M60 Update: ALL Services Included?

Hello local friends and faraway dreamers! Welcome to New York City--site of retail, riots, and private hells. It's also the place where the homeless, surly, and otherwise strange find and target me, where they invite me into their worlds.

Don't get me wrong, I regard this incredible knack for connection as a true gift from above. Or below, or everywhere within and without my body: Shantih shantih shantih, Amen, and all that jazz. People of all orientations and shades of mental illness flock to me in great numbers. Like shit on a stick, if I do say so myself, since in this scenario (only), I'm the stick.

Right.

Let's discuss my recent trip on the great M60. On Friday nights, this strolling, express-stopping White Whale of a bus eludes even the seasoned MetroCard holder. It's the truth. Try following its schedule and you'll quickly realize that the bus itself yields to no such parameters, not even the ones specifically designed for its route.


Look! There's the M60 now, laughing at your 20-minute wait!

No, in all honesty, the M60 looks like a gigantic white shoe box. The diesel hybrid electric bus-box careens around corners and onto wide-set streets such as 125th on its way to LaGuardia Airport.

This is a better representation:



I finally caught the great beast and gave it my card. I sat in a single seat beside a window so I would remember where I was. I sometimes forget the order of the streets, or if I don't forget, I have anxiety that the unstoppable M60 creature will take me to the airport and drop me on a plane to some distant beautiful place. Or wait, is that my deepest desire?

As I moved forward with the jaunty thing, other passengers joined me on my passage to Lenox. Or India, if my traveling wish were fulfilled. One distinguished character entered the bus, sat down across the aisle from me. He looked about 50, donning a cowboy hat, and a carefully chosen button down shirt accented by a crisply starched collar. He wore corduroys and brown leather shoes. He was well-put together, and different from the other men I had seen in my neighborhood. For a moment, I wondered if he was gay.

Minutes later, I discovered he was not. As I watched people pass on the sidewalk, I noticed his gaze fixed on something in my direction. The window, he's looking out the window, too, I told myself. We stopped at a light one avenue away from my destination. I absentmindedly turned in his direction, startled. He stared directly into my eyes, not out the window. No, he was not creating romantic fantasies about the ambling passersby. If he imagined anything romantic, it had to do with me.

How did I know?

I noticed his left hand on his thigh. I saw the bulge. I observed the pressure, the rhythm, the certain thumb-and-forefinger grip he had on his growing member. He didn't pull it out, no. I imagined him as a traditional gentleman, a fine upstanding, church-going community member who single-handedly (literally) stunted gentrification through bouts of public gesturing at white women.

Slightly rattled, I pressed the button to let me off. I wondered if he would follow me or if working it on the bus was enough for him. I became increasingly more disturbed as the hours passed. If only I could avoid the M60 or any bus or public transportation in general.

To think, I took the M60 home from Labyrinth, a bookstore on 112th Street. To think, I was at Labyrinth to hear Naomi Wolf read from her latest book. To think, this kind of sexual assault would come about as an indirect result of my participation in a feminist-y forum.

Oh, what's all this thinking going to do. I'd recommend for you to watch yourself on those buses, but I'm sure "they'll" find me before they get to you. Thank me later. With a food processor.