A comedian with an audience of one.

26/10/02

I haven't written a diary for a while, I can't pretend I've been too
busy, I just couldn't be arsed really. I guess I was waiting for
something to happen that I wanted to write about. Then it did.

On Thursday I thought I'd experiment by taking a different route home
from work (anything to enliven a dull journey) I decided to trust to
the buses, namely the 38, which trundles all the way from Victoria
Station to Hackney and beyond.

It all went swimmingly initially, short walk to the station, boarded
one of the route masters just as it was leaving, found a nice seat at
the back of the upper deck, and settled down to read my book ("Fields
of Fire" James Webb. A Vietnam war novel).

Initially I was very relaxed as the bus slowly made it's way from
Victoria and up towards the West End. Then the journey changed. In
front of me, two teenage lads got on, they were African, I think, and
just obsessed with sex and talking about it. Now I am no longer a
teenager, and I remember thinking about sex a lot as a 17 year old, but
I didn't shout about it and make lude gestures to every woman who came
into my line of vision. This was what these two lads proceded to
do.

I sank into my chair as I heard them discussing over 2 mobiles, what
they would be doing to various teenage girls they rang. They would swap
phones and tell the same girl that they were going to "sex them in the
bush". Then laugh, and tell each other how they were going to rip off
the credit cards of the same women, "cos all women are hos and bitches
and you can't trust none of them, all they're good for is
fucking"

Now, I was beginning to come over all Victorian, thinking it was
unseemly to talk about sex is such a vulgar anf aggressive way. But I
also analysed my own feelings, how I do enjoy erotic passages in books,
if well written. So was i any different?. Well, yes, I wasn't forcing
sexual language on strangers.

Every time a woman got on the bus, the two lads would rate them, and
shout out at them, asking if they wanted to be "sexed". If a man got
on, the older, leader of the two, would drop a condom and then ask the
man if he'd dropped it. The men invariably smiled, said no, to which
the lad would say, "of course it isn't yours.....small meat"

Now I was getting a little tired of the condom joke, after the seventh
occasion, it had lost whatever humour it might have possessed. I sighed
at one point. Without turning, the leader, this "Comedian with an
audience of one" asked me if I wanted a condom. I just said no, he said
"cos you need it mate, you look really stressed"

Of course he was correct in his assumption, I was stressed, because he
and his sidekick audience were having a little show on the top deck
which no one wanted and didn't seem to mind that they were pissing
eeryone off. I wanted to say this, but didn't. Because it might have
escalated into violence, he might have escalated it, and I would have
to choose between becoming violent, and apologising to him so that he
wouldn't be violent towards me.

I am not violent, I have had very few violent incidents since school
(which I left in 1981) I guess I could defend myself, but living in
hackney, you see stories in the Hackney Gazette about stabbings on
buses, shots fired in night clubs, and you have to make the decision
that it isn't worth taking the risk that a confrontation could cause.
So I remained silent. Now I will never know what would have happened if
I had decided to confront him. And anyway, all he was doing was talking
dirty, being sexually agressive. He had already got angry at a white
guy with a black girl. Berating her for going out with "white bones"
and telling the white guy he was "small meat". The guy had not reacted,
probably for similar reasons to me, you make a judgement.

Luckily, I had heard him tell at least 10 girls on the phone to meet
him un Angel. So i knew he was getting off there, and not in Clapton,
so I could hold off until Angel. And he got off, with his little side
kick. And you felt all the bus passengers breath an enormous sigh of
relief, the bus itself seemed to relax.

More hassle was to follow, the bus stopped in Islington, having changed
it's destination. I got off, glad to have the chance to smoke a
cigarette, and walked along the Essex Road to get another bus. One
eventually turned up, and I got on home at 7.00pm, 2 hours after I set
out.

On the Friday, I took the tube.