Trigger Warning! (depictions of child abuse, sexual assault, transbashing)So, I'm back in California after spending a month in Ontario. I'm too damn poor to afford an airplane so I took the bus, again, after swearing probably a hundred times every time I take the Greyhound never to take one again. Nonetheless, I'm still poor and even poor people need to be able to visit their loved ones.
So why do I have to let off steam?
All the way from New York to St Louis I sat behind a man and his son whom he treated worse than shit on a boot. I really mean that, I honestly didn't think that people like him existed. I thought that the way he treated his son was a kind of myth perpetuated by an apologist society to make real child abuse victims and survivors feel like they weren't "truly" abused. It was that bad.
That made me sick but what really drove it home was at one point the father became physically abusive and shoved his son, knocking his head hard against the window followed by him choking his son around the neck while his son tried to breathe. I was in shock. When he had finished beating his son he turned to a couple men sitting across the isle and made a comment about how disgusted he was that other parents don't "spank" their children like he does.
Do you know how they responded?
They made jokes glorifying child abuse. One of the men even told a joke about a boy who told his abusive father he was going to call child protection and how the father told him that he was going to work him over in the time that it would take the police to arrive. They didn't even stay neutral; they reinforced and glorified the actions of a man who had just slammed his maybe-five-year-old son's head into a windowpane and who wrapped his hands around his child's neck and choked his child! Like that behavior is okay! People sitting around on the bus who overheard the conversation laughed.
I'm still trying to justify my own role in what happened. I feel that I could have done something. I could have stopped the man, confronted him when I first saw him throw his son against the window. I was in so much shock at the time I couldn't believe what was happening around me. What is more, afterwards I stayed silent. I told myself that all I could do would be to make sure the man didn't hurt the boy like that again. I told myself that if I brought it to the attention of the driver chances were that they would have been kicked off the bus and the poor child would have to take the brunt of the fallout.
To say that I doubt what I did was the right thing is, at this point, an understatement. Being a part of that caused me to loose faith in humanity and in myself.
The rest of my trip seems almost trivial in comparison to what happened:
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In Denver we had to stay the night in the bus terminal. At one point a homeless man wandered into the terminal asking for help. He didn't hurt a single person. When the security guard noticed him he chased him, running, with a nightstick out of the station. He chased him down the street.
People laughed.
When the guard returned he laughed and made comments about how he caught up with the homeless man and beat him.
People applauded.
He never hurt a single person but people thought it was worth applauding when a security guard with a nightstick and a handgun runs down and beats up an unarmed and fleeing man. Why, because he was homeless?
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From Denver to Los Angeles was particularly terrifying for me:
I was sitting near the back of the bus minding my own business when a ghetto thug and his buddies board. The bus was fully booked and one of them had to sit next to me. He didn't look before sitting down and when he saw who he was sitting next to, when he saw that I had breasts and, at this point, a beard, he began to berate me for being a man.
I even shoved my driver's license in his face which very clearly says I am female.
Thug 1: "Oh fuck! It really is a chick!"
Thug 2: "Bull-shit, look at its chin hair"
Thug 3: "It's a fucking dude, man"
Somewhere in there I got called a "hormone with tits." I got called a "retard." I had my disabilities mocked and mimicked to a snickering crowd.
I was cornered in a window seat next to an extremely homophobic thug and his posse who, had we not been on a bus, I'm sure would have ended very badly for me.
I was dead tired. I had been up all night and the next leg of the journey was a long one. I wanted to sleep so badly but I was afraid to. I was afraid that if I closed my eyes the man sitting next to me would reach between my legs to "check" if I was a "real woman." I was afraid of being raped, of being groped and molested in my sleep. I was afraid what would have happened to me if their suspicions regarding my genitalia were confirmed.
I did the only thing I felt I could do: I pressed myself against the side of the bus trying my hardest not to touch him while I clutched my brush next to my side for protection.
When we reached the first stretch of the Rocky Mountains the driver had to slow the bus to a crawl because of mechanical trouble with the radiator. The bus simply couldn't handle the grade. Many people, having been held over for so long in Denver, became furious. A mob mentality began to form among many of the passengers with angry threats being hurled at the driver. A few of the thugs, outside of earshot from the driver, talked about how they were going to beat up, maim, or even kill the bus driver for being too slow.
I was honestly scared for my life at this point. I felt that if the mob broke out I would be trapped on the bus with nowhere to go caught in a riot.
When we reached the first stop in the Rocky Mountains a very kind, if rather inebriated, man kicked the man sitting next to him out of his seat and told me to sit next to him. I did. He never did anything to threaten me and did everything he could to make me feel safe and comfortable. I was still near the thugs and I could still hear the things they were saying about me but at least I felt safer with someone protective between me and them. At least I knew I could fall asleep without being raped, which I eventually did out of pure exhaustion.
Later that night I overheard them discussing loudly and laughing about the best ways to rape a woman: how to get a woman to submit to, or how to trick a woman into non-consensual sex acts.
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To top off the trip, when I reached LA I sat within earshot of a pair of men while I waited for my next bus (which was four hours late, by the way). They were talking about the best ways to cheat on their girlfriends.
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Fuck this world, fuck the bus, fuck people. I'm sick to my stomach. If it weren't for the fact that I was able to see a dear friend in Montreal and the random kindness of a couple people I would have simply broken.
Rereading this it seems so far-fetched, like I made it up. I did not.
