It’s Safe to Sit

As Good As It Gets starring Jack Nicholson made me laugh. It might have made me cry too but don’t tell my dad. I laughed like everyone else because of how crazy this man was and what a life such as his must be like. I cried because I saw way too many similarities between he and I.

For the longest time I had forgotten about most of those similarities (I’m not one to re-watch, re-read, re-whatever anything that points out things I’d rather not think about). Then I started riding public transportation.

When I first joined the world of public transit I tried not to hold railings, I wouldn’t sit down, and I carried anti-bacterial hand lotion with me. The little pocket sized tubes replaced chap stick in pocket priority for some time. Most annoying was that I didn’t really know why I was doing all this. I have my fair share of neuroses but at no point in my life was I victim to germaphobia. I may not have been open to the sharing of a toothbrush or underwear but a germaphobe I was not. Germs were never real to me. They were to absurd and there were too many products out there to stop the spread of them that the panic had to be fake—a marketing gimmick is all. To me, Airborne couldn’t have been more absurd.

But there I was, leaning as best as I could against a pole, using my shoulder and chest as a corner pocket, to balance myself. My legs would cramp from the long journeys along Los Angeles’ busiest corridors, as they flexed to keep balance for an hour or more. I looked like an asshole no doubt for my legs would some times give out after hitting a Wilshire style pothole and, refusing to touch the rail, I’d fall into a wall, a seat, or worse, a person.

Perhaps it was the sneezing of others that did it—the coughing, the scratching. But whatever it was, it was strong enough for me to risk falling into people, which was a fate worse than any seat or handrail could ever be, seeing as it contaminated my whole wardrobe.

Then one day it all changed. I was standing near the back door of an articulate, my one time favorite place to stand (now my favorite place to sit) on my way to work. I was doing my usual routine of leaning and locking when an older black woman, dressed in red and wearing a beret, walked passed as if fearful of me. I politely stepped aside and apologized (for whatever reason) per usual. She stopped just passed me in the first row of raised seats and pulled out a large heavy-duty plastic sheet, like that, which would hold a mattress. She continued to unfold it and reveal a piece no smaller than 4’ by 4’. But even though it was enormous she maneuvered it like a matador and his muleta, and before the bus was moving she had successfully covered the entire seat she was about to sit in with this plastic cover.

Blown away by this, I forgot to brace myself and when the bus swerved into traffic I was caught off guard and fell into a seat—a regular, uncovered seat. I panicked for a second but before jumping back up, my usual practice, I noticed the face of the black woman. It was a face of disgust, of fear, of utter panic and anxiety. She pictured herself being the victim of such a tragedy and it was racing through every expression on her face. And immediately my face went through those same expressions as if by mirror. Fear and disgust and anxiety, not because I was sitting in a seat, because I was unknowingly holding the rail, but because I was slowly becoming this woman. I was slowly becoming Jack Nicholson. All that was left were the gloves, surgeon masks, and dare I say, mattress covers. So I cleared my thoughts and face and stayed in my seat. I dug my ass into. I set my book bag on the seat next to me and vowed that when I got home I’d put it on my bed without a second thought.

It’s another dry day in SoCal and my lips are drying as well. I reach into my pocket and find the tube of Burt’s Bees waiting calmly to save—it has reestablished its spot in my pocket hierarchy. And to think, 2 years prior I would’ve been out of luck contemplating the chapped lip healing powers of antibacterial hand lotion. Who says public transit isn’t therapeutic; after all, Metro has cured me of OCD.