Guy, wearing knit
hat and sunglasses steps onto train at (name station), to the entire train car:
“I’m not going to watch Godzilla tonight. I’m not going
to watch it. I woke up this morning, ate breakfast and, uh, maybe got high and
I’m not going to watch Godzilla tonight.”
Guy in dreads with
headphones on to cute girl with dark red streaks in her otherwise black hair:
“Hey, can you do me a favor? Can you tell your parents
thank you from me?”
Me to that guy after the girl walked away from us very
quickly when we got off the train.
“I think you scared her.”
“It’s alright. She got her own,” he replied.
Guy playing Three
Card Monte to the group of three men holding their bikes gathered around him:
“You think it’s there? I bet it’s not. I bet it’s not. A
dollar? Five dollars? Man, I’m glad I didn’t bet, you would have won.”
The same Three
Card Monte guy to the same three guys and their bikes:
“Keno’s my game.
Keno’s my game. Learned it in
prison. Do you Keno? No? You ain’t ever
been in prison? You didn’t learn Keno in prison?”
Guy who brought
his bike onto the train, put it in the articulated section, then walked to the
complete other end of the train car, to the entire car, shouting:
“I might need bike. I might need my bike. I might go for
a bike ride, alright? Alright? You, (pointing at random person who luckily was
not me) is that alright?”
No one responds.
The former army
guy, retired, to the woman who ask him for directions, after he had given her
the directions:
“Man, I love the train. I mean used to drive, but it takes
like two hours in traffic for me to get up there. Just bought a house. Man, I
need to get to work so I can pay the mortgage.
We just put down this new tile floor, it’s this Mexican tile, I can’t
remember the name. But we did the tile, my cousin, he did it, he does
tile. We used the tile and you use black
grout and it looks cool. And then, you
put down a layer of glaze on top. It’s beautiful, man.”
The guy in the
Angels hat, to me, as a green line eastbound train comes into the station on
the westbound side of the tracks:
“Is that to Redondo beach? Is that Redondo.”
“No, it’s on the wrong tracks.” I said. “They are doing
track work today. You want to go west.”
“Yeah, west,” he said. “Thanks, amigo.”
The same Angels
hat guy, when he got off one stop before me:
“You take care, sir,” he said. I went from Amigo to sir.
Fuck am I old.
The guy on his
cellphone sitting across from me wearing pants with lots of zippers on them:
“No, man, that’s done. Tweety bird finished that
yesterday. I told you that. Tweety bird finished the toilet yesterday. Yes, I
did. You never listen. You never listen.”
The same guy,
second phone call:
“Yo. I’m on the train. I’m on the train. That’s why I
can’t hear you. I was going to Uber to you. I was going to Uber to you but I’m
on the train. I’ll get off at Avalon. Come get me. You be my Uber now.”
The same guy,
third phone call:
“I’m checking to see what you got right now. I got maybe
two, two and a half. I’m seeing what you got right now. No, man two grand,
twenty-five hundred. What you got now?”
To Laurie Lindeen,
author Petal Pusher, and guitarist and singer of famed indie rock
band Zuzu’s Petals, of who I saw on the bus and who I saw during a panel the
day before:
Well, we didn’t
say anything. I was too chicken shit to talk to her.
The woman with the
matted down hat at LA Kings t-shirt, to the guy in the dirty green hat who got
on the train with her and who was reading “The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.”
He looked at her. “I don’t know you,” he said.
“Sit next to me, you ass.”
He did. She hugged him.
