It’s amazing how different a bus ride can be depending on the time of day and the day of week. Ride the bus in the morning on a week day and it’s full of tired students on their way to high school and sober-looking grownups on their way to work. Ride the bus on a Saturday night and you end up sharing your seat with people like the pair sitting next to me in the back. They snuck a six-pack onto the bus and each has finished his first and has fitzed open his second. They have goofy laughs and they try to carry a conversation with two girls sitting across from them. The girls are dressed suburban hoe style and you know just by looking at them they’re the sort who never learn anything except the hard way. One of the boys is showing off by demonstrating his ability to fart at will. The other announces that he’s a poet who can come up with poems on the spot. He asks one of the girls her name. “Judy?”
“Trudy.”
“Trudy?”
He stares at the ceiling then squeezes his eyes together tight like he’s sitting on a toilet. “There once was a girl named Trudy/Who was reedy and trudy a cutie/She looks hot in her pants …” The poet stalls. “She looks hot in her pants …”
Trudy’s friend lets out a short nervous laugh.
Trudy blushes.
The poet’s friend laughs and sez: “Cuz she farts all the time.”
The poet whacks his friend on the head and tells him not to be so crude. “We’re in the presence of ladies. We have to act with dignity. With honour.”
Trudy’s eyes grow milky and you can tell she’s impressed.
The poet looks up to the loftier reaches of the bus like Saint Sebastian in a moment of ecstatic revelation. Maybe he’s hoping for inspiration. Then he returns his eyes to the level of regular people and fixes them on me. He looks up, then back to me. He whacks his friend on the shoulder.
“Wha’d ya do that for?”
“Look at this guy.”
The friend leans forward to peer around the poet and stares at me. The friend smiles at me and nods. Then he sits back in his seat. The two teen-aged suburban hoes smile at me too. “Ya? So? Some dork guy on a bus.”
“But lookit.” He points at me. Then he points to an ad above the two suburban hoes.
Shit. I’ve been made. The poet’s pointing at the new Metro Social Services ad. You see, I’m a model. Now don’t get all excited. Usually when I tell people I’m a model they lean in close to take a good look at me, then say something like: “But I thought models were supposed to be good-looking.” I have a few answers to that. One is makeup. Another is Photoshop. And the all-important answer: there’s a huge market for ordinary-looking people. If ads weren’t full of ordinary-looking people, then super-models wouldn’t look so super. And sometimes—as with the Metro Social Services ad—you’re targeting ordinary people, so you need ordinary-looking models.
The Metro Social Services ad is for victims of abuse. In the ad, I’m a mean-looking guy, unshaven, unkempt, slumped on a couch. Cowering in the corner is a woman with her arms around two young children. The ad says it doesn’t have to be like this; there are shelters for women living in fear. And there’s a phone number you can call for help.
The poet whacks me on the shoulder with one hand and points to the ad with the other. “So you’re the abuser.”
The suburban hoes lean back and stare at the upside down foreshortened image of me above their heads.
The friend stands and, clinging monkey-like to a pole, leans in close for a good look. “Shit, man, you’re right. We’ve got the abuser right here on our bus.”
I smile at him and hope he goes away. He has bad breath.
“So you think you’re tough shit, doncha?”
“Let’s teach ‘im a lesson.”
“Betcha don’t know nothin’ ’bout honour.” He stands and steps around me, blocking my way to the exit. “Ladies,” he says, “I think it’s time we taught a wife beater a lesson in honour.”
“It’s just an ad,” I say. “I’m just posing.”
“Oh, so you like to pose as a wife beater.”
“You’ve been drinking. Why don’t you sit down?”
“So you like to be a role model for wife beaters. Is that it?”
The poet takes a swipe at me, but he’s way wide of the mark and it throws him off-balance so as he swings past me I give him a shove that sends him to his knees.
“Don’t do something stupid,” I shout. “I’m not a wife beater. I don’t even have a wife. It’s an ad. It’s make believe. It’s like acting.”
The poet stands and turns to face me. “Just the fact you’d be willing to pose as one tells me what kinda person you are.”
“Get the abuser,” the friend shouts.
“I’m not an abuser.”
The poet lunges at me, but he’s easy to dodge and I return with a left jab right hook combo that sends a tooth ricocheting off a window. The poet hits the ground with blood on his lips.
His friend shouts: “The abuser’s beating my friend. The abuser’s beating my friend.”
I shout back: “I’m not a fucking abuser!” And I kick him in the stomach.
The bus has rolled to a stop, so I force my way out the rear exit and onto the sidewalk where I shout back at the punks on the bus. “I’m not an abuser!” And then I run away into the darkness.