Benches and Goalposts

The sun makes no distinction down here in the summer, not even this morning. It pierces and burns residents like tourists, it does not spare the rich people on foot (although very rare), it democratically strikes provocative female students in shorts, stressed workers and human cases coming off revelry nights or, like me, from a exhausting shift to say the least.

Forrest Gump holds up his dripping sweat head, crouched on the bench, without a word, he has no boxes of chocolates or stories to give to the equally dripping zombies that jump from foot to foot waiting for a miracle otherwise known as “14 coming on time. “Jenny instead shakes her head, peers at the smoky horizon of the exhaust gases, then walks disconsolately and swaying of hips to the sea.

Only a small square of a bench appears in shadow, but the place is guarded by pigeons and cockroaches that jostle on a few leftovers of junk food. Still nothing coming.

Nothing like in my current life, I find myself thinking: not a job that allows me to scrape together something that does not end in rent and bills, not a social or affective life worthy of note … but I realize that Bubba is glaring at me, as if I had just cursed the shrimp god. Perhaps it is the case that you stop sketching other mere mortals with my self-pity tears, they already have sweat for them!

All right. It is already 8 and 10. They pass, in order, 203 and X1, for which I feel the same emotions as a far right ultras in front of a library. 8 and 12, here’s my bus. All crowd around the sign post, the bus obviously stops 5 meters before. I am in the middle, resigned to be overwhelmed while I put the scarf around my neck: yes, if you can count 45 degrees in the shade outside (but shadow?), inside you will count -10 at the window, and after the second flu catched in a row I think I learned the lesson.

I learned it so well that in 10 seconds I gained a place at the back, squeezed between two female elephants, positioned just below the air conditioning outlet. But that’s okay, I put on my beloved hat, and shake apart just a little bit just the hour that separates me from home.

As per regulation, in fact, the bus driver is not required to brake properly. Each time, he must violently crush the brake at the last moment or nail in the curve, so that the users massed in front and behind remain alert and vigilant, and all together passionately swarm towards the bottom (“Move back! Move back!”). And our driver is not just anyone, he looks fearfully like Lieutenant Dan, his eyes full of rage and homicidal madness sparkle intermittently between the mirror and the pedestrian crossing.

At the very moment when I get out of the way, I feel like the leaf (or was it a feather?) of the homonymous movie, the one that flutters freely and lightly in the air on sweet and equally light notes, were it not that I hit something in the midst! The rancorous Lieutenant calculated the measurements well. 5 meters before the stop a majestic light pole stands out, just to remind me that life is not a film and not even a football game where the “almost goals” will also startle people but in the end do not count anything on the final result.

My partial result is, for now, to bounce from one side of the bed to the other at the mercy of the humid heat, dreaming of being fired for no reason, of having to pay exaggerated bills, of greeting other friends leaving and never seeing a love coming, as if resisting, resisting and resisting again was all that life has to offer me.
Then I turn my head the other way, I laugh over a good minute, then turn off the light. And it’s immediately evening.