N-JUDAH (A Night Ride Home)

Another slice in the life of.....

.

N Judah
:dragonfly:
by Stephen D. Gross

There's not much excitement on Lower Market Street at 2 am. A wino peeing in the shadow of a staircase, a pair of cops rousting a guy who picked the wrong color skin in which to live his life, a covey of noisy tourists heading back to the Hyatt after a night spent ogling mammaries in North Beach, a buzzing blue neon Gourami in the window of Kan Lee's Tropical Fish Emporium.
I had just put in six tedious hours shoving mail into pigeonholes for the U.S. Government. I got high with the night shift crew while sitting on the wall during my break. I bought a sweet potato pie from the four Black Muslim ladies from Divisidero street., hot from a cooler chest in the back of their Buick Century station wagon. I don't know why I buy only one - I always kick myself after they've gone home.
I'm waiting for the N Judah on Market Street near the corner of Spear, which, God willing, will take me to within one short block of my home on 47th and Irving.
San Francisco's glass and stone echo the sound of two guys with oversize coats arguing about the contents of a brown paper bag. I should turn up my collar against the chill but it was warm when I left the house at 3:30 so I made the mistake of leaving my Marine dress jacket with the bead work featuring a green and red yin-yang, a gold candle , and the word 'shalom' in Hebrew letters superimposed over a blue Star of David (also bead work) resting on the back of a kitchen chair. Stupid me. Stupid, chilly me.
A light drizzle lays a slick film down in the gutter where yellow lights dance in the wash of passing traffic. One of the bigcoats shoves the other who stumbles backward for maybe 70 or 80 feet before planting his rump in somebody else's phlegm. Rain, spit, It's all part of the catch-all urban swamp to him. He doesn't notice any difference at all.
The reticulated streetcar clacks its way up Market, all lighted and warm and redolent with the caustic stink and whorehouse tang of humanity. It's uncharacteristically crowded for the late hour and I grudgingly accept that I have to sit next to someone else. I cast about for a candidate who looks like they bathed this month, and sit down next to a well-dressed Middle Eastern-looking guy who might be Iranian, or Israeli, or Turkish He looks shifty and suspicious but clean enough to tolerate for the next twenty minutes. It's not forever, I assure myself studying the "U Kn Lrn 2 Spdrd n 2 wks" ad above his head. I lower myself down carefully so as not to shake his placitude. I feel little darts of annoyance jabbing at me from his direction. Yeah, well fuck you too, Abdul.
I study the back of the head in front of me. It's small, compact, salt 'n pepper and female. The driver lurches away from the curb and navigates his way westward into the early morning fog. The streetcar strains with snorting, sneezing, farting and hacking humans trying to stay alive until the N Judah gets them home. Not much conversation, possibly because of the strained, witchy hour, but lots of bodily effluvium. Keeps one in touch with reality. After a surreptitious peek around at the dreadful assemblage, I turn my eyes again forward and stare some more at the compact head. The neck it's perched on is invisible behind a mud-colored sweater that looks more like a road kill than a manufactured garment. The unseen neck swivels rustily toward a murky window and I see the wizened, shrunken face of a tiny, ancient monkey-lady. I knew she was human because they let her on the streetcar but, she could have been a card-carrying member of the organ grinders' union. The neck creaks a few degrees to the left and it strikes me that the reason her skull.looks compressed is because the monkey-lady is wearing a hairnet.
The net is whimsically adorned with tiny decorations, rosebuds, stars, merry-go-round horses, tiny birds and bees and a managerie of critters that were once cute and endearing but now lay limp and shapeless between the net and the head it's pasted against. Abdul is working on looking fierce and mean, so I studiously concentrate my gaze elsewhere. There's a fat lady in six-inch spikes and a day-glo orange raincoat big enough to cover the Red Sox infield during rain delays. An Asian kid with coke-bottle specs is studying a book on Fractal Geometry. Two middle-aged women with east European accents are picking apart the butcher shop on 43rd and Kirkham. There are three woman-child-type teen-agers whispering about Johnny-this and Bobby-that and who went and broke whose heart. A pair of nuns, a tall one and a fat one (there's always a pair of nuns), are sanctifying a couple of seats across the aisle, and there's a skinny Black dude with what looks like a cornet or flugelhorn case (like I really know what a flugelhorn case looks like)! A whole cross-section of humanity snuffling and wheezing off the same stale air while enclosed in a steel box cranking inextricably toward the Pacific.
