What I Remember Of A Political Struggle

It happened quite quickly. I knew what had happened as soon as it had. It happened in the afternoon. As commuters got on and off the bus at 1^st and Main I silently bled beneath my suit jacket. The bus doors folded shut. I went reaching into darkness for salvation, a pole, a goddamned pole to hoist myself up. I eventually stood welcoming back my vision. I pulled myself out of the void and back into a lifetime of daytime television. Two more stops and I’ll be okay. I’ll be back on my way.

As I stood there clinging with white knuckles onto the strap hanging from the ceiling I was overwhelmed with a sensation burden. Blood was seeping out of me and being absorbed in the woollen weave of my slacks. Light grey stained brown on an otherwise dull bus ride. I felt little pain from the wound. I merely felt my slacks getting heavier as they hung over my left leg.

We got to 1^st and Broadway. One more stop I thought to myself—fooling myself into believing I would make it. The commuters rushed about me in a blur, the bus doors folded back over the lights of escape. I looked out the windows, down at the girls passing by. They were in tight short skirts that made their hips move steadily like swells of the sea. One girl in a skirt had skin the colour of cardboard. She had short black hair that rode lightly above her ears. She had large pink hoop earrings. Time stood still as she walked past, grinning to her friend as if they both knew the agony of vile men. Time marched forward so did the girls and so did the bus. Like a whistle in the night; they were gone but echoed down the street.

I leaned against the pole. Commuters began giving me a strange looks, I must have been wearing quite a strange look myself but I have no way of knowing because I was lost. Lost in a de-railing train of thought. It was as though as my injury grew worse and worse, my thoughts became more frantic and desperate.

I recalled the mornings and afternoons spent drunk, yelling at passersby from my front porch; shotgun in tow. Then I saw before me the heroes, the commuters on that afternoon downtown Dash A bus. Naturally, I recalled the winters I spent in snow-filled valleys with snowdrifts as tall as a combine harvester. I recall looking down at my feet, thinking about whether or not I could march into forever with bare feet—they certainly have not let me do it in this temporary place. I for the final 30 seconds of my journey I thought about whether or not I should feel bad about all my dubious activities over the years.

I recall many things I did in my younger years I regret and am still embarrassed about. I look back at all the people that welcomed me into their lives only for me to burn the bridge as quickly as possible. I recalled my drunken, desperate, ineffective sexual advances at women. The things I could have learnt by sitting back.

If I had sat back, I wouldn’t be summoned to court like this today to defend the people of LA County. The bus arrived at my stop. The doors of escape folded open, the brisk October air rushed into the cabin of the bus. I slowly felt my way to the hatch. I burst through with all the force of my shoulder. I turned to face the courthouse. I took seven steps. I collapsed spurting blood from my mouth, hyperventilating, kicking like a sheep being torn from the clutches of existence by wolves. As lay there reaching into the void once again for a goddamn pole. Life, death, the bus, and the girls on 1^st marched into the Los Angeles Afternoon.

~First Draft.

Love,

Digress.