem with what I’m saying- as it seems you do- than you can just move somewhere else. There’s plenty of seats in the back. Why don’t you pick your ass up and move to one of them?”

Determined to finish my story and thereby spite the psycho bus rider, I turned back to Tyler and continued where I had paused. The man sat stiffly in his seat, clenching his fists through the rest of what I had to tell. When my story smoldered joylessly to its end, Tyler and I continued to talk idly. The whole while, the man sat rigidly in his seat and directed waves of anger and hatred towards us, making me acutely aware of every word exchange. When I pulled the rope for our stop, and then walked to the front of the bus behind Tyler, I could feel the psycho’s eyes boring into the back of my head. I tried to look into the bus windows and return the man’s gaze of hatred with one of fearlessness, but distorted dark pine trees and a gray sky was all that reflected back.