The Bad.
Paul was a kindly old bespectacled man who was the proofreader at the newspaper where I worked. He looked the sort of idealized Norman Rockwell grandfather archetype that some how instilled in me the urge to go fly fishing with him at some bucolic cabin, despite my never having had in interest in such activities. So it was to my surprise to find out that he collected weaponry. Collected may be too soft a word actually, I better go with horded. If his claims were true, his home was a depot that housed enough various implements of destruction to arm a small South American militia. After I had recalled to him yet another tale of feeling menaced on my midnight commute cross town, he gave me a small gift. He called it a "CIA LEtter Opener", and it looked rather like a triangular tent spike with a handle. It was made of black hardened teflon of some kind and was about 8-9 inches long. It was explained to me that I could carry it anywhere as its material would not set off metal detectors, and that its beveled triangular sides were designed to cause "the maximum amount of bleed out from a puncture wound". Um, thanks? My fly fishing fantasy kinda died that day, but I digress. As I am not accustomed to being "armed" in any sense of the word, I threw it in my messenger bag and kinda forgot about it.
Some weeks later I found myself on the good old 38 Geary line about to embark on yet another adventure to make it home. It was years until I figured out that riding a bicycle was a much more fun, more safe and more healthy way to approach this epic nightly voyage, so here I was, paying my dollar and trying to pick a seat. There are many schools of thought when it comes to picking a seat on a bus late night. Personally I have always been fond of sitting all the way in the back, thus being able to have a visual on everything thats going on. Now the problem with this is that the back of the bus is almost invariably where the brigands, ruffians and highway men gravitate, so one may find oneself in close company with such nefarious characters. I am of the opinion that to keep these folks close is bad, as you may be forced to interact and as such have to utilize "The Crazy Eyes". For those wondering, The Crazy Eyes is where one allows just a little white to show over the *top* of your iris, cultivating a truly maniacal visage that can be varied by degree - the more white, the more crazy (see ref: Michelle Bachmann, Charles Manson). By practicing in front of the mirror, you too can become a master of The Crazy Eyes, and when accompanied by the hollow demented half smile, pretty much everyone will just want to leave you alone. Now as bad as getting into an interaction with the hive of scum and villainry that congregate in the back row of seats is, I still would rather have them where I can see them. After all,I dont have Crazy Eyes in the back of my head. The very front of the bus is out of the question, as it prematurely ages and feminizes a young man.
Yes, I have my seat selection opinions, but not very many hard and fast rules, and seeing that this was a relatively uncrowded bus, and just, well, *felt* like an uneventful night, for some reason I perched myself in the middle to rear segment in a forward facing seat. I settled in and within a couple stops, of course, he got on. And oh, gentle readers, what a specimen he was! By means of a quick description, I would say he was cross between Rasputin dressed as a homeless ninja and the black Spy vs. Spy guy. People that live on the streets for a long time often get this patina, and judging by this guy's shine, he had been in survival mode for quite a while. He was all dressed in black, with strips of cloth tied around his outer garments. He had armbands, a black scarf pulled across his lower face and this magnificent hat. It was a hat straight out of a kung fu movie, a kind of fedora with a wider brim that left the rim at a downward angle, obscuring his eyes. It was a spy vs. spy hat, plain and simple.
As he got on the bus he locked on to me as, my overly developed freak magnetism, and two, there were very few people on the bus. It was clear immediately that no amount of white above my eyes was going to out crazy or dissuade this fellow, and I did not meet his gaze. I merely observed him with that absent peripheral vision thing people do sometimes. He walked past me and straight to the empty back of the bus. The next thirty minutes were abject psychological hell, as I soon discovered that this fellow had a habit, and I could just feel it was directed at me. The habit? Lord. He had a nylon velcro man band that apparently housed a watch. This fellow would check his watch, creating that distinct scccrrrritch of velcro being pulled apart, and then change his seat. Sometimes he would get right behind me and do it real slow, and then move a little farther, and then back. Nerve. Wracking.
It is this point that I must lay down one little fact. I lived at the very end of the line. Now downtown SF is always bustling, but out in the avenues at one am, there isn't a whole lot going on. There are only very rarely other people on the streets, and generally I would see no one on my six block walk from bus stop to hacienda. This thought became more prominent in my bean as on by one, the bus emptied out until it was just me an my new friend, popping around the seats behind me. Scrrrriiiitch. With about twenty blocks left in the trip, I became certain that he would be getting off at the last stop as well. It was then that I remembered my gift from Paul, and I slowly retrieved the menacing black spike from my bag and palmed it. If my number had finally come up, I wasn't going down without inflicting "significant bleed out".
I got up to get off at the last stop, and so did my ninja. He stood right behind me, a little too close, and exited the bus with me. The bus drove off to the barn, and I started walking fast. He followed me step for step, maybe one foot behind me, quite literally like some evil shadow. I still hadn't turned to face him, but I could only take about 100 feet of that. I quite literally snapped into some sort of fight or flight mode, wheeled around brandishing my dreadfull weapon and literally screamed, "What the fuck do you want!?! My ninja was startled by this sudden affront and instantly ran down the street and disappeared around the corner. That was the longest six blocks I have ever walked home, and the ones following for the next couple months weren't much shorter.
I never saw the man again, but I remember that moment so clearly to this day. I am a gentle, non-violent person, but if that man had made a move toward me rather than running away, I without a doubt would have plunged that weapon into his neck without hesitating, so jacked on adrenalin was I. I know I would have, and thats a kind of scary thought, to come that close to actually killing another human being. I also know that I was somewhat emboldened by having a weapon. Further, with said weapon, I actually could have done fairly easily. I cant imagine how the psychology plays out when one is carrying a gun. I know the guy was asking for trouble, but he was clearly mentally ill. What if in his mind he was just being funny? Had I completely made up the fact that he was a threat to me? I will never know, but I wonder about it sometimes. A few weeks later, I put the knife thing in a drawer, and haven't looked back.
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