The N Judah feels its surefooted way along the tracks, hissing and clicking, lurching and whining. People rock backward and then gently forward in unison, doing the Dance of the Midnight Commuter. A tiny movement flickers just beyond the corner of my right eye. I stare ahead at the compact cranium and marvel at the tiny net and its myriad decorations. I'm almost surprised when I see one of them move. It's a bee, a lovely, convincing replica of a little bee. The woman's ratty hair net, her creepy, stringy web is falling apart. The tiny creatures are methodically detaching themselves from the fiber. No, I'm not surprised. Abdul's head is inclined downward as he peers into the darkness of Judah street. Only briefly do I wonder what he's staring at, but then I see his narrow eyes reflected in the glass of the dirty window and I realize he's looking at me. The bee ornament, a big one to be sure, is slowly shifting over the compact curve of the woman's skull and will soon become lodged against the net's elastic just above the invisible neck. Between the metallic whine of the streetcar and the sounds of the metabolizing human zoo I'm riding with, the hum is not readily discernible. A part of me may be hearing it, but it's quickly absorbed by the muffled cacaphony that surrounds me. Between the snorts, groans and grunts the persistent hum finds a wavelength of its own.
As I watch in amazement, the semi-crushed bee ornament disentangles itself from the grimy hairnet and begins to crab sideways in the direction of the monkey-woman's right ear. Gravity, I tell myself, has nothing to do with it. Eighteen inches in front of my face, the angry insect buzzes impatiently. God knows how long he's been wedged against the woman's skull, but he's obviously in a bad mood. A red light goes on in my head as I see that rather than a fun-loving, nectar-sucking bee crawling around her head, the woman is playing host to a cantankerous hornet. Tired of weaving its way through her tangled, nappy knots since dusk, the creature looks like he's about to do something desperate.
By this time Abdul has noticed my reaction and is ogling the woman's pate in an attempt to learn what it is that caught my attention. I subdue a chuckle as I see his eyebrows shoot up and his eyes widen like concentric ripples generated by a pebble tossed into a brook.
In my own private fog I sit entranced by the quiet drama unfolding in front of me. I feel terrible for the poor yellow-jacket's dilemma. I'm saddened by his having had to sustain his injury trapped and miserable with no other bug to comfort him. He's up way past his bedtime, hasn't eaten for hours, and obviously needs to get home where his family can take care of him -- if indeed it's not too late. Here we were past Nineteenth Avenue and heading west, and the little invertebrate presumably climbed on the N Judah with the monkey-woman on Lower Market near Spear Street. That was more than three miles from here. I feel like I should try to do something to help free him and at least give him a chance at survival. Sometimes, though, when it comes to the natural course of events, it's best not to interfere.
I thought back to a visit I once made to a wise, old country dentist named Dr. Jacobs. We heard a plaintiff buzzing coming from his window and upon closer inspection, discovered a green-headed fly caught in a spiderweb. Dr. Jake's first instinct was to free the hapless creature, but then he thought better of it and decided against interfering. The spider had put some work into setting his trap and had earned his meal. It was the fly's karma to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. So Dr. Jake poked around my molars a bit more while we listened to the fly's weakening dirge and abruptly Jake stopped excavating and said: "I know we really shouldn't interfere but on the other hand, we're here at this particular moment in time for a reason, intelligent beings capable of effecting a change such as saving that fly's life. If it were the fly's cosmic destiny to be eaten by the spider, than he wouldn't have been caught where we would plainly see and hear him... and consider doing something about rescuing him. Maybe we're sharing this stage with the fly because we're supposed to save him." And with that he rushed outside and freed the green-headed fly.
