Everyone Held Their Noses So Tightly

It's the weather that makes Los Angeles an extraordinary place, some say. The perpetual sunshine, seeming to make promises that, by all probability, will never be kept. Only it's easy to forget about the city's reputation for being unreliable, and the nauseating affect of being unable to take It at its word, when all that sunlight is blaring in your eyes. You avert your gaze though - to the pretty girl walking down the sidewalk here(she looks terribly old when you get close up), to the pretty girl sitting at the table there(she has an obnoxious laugh, an obvious moron), to the big billboards advertising movies that will soon be in theaters near you(can't believe they made them, and at so much cost!), to the Hollywood sign, through the haze on the hill, which incites everyone to say they've made it(being facetious, of course); essentially, you avert your gaze to any- and everything that promises even the tiniest bit of possibility and you hang on to it.

Then the "perpetual sunshine" fails to come through one day too, and the clouds roll in in giant, cold grey wisps, like steel wool strung apart, wet and nearly freezing over, and the rain comes down, always surprising everyone as if it were the very first time it had ever rained.

When it rains here everything changes. What usually shines brightly harsh golden yellows then glimmers all dull blues, reflecting only the stoplights and the headlights from traffic that is invariably backed up, and the hazy shadows of residents and tourists alike who seem to hover through the rain like ghosts. Sunglasses are taken off, ridding sight of that thin but affecting lens that seems always to remove individuals slightly from their surroundings; consequently, immediacies become restored to their rightful places, become more clear, more "real." The city is exposed for what it truly is and becomes ordinary and bleak. Bleak not in the old world Russian or modern day Bulgarian sense, but in the 1940's American romantic sense. Existence hardly goes any further than what happens in front of you and what happens in your brain.

It felt good, settling into my seat on the bus, in the rain, for the half hour long ride from West Hollywood to the stop where I would catch the metro into Downtown. I was reading "De Daumiere's Blue Period" - a good story - and felt as though I were all alone in transit. I had gotten to the part where De Daumier sits quietly at his desk in the main room of the Arts Institute(a university which teaches art via airmail from a two bedroom apartment in New York; the only other "instructors" besides himself, and also the founders of the school itself, were an old married Chinese couple), having just sharpened all of his pencils and laid them out neatly in front of him and knew not what else to do but light up a cigarette. I think the head of the school, who had been at a desk just a few feet away - and silent until then - came over to De Daumiere's desk to tell him that there would be no smoking in his "classroom."

These details of De Daumiere's story, if they matter at all, might be confused some due to the disorienting nature of what occurred a few moments later.

The bus hadn't traveled very far from the stop where I had gotten on when it happened. A smell wafted through the bus that made me look up from the book. I couldn't find the source of the smell immediately, but I could see it traveling in a wave like those seen in sports stadiums across the country all the time, only in this instance it was not the two hands being thrown up simultaneously, then put back down, it was a swift movement of one hand to the face, the thumb and forefinger pinching the nose, and a look of disgust. And as that wave finally reached me I saw him - a man very much sunken into himself from malnutrition, wearing rags and a scraggly beard, holding a plastic sack full of godknowswhat. By this time the smell had become overbearing - it was evident that he had just recently shit himself - but I did not follow suit of the rest of the passengers on the bus. He sat down in a seat that situated him in a such a way that he was staring directly at me in profile; I couldn't bring myself to humiliate him with the gesture of pinching my nose shut.

I fought through the smell as best as I could, trying to continue to read with the book repositioned slightly in the window so that the coat sleeve of the arm holding the book covered my nostrils somewhat - it never would have been enough. I read the same paragraph over and over and yet did not really read it once. My sight had become blurry. My stomach was nearly turning over. Some of the other passengers opened the windows near their seat as far as they could physically go - just a crack. The man muttered to himself incoherently. The bus driver pulled over unannounced. In a hurry, he walked the length of the bus, shaking his head as he opened every last window on his rig. When he came to the window above the man, he opened it vehemently, saying so others could hear, "Definitely open this one!" The bus driver retook his position at the wheel. The man sat still, staring forward with vacant, jaundiced eyes.

The thought occurred to me, unjustified at the moment, really, "Why do these things always happen to me? Why of all places did this man choose to sit there, right across from me?" Logically though, the man had probably just chosen that particular seat because it was in the back of the bus and had the fewest number of passengers around it(though he would've cleared any nearby seats with his smell) - the same reason I had chosen my own. His next move, however, still does not make any sense to me, though in hindsight I will admit that my thoughts may have somehow been related to the cause.

His next move was only a few blocks up. It began with a ghastly muttering under his breath and him rising to his feet(his legs wobbling beneath him), and ended with him sitting down in the seat directly beside me. I had to quickly snatch up my coattails to prevent him from sitting on them. The passengers in front and in back of me moved to different seats. I could hear a few of them laugh. It took immense concentration, but I did not react - not a single blink, nor a single gag(though my reflex is normally weak). I simply stared straight ahead as the bus continued forward and this man, it seemed, continued to inch closer and closer to my seat.

A few blocks more was all I could take. No amount of compassion could have kept in my seat.

The bus came to a stop and I stood up. The man took no notice of me. I politely attempted to inform him that I was getting off - still nothing from him. The bus had only been stopped for a moment or two, I'm sure, but it felt as though it had been stopped forever and it would certainly be taking off again shortly. I had to act with haste. I threw my bag on the seat in the row in front of mine, then I grabbed onto the railing that extends the length of the bus at head level for those passengers that are forced to stand when the bus is packed, and I pulled myself up and over the man's crumpled, shit-stinking frame like some sort of frantic acrobat making his last act of desperation to save his life. It was terribly sad, but again I could hear the other passengers laugh as I grabbed my bag of the seat in one quick sweep of the arm and pushed through the back doors onto the street.

I was still about six blocks away from my usual stop at the Santa Monica/Vermont metro station, and much further from downtown. It was still raining. I lit a cigarette as I began to walk towards the metro stop. Neither the rain nor the cigarette could wipe away the smell that had permeated my brain. That smell, and the image of that man - so shrunken - it had created an overwhelming feeling of despondency within me. The sun would come out again later, and distractions would present themselves everywhere - but what matter? Walking towards the metro in the rain, having a cigarette, young and still in good health, good-looking enough, things felt bleak. And not bleak in the 1940's American romantic sense either, but more so in the modern day Bulgarian sense - the sense that a rainy day in Los Angeles has the potential to evoke.

Later, waiting on the platform at the metro, I was crouched against a wall, somewhat in a daze. Someone walked by me - a fellow passenger from earlier. He addressed me in passing, "That was some funny shit!" I have no idea how I reacted. Maybe I laughed with him, a little at least; maybe I looked up with surprise and ultimately said not a word to him. Either way, it seemed the most bizarre thing he could have said to me just then.

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Hope everyone's set aside a few dollars for the new "SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF THE EARTH" audiobook, set to be digitally released at the end of the month. If all of us here at The Poor House can get our shit together.
Stay tuned
&
Enjoy,
Benjamin Font