you could get caught up in all that nonsense like you wanted to, or you could just jump right into the fray like you did last night--the choice is yours, but you shouldn't mistake one for the other: the former is filled with nothingness and lifeless characters who are only ghosts in your mind, while the latter is at least a struggle to figure out what all this **** really means and where you need to go, what you need to do to make it all work--take what happened last night when you got on the bus: there was no room left except in the space right behind the punk girl who was chewing gum--now, you knew it was a bad idea, but what were you going to do, grab some ceiling bar and sway, and lurch, sway and lurch till you got where you were going?--hell no, it was supposed to be a civilized world, and so you'd wanted to sit--in your head, you'd already earned the right to sit just by virtue of there being a seat, just by you wanting to sit down without ever wanting to push someone else out of the way to get it...so when you finally did change your own mind and convince yourself that she was just some kid trying to act cool, that there weren't going to be any problems, that's just when she pressed that button underneath the armrest that adjusts the angle of the chair, and the whole thing headrest and all, came crushing down on you so that you had to look across at the women you'd come onto the bus with, the one who was supposed to be your lover and your friend, and you knew from the reaction on her face, which was fear and horror mixed with laughter, that you were once again allowing yourself to play the ******* clown, and all so that it would take the edge off of what you really wanted to do and say--who the hell did that little ***** think she was, anyway?--she knew you weren't supposed to lean the chair back that far, she knew there was next to no legroom back here--it was between the rear of the bus and her chair for christ's sake!--and yet as you felt your face pinging with both the pain of sudden discomfort and with the u deniable and stinking presence of the upholstery that had been filthied by years and years of ***** hands, *****, sneezes, and smoke, you also felt through all this that she was getting comfortable in her chair, that punk girl, that she was maybe even readying herself for a nap as you were living through a new experience of being torn between losing your **** asking who the **** she thought she was and the civil propriety expected of you to solve all of this amicably, or at least without harsh words and ***** looks...but if anything had been the story of your life, it'd been this very thing: how to not lose your mind when almost every ******* button was being pushed and pressed over and over to make you do just that--it wasn't an easy thing to first wrest your whole head from between the wall and her headrest and then lean to the side and whisper to your friend that you really needed to move, that you'd meet her at the next stop if you lost each other on the bus, and her silence meant exactly that: she wasn't giving up her seat for anyone or anything--she'd seen it first and had gotten there first and it was hers by right of this layman's etiquette, it wasn't like you were going to argue the point with her because you knew she was right--the seat she was sitting in was hers, you weren't suggesting that she change seats just go be closer to you, just because the two of you were together--what was this, middle school?--it's not like this was a nightmare or something, you'd just have to find each other later on, no big deal, right?--except that for you, it was a big deal: it wasn't that you were asking her to trade places with you or surrender her place and that she should go find another because she was smaller than you, no--you were just hoping she'd want to give up her seat in order to be closer to you, and you couldn't help but feel a little slighted and you knew it wouldn't take very long before this "slighted" feeling made you feel put out, that once more, you'd be expected to hold your tongue and get over it because when compared with the "big things" in life, what the hell was her not wanting to exchange her comfort alone for being uncomfortable with you possibly in a standing position till the bus pulled into the station?--it wasn't a big deal at all, you knew it, but it did feel a little "larger than life" just because of the physical discomfort you'd been put through just now...seriously, what ***** would've just stayed there being squished like a bug between the wall and that punk girl's seat?--in your head you were playing alternate ways you could've handled that whole thing that wouldn't have resulted in you squeezing yourself out of what had felt like the jaws of death around your skull, you had started imagining what might've happened if you'd simply asked her to put her seat up a few degrees so you could pretend you weren't a ******* veal being prepped for slaughter, imagined her response to be, "it's my chair," and doing nothing about it, which would've prompted you to say, "but it's my fist," and what kind of trouble could you have expected after that bus ride when the thing finally pulled into the station?--she would've taken a picture of you with her phone, gotten a cop, and you would've been right back in trouble just like you felt you always were, like your old man had always told you you'd be because of that mouth of yours--and in the life you'd always wanted to live, the one where people did sort through their problems using communication, using the experienced gleaned from previous and present relationships, the life you often lived yourself where you heard yourself speaking the words in the way that you'd always wanted to speak them where you could convince yourself that you really and truly were that person, that man who could refrain from all violence in order to serve the greater good of actuating all desire through talk and thought and connecting with other people, like this you had convinced yourself this was the norm, that everyone should just ask things politely and be gentle about getting rejected or when life handed down some pretty rough **** to deal with...how many times had you heard yourself speak such words that you couldn't help but think we're too soft or seemed too obsequious...but were they "civilized," were they peaceful?--yes, they had been, but maybe they'd been too civilized, too peaceful, and maybe the propel who'd been listening, those you'd been dealing with had mistaken your kindness and respectfulness for weakness--hadn't it happened before, and hadn't it brought out the very worst in you?--because, in unwind response, you had become the animal: it started with that look of yours they used to call part of your "black mood" and then sometimes it would escalate into the kind of cursing that pre-empted a scene of violence--between these two things, people usually caved or the situation resolved itself, but how had you felt afterward?: always like an animal and never like the educated man you'd spent all your life cultivating from the deadness they'd given you to work with, from the nothing they'd given you as a blueprint for success in this world--yes, you were a wolf, but life had made you a lone wolf, and now you were growing tired of all of it, tired of being put into these situations, tired of having to do the exact right thing in any given situation even if you knew it was someone else's version of what was right you were being judged by...and what were you going to do?: dump her on her *** because you were expected to "be a man" both by finding another seat and by intimidating the punk girl into submitted to your will?--who could satisfy both at once?--you didn't need this kind of judgment, it was bad enough already that you all "all this" just having a blast with ******* yourself up with all these options that weren't really options at all--if you gave the girl a ***** look, your woman would snub you because if it and she wouldn't let you forget it--for years later, you'd be called out for behaving like an animal...and yet if you said nothing and found another seat, she'd be mortified that she had chosen someone who wasn't a "real man"--god, how many times had you wanted to show her that if being a "real man" meant using violence or the penchant for using violence as a first response to any and all problems, then you would always be the "real"-est of men...there was no way to win this, it was the hallmark of civilization after all--you might've wanted to think you were a "lone wolf," but weren't you with that woman not giving up her seat back there, weren't you on a bus full of people?--weren't you going to busy yourself for the rest of this day and most of the next trying to get your mind off of this flashpoint that had almost become an outburst not "then and there" but in the here and now?--and what had been the chances of you coming out of all of this looking good, what were the chances that you'd find her at the station after you'd both gotten off the bus without a moue of disgust on her face you'd be expected to ignore and also ask her about because both would show you cared too much, both would show you'd ****** up, both would show there was no way to win, which was something you knew in advance, that you'd known just as soon as you got up lurching and swaying from ceiling bar to ceiling bar looking for another seat...but that didn't mean you were used to it, not yet anyway--
