Get off the Bus ...

On the 87 descending into Harvard Station: "Hey, yo - let me out. I missed my stop." Barked the loud man with the grey hoodie and construction boots. In his back pocket were lifting gloves and a tin of dip. He had loudly told the bus, with slurred speech, that he was 3 days back from Iraq. The bus entered the tunnel with the 20 foot concrete walls. "Just let me out here, I'm a Ranger, I can scale those walls." "How do I get to Brighton, which bus?" "Wait, oh yeah, I need to get to Sullivan Station. I'm buying a used truck. It's a beater, but I'm puntting a kicking sound system into it and new rims." As I ambled over to Dunkin Donuts I saw the fellwo go up the stairs and bark something at the the men fixing the elevator. On the bus he had talked loudly about scratching off the serial number to his illegally obtained 9mm "that got him out of a lot of jams". He also said that he was 27 and had 2 kids but his girlfriend left him because when he got 30 day breaks he couldn't cope with coming home so he travelled to thesouth of Spain (where the women were kicking) and to Rome and Amsterdam. It made me think that when I was young I would see Vietnam Vets and it all seemed so distnt from my life. But now - here I was face to face with a new generation of traumatized troops returning from a war that wasn't necessary, not knowing which bus to take.

overh Originally uploaded by bkerr.