Philly Transit Chronicles Three: The Drive By

The stories we tell during our precious downtime at work are as important as the jobs we do. Most HR Representatives would beg to differ. The watercooler serves as the cheapest of amphitheaters, a little stage for the working class to blow off steam. On stage was Ron, the guy in charge of setting up the tables and chairs.

Ron’s Norse saga detailed the time he threatened to knock the teeth out of the guy who stepped to him at the bus stop. I forget what the guy said, but he had it coming. Not the largest fellow, Ron was one of those squirrely white kids who grew up in the city, so I believed he could smack at least one of the guy’s teeth loose. Maybe not on the first punch. The antagonists must have believed Ron’s threat as well, because that guy fucked off without daring to open his mouth again, teeth intact. Following Ron’s tale was going to be as intimidating as opening for Slayer. I took the spotlight and played it safe with an old go-to.

I said, “This happened around 2001–2002, when I was in my early twenties. I had just met up with my girlfriend at the time, escorting her home from her subway stop, like a true gentleman. Berkeley had just accepted her, and she still thought I was moving to San Francisco with her like we had discussed. At that point, so did I.

Walking past the Philadelphia Community College with her could have been my last memory. My last reality before walking towards the light, wondering for eternity what our life together on the West Coast would have been like. It didn’t happen.

I heard it before it hit me. The shot sounded like a gun with a silencer on it, followed by tires squealing away. There was only a twinge of pain on the back of my neck, like I got bit by a mosquito on steroids. Maybe I was just in shock.

My first words: “Oh my God, I’ve been shot!”

My second: “Oh my God, I bleed yellow.”

I pantomimed feeling the back of my neck, and then discovering my yellow blood on my palm, mouth agape. I described the gooey feeling of the gluten shell of an exploded yellow paintball between my fingers.

Fists balled up in rage, I pretended to scream, “Some goddamn kids shot me with a fucking paintball gun!”

Ron doubled over with laughter, as if someone had punched him in the gut.

“It’s not that funny,” I said.

He gathered himself before speaking. “Yeah, it is. There is a good chance that I’m the one that shot your ass! Me and my boys used to do that shit all the time. Spring Garden Street was our hotspot. And if you were walking with a girl then you were definitely getting got.”

You never know when you’re a character in someone else’s play. I brought Ron so much joy with the memory I couldn’t even be mad at him or plot revenge. I liked Ron, and enjoyed hearing him play the piano in the rec lounge on his break after the bosses went home. He transformed from a forty-something-year-old dude with three kids into a hell-raising, malt liquor guzzling teenager with a paintball gun in each of his idle hands.

I ended my story there, cutting short my usual denouement. I didn’t share this aftermath with my coworkers. Jump shot to me, standing in my apartment, talking to the fuzz on my green landline, twirling the curly cord in my fingers, choking on adrenaline. I used white people’s language, the stuffy words of my people, like “unacceptable” and “inappropriate” while my girlfriend wiped the yellow paint off the back of my head and nodded along to my words like a hype man. I snitched and squealed louder than a senator caught with his pants down. In my best “Well, I never” tone, I let the officer know that good citizens such as myself didn’t deserve such abuse.

Instead of telling this version, the rest of my stage time was squandered pontificating on the size of my head, the second largest in my graduating class, a natural target that has attracted ballistic sidewalk assaults featuring everything from eggs to forty ounce bottles of malt liquor, a blonde meteorite drawing in projectiles with its gravity. The general consensus among my coworkers was that the size of my noggin should shoulder half the blame. The typical small mindedness of the small headed is my cranial cross to bear.

I also forgot to mention the muffled laughter I heard on the other end of the line when I gave my report to the cops. Ron didn’t deserve that much happiness.