I considered too, the monkey-woman's plight. If I kept my mouth shut, there was a good possibility the hornet would become frustrated and do something irrational, like sting her. Or she might suffer an attack to her hand while idly running it through her hair. Hundreds of people with allergic reactions to insect stings die every year. Far more than those who are chewed on by sharks. If I saw someone swimming and a Great White cruised by, would I think twice about telling them? Probably not. But it wasn't that simple. The wizened, frail woman appeared quite elderly. What if her heart wasn't a hundred percent and she reacted badly when I told her and her heart gave out? People her age have strokes all the time. Abdul, meanwhile, was mesmerized. He had broken into a greasy, tropical sweat and couldn't tear his eyes from the limping bug. The harder he stared, the more profusely he sweated, and the more he sweated, the more like decaying vegetation he smelled. Then there was the actual act of Informing the Woman to consider. I couldn't very well shout, "Hey, there's a goddam wasp on your head!" I had to be genteel and unintrusive and choose my words carefully. That is, if in fact, I decided to tell her. I briefly once again considered a policy of non-intervention -- letting events just run their course. Abdul looked like he was excited enough to bite the back of the woman's head. I couldn't think why he might want to, but he had this insane, semi-cannibalistic look in his eye. I felt like if I were going to do anything, now was the time to act.
Cautiously I touched the woman's right shoulder and said in my gentlest voice, "Excuse me, but I think you have something trapped -- I think you should remove your hair net." Responding slowly to my touch, the woman creaked her invisible neck around as far as it would go and vacantly stared at Abdul.. She knew who had spoken and would have been staring at me but her neck didn't go around that far. The stare said, "what the hell are you talking about, I don't understand a word you're saying (...and even if I did speak English I'm hard of hearing and my comprehension level is less than that of a mink in heat)" I leaned dangerously in Abdul's direction so I could be sure she would see me and I tugged at an invisible net around my own head while pointing at hers. She must have figured out that I was refering to her hair net, but she couldn't imagine why. She must have been thinking, "all kinds of crazies ride the N Judah at 2:30 in the morning -- just my luck to be sitting in front of one!" I continued to point agitatedly at her net while I still had her attention, and she must have felt or sensed something crawling across her scalp because she finally reached up and pulled the mangy thing off. She looked at it and shook it, and the sorry decorations wiggled and jiggled, and then she noticed one of her colored pipecleaners and cuetips with wire legs had a mind of its own. She pronked right up in her seat looking just like a gazelle jumping straight in the air so it can scope the veldt for lurking lions. She emitted a alleycat yelp and shook the net so violently most of the decorations, hornet included, got shaken loose. Abdul had looked more comfortable with the yellow-jacket safely ensnared. Now that it was free, his cheerful demeanor instantly dissipated. Reviving much more quickly than I anticipated, the determined bug flexed its thorax and became airborne. Like the menacing drone of a jet fighter, the wasp's hum electrified the air.
All the streetcar's windows were closed so it couldn't go very far but in seconds it had made its prescence known to the N Judah's semi-comatose nightriders. Like an animated penny-arcade diorama after a quarter has been dropped in the slot, everyone suddenly exploded into action. Abdul gasped and shot to his feet like someone with a live cherry bomb under his butt. Cracking his knee hard against the seat in front of him, Abdul's wide eyes grew impossibly wider and he reached for something inside his jacket. "Is it his heart?", I conjectured hopefully, or is he reaching for a weapon". Possibly attracted by what it believed to be an ocean of nectar, the wasp zeroed in on the fat lady's day-glow raincoat. Like lava flowing over the rim of a caldera, she raised her tangerine enormity out of her seat and with her six-inch spikes gimleting dangerously, she chatter-stepped backward toward the unsuspecting driver. Unable to hear the winged icepick's miniscule buzz over their giggling, the three Lolitas weren't yet aware of any impending danger. All they knew was this half-ton popsicle was in the throes of a spasm or an orgasm, either of which was fine entertainment. Of course Day-Glow's left cheek weighed more than the three of them together, but their mothers had assured them they would be eternally slim and beautiful and never, ever grow old, so they snickered behind their fists, and elbowed each other conspiratorily.
