In the closing days of my third annual visit to Portland, as my roommate, who I might call American Viper, with two confirmed kills in three days, services the needs of the local herd of 25-year-old heffers—both a cut above the regular herd, as Bob would say—while I played butler, folding clothes, washing dishes and resting my eye, a friend 3,000 miles east in Gotham, texted:

“My friend Brian almost got jacked up last night getting off bus last night in Brooklyn.”

[These fellows were in communication by smartphone as this unfolded.]

“[Some darker negro] glared at him hard before chasing him and put his hands in pocket when he tried to get close.”

“Dude followed him off the bus, crossed the street whenever he did then broke into a run. Brian hauled ass and saw the same bus stopped at a light.”

“The glare gave it away (he had mandatory surgical mask on bus)”

“Bus driver saved his ass by letting him back on the bus…”

[I called to get more details and my friend related:]

“The bus driver let him on and when the other dude chased him all the way to the bus and demanded to get back on after him, the driver kept the door shut and wouldn’t let him on. That took some balls. It’s not like the NYPD is in a hurry to respond. The way he described it, casually, it was an open hunt with no attempt to conceal the action, openly stalking him and then running him down in the street. Brian is mixed [Asian and Wakandan] and is smaller and now older then most of these fuckers. So I suppose that dude was going to get someone on that bus and chose the weakest target. Fortunately Brian never got fat and could still run. The shame about living with These People [1] while white people run things, is that the bullshit white idea of differed justice, due process and everything—on top of the white guilt that declares These People can never be guilty of a crime, that it’s all my fault and your fault—is that it prevents true justice like you have in Africa, where they’d just put a car tire around this fucker’s neck and light it on fire for this kind of shit. So there you go, another one of my friends barely survives an attack by Homo Erectus, and its not a PIG that saves him—PIGz never save anyone—but a bus driver.”

…

I do not recall a police officer—more accurately a PIG—ever stopping a violent crime in progress. However, I recall three episodes of Baltimore bus drivers saving people:

Jim Bob was being stomped by two Wakandan Kangs who ran him down at the intersection of Harford and Northern when the driver of the #19 rolled right up to them and stopped.

Another time, a masked Kang—back in 2014—got on the #55 bus to rob one of us and the bus driver just stopped the bus and yelled at him:

“Mask off.

“Take the mask off!

“Take the fucking mask off or you get off!!

“One more time and I’m calling back up!

“Take the fucking mask…!

“That’s right, and keep it off on my bus!”

In June 2017 the driver of the #55—a younger version—asked me not to get off as the two Kangs zipping up hoodies at the stop were obviously prepping to rob me. Feeling up to the challenge, I got off and the hunt began as they tracked me for a mile hunt… [0]

Then, back in a blizzard in the late 1990s, as I walked the last two miles of a 14-mile trek from work, as the snow fell while I was penniless and prevented my wife from coming to get me, a bus driver on Belair Road [all of these four drivers were black men, not Wakandan Kangs] stopped the bus, opened the door, and yelled, “Get on!”

I said, “I don’t have the fare.”

He barked, “I ain’t gonna let a broke man freeze ta death—get on!”

White Trash Digression

Now, I had been turned off of numerous buses for being short 10 cents in the 1990s, as the additional zone fees were not clearly marked on the stops [2], once walking 8 miles for lack of 10 cents to add to the $1.35 I had already put in the meter, and could not get back. The Wakandan Queans and the white drivers [they still had some in the 90s] would never give me a break for want of a dime.

I had one white driver at Light and Pratt watch the meter suck 2 of my dollar bills up and only credit me for one bill, and refused to give me a ticket and made me get off the bus. He could not wait to call the cops on me. So I spent the next 3 hours walking uphill out of town to Northeast Baltimore. Yes, I was a loser who only carried enough money to get back and forth to work, so, in American terms totally deserved to walk for being unprepared to make up a shortfall from a bus meter counting error.

But once, at Eastpoint, as I turned to get back off the bus after putting in $1.35 of a $1.55 fare [3], sucking it up for a 9 mile hike after working 20 hours, the black man driving the bus gave me a break and told me to get back on.

Another aspect of Brian’s hunt here, is the mask. Kangs have been wearing masks to hunt people in Baltimore since 2015. So it made much sense to me in 2020, when despite all medical knowledge indicating that masks do zero to prevent disease transmission, that as the Floyd Christ Riots were also ongoing, that masking was made a social norm. talk about dual-use technology. When you look at who continues to wear masks outside after all mandates come down, you see that it is fear-ruled Asians and Hipsters and my traditional Wakandan foes. This masquerade of a hunt, shall, I think, continue into the deepening twilight of the American night.

…

Notes

-0. I think this story is in Autumn in a Dying City, a book that was banned by Wamazon between February 2018 and January, 7 2021.

-1. Kangs of Wakanda

-2. Bus lines would have additional mileage fees that had to be paid if you did not have a bus pass and paid cash, or had not been issued a transfer slip from the driver of the last bus. Since I walked between bus lines, unlike most people, female drivers usually refused to give me transfer slips and white drivers would never believe that I would walk between stops, so would refuse me the credit.

-3. The #15 line would have a zone fee that kicked in North of Frankford, then another 10 cent fee at Northern Parkway, parallel to where Jim Bob was stomped over on Harford, and then an additional express fee to get to Perry Hall, which only a few buses a day would do at rush hour. Around 2000 this mess was superceded by meters that issued a day pass slip.

It has always impressed me that the only humans to show mercy to me as white trash, were black men, and that women, white men, and cops have always come down on me as if I represented an existential threat to humanity for being a failed white man left walking and taking the bus as my betters drove their gleaming chariots of ire. [4] Read How the Ghetto Got My Soul if interested in some stories along this line.

-4. Thus, I laughed when Myth of the 20th Century listeners posted comments that “LaFond is a ոigger” and that “he deserves to be homeless,” as those words rang so true to my life in Baltimore, where the only men to ever grant me respect were black.