Feb. 17th, 2003

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Last night was a dud. The game was fine, but I got back to Monshu's too late to catch his Friend from Peru and he seemed pretty worn out. I watched too much dumb t.v. and caught the bus back to my place.

I didn't much care for our driver. Shortly after he got on, he roared past a stop even though the passenger had pulled the cord and was standing in the back stairwell. I made mental note that I might have to yell at him to stop when my turn came. (I'm always wary; I had a driver blow past my stop a little over a week ago.) He paused during a green light at Montrose to chat with someone he knew on the street corner.

But everything was basically fine till Belmont, where he stopped at the corner to let someone on. I couldn't tell if there interchange was friendly or not until the new guy headed back to take a seat across from me and the driver yelled, "Next time I see you on the corner, I WON'T stop!" This set off a lot of bellicosity, with the driver yelling, "EAT SHIT AND DIE!" and, when the rider threatened to report him, "You think you can get me fired? YOU GOT NOTHIN' ON ME!" His voice filled the whole bus. At one stop, a woman hesistated before getting on the bus and he yelled, "You don't want to get on either? FUCK YOU, TOO!" And the guy near me jumped up and said, "You talkin' to me?"

"You talkin' to me?" That's what I said Friday night on my way to Safenicks. Three people exited a gift shop, spread across the sidewalk, and sauntered. I said "Excuse me" and slipped between the two women. Then I heard the guy with them say, "'Scuse you, bitch!" So I turned around and said, "You talkin' to me?" Why, I don't know. I wasn't about to get into a fight with some street tough. Fortunately, his answer wasn't, "Yeah, I'm talkin' to you, what you gonna do about it?" but some semi-coherent torrent of abuse that I shook off as I charged ahead.

Hearing the words from a stranger made me think again, "What the fuck is up with all this male posturing?" With the other guy, it seemed clear he was showing off for the girls. One of them had carried a big stuffed bear from the gift shop and it made me think that the belligerence was fueled by class resentment. I don't look rich, but it's a fair guess that I can afford a better Valentine's Day present than a dime-store bear.

I had no guess what was up with the guy on the bus. Had he been looking for a fight or had the bus driver just rubbed him the wrong way? An older woman who passed by him on her way to back door said something to him under the driver's shouting; I don't know what, but her face expressed sympathy, not scorn. Had there been something in the initial interchange that made her side with him? The driver claimed that the only reason he wasn't going to kick his ass right there was that there were security cameras on the bus. The rider called his bluff by getting in his face and then sat down again.

When another woman got off, the driver began apologising to her for missing her stop and the rider yelled, "SHUT UP, ASSHOLE!" That finally stemmed the torrent of empty threats from the driver. I pulled the stop before mine just in case and because I didn't want to spend a second more on that bus than I had to. By that point, I had half a mind to report the driver myself. Even if the other guy started it, he handled it totally unprofessionally. Drivers can ask any passenger to leave at any time if they are causing a disturbance. But instead of keeping his calm and doing that, he got into a shouting match at the expense of everyone.

The whole unpleasant experience had me so wound up that it was past midnight before I fell asleep. Had I got into the shouting--say by suggesting that if the cameras were a concern, they get off the damn bus and duke it out--it would've been even later. I woke up half-an-hour before my alarm, but I was so tired, I just laid there and listened for it. 14 people died last night in a nightclub stampede.

Even before the reporter identified it as Epitome on the Near South Side, I knew where it happened; I'd been past that stretch of clubs many times on the bus before. Apparently, someone had sprayed mace or pepper spray on a crowded dance floor and everyone fled for the exits. Pepper spray! Not even bullets! I could visualise the scene. In my mind's eye, lanky young men stormed the exits without the slightest concern for others. By the time I was up and heading for the shower, the total had been revised upward to 21.

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