Hiding behind his text on Fractals, the Asian kid fired a quick peek at Ms. Day-Glow and pretended he was on the streetcar by himself. He snatched a peek at the gigglers and I could see his mind was more on what was in their Calvins than what was in his book. Veterans of political opression, starvation and the horrors of war in their youth, the middle-aged "yentas" leaned into each other protectively, but without much real concern. They had many times been in much greater peril, and a wasp on the loose didn't warrant more than a raised eyebrow. The Black musician had learned early-on that it was safer to not get involved in that which wasn't his business, and until such time as the wasp threatened him personally, he planned on leaving it alone. Instead, he was staring out into the fog and concentrating on a riff he had heard on an old Clifford Brown recording, so he was unprepared when Ms. Day-Glow put one of her six-inch spikes through the top of one of his Nike hightops. His scream of pain brought an immediate reaction from the driver and the two nuns. The nuns both clutched their rosaries and made huffing noises as they looked at one another and crossed themselves repeatedly. They weren't exactly sure what they should be praying for, but it sounded like the situation definitely called for some. The driver braked and turned to see what the furor was about, and nearly rear-ended a BMW which was double-parked near 36th Avenue. Meanwhile, the monkey-lady was staring at me with a mixture of confusion and dismay. She wasn't quite sure why I would want to cause this mess and was wondering whether she had anything at all to do with it. Abdul was making low gutteral sounds deep in his throat and fighting to open the window next to his seat. The poor wasp was zipping in four directions at once and sounding more irritated with each passing second. As the driver braked Ms. Day-Glow lost her balance and tumbled into the collective laps of the three teenagers who's screams caused the nuns to squeeze their beads and pray more furiously than before. Rattled by the pandemonium erupting withing his streetcar, the driver alternately braked and lurched shaking us like one of James Bond's martinis. Unfortunately, that was what ultimately dispatched the guileless wasp. While making one of its swift circuits around the N Judah's interior the snot-sized bat made the mistake of flying behind Abdul. He was standing, straining mightily upward and outward (in the direction of Mecca, I'm sure) when the streetcar leaped forward, causing him to fall backward into his seat. As I was sometime later mourning its demise, it occurred to me that it must have been the wasp's karma to make a pass behind Abdul at exactly the wrong moment. It was over quickly, Abdul crushing the hapless creature behind his back, just as we pulled away from the streetcar stop at 45th Avenue.
As soon as he realized what he had done, Abdul's eyes shone with the light of an avatar just returned from the Holy War. Maybe they were just salty and stinging with sweat oozing from his brow. His elevated spirits took a nosedive after he removed his jacket and saw the beastie's buttery guts and green transmission fluid frescoed all over its back. After the three budding blossoms of pubescence had their giggles smothered under Ms. Day-Glow's colossal fall, the driver reined the N Judah in so they might have a chance to disentangle themselves. His nose buried in Fractals, Mr. Cokebottles silently insisted he had absolutely nothing to do with any of it. His face contorted grotesquely, the Black musician hopped up and down on his remaining good foot while he desperately massaged the impaled one between his hands. Accepting it all as another slice, another chapter, the two European ladies gathered their shopping bags together and prepared to disembark. Eyes rolled imploringly heavenward, the nuns, now clutching each other, silently moved their pale lips. We had reached 47th avenue, my stop, and like a infantryman weaving his way between corpses on a battlefield, I made my way toward the exit.
Just before I stepped down into the street I turned around for a last look at my fellow passengers and for a split second I felt like LLoyd Bridges or Dana Andrews in one of those Airplane disaster movies like "The High and the Mighty" where, after they learn they're all going to die together, the passengers reveal intimate little facts about themselves that they've never before shared with anyone. They instantly become comrades-in-arms, co-subscribers to a mutual destiny, irrevocably intertwined now, and for all eternity and the survivors usually get together for a big reunion after a few years. I stepped out into the cool, soothing fog of the outer Sunset and as I watched the N Judah again cleave the vaporous night, the last thing I saw was Abdul gloomily trying to scour the wasp guts from the back of his jacket.