Overheard (rude language)
Feb. 6th, 2006 10:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pecuniumI was on the bus last week, heading to Poly to go walk the dogs with Maia. (We had a nice walk, saw a couple of hawks, white, but not in a place I could get a decent photo, looked at lichen, trained the dogs and saw a bat).
The bus is an interesting place. I forget some of the things I like about the bus; because the things I like about the car cause me to avoid the bus (time; taking the bus to Poly means budgeting at least two hours, from when I walk out the door, just to get there. It's a 20 minute drive. Maia's schedule is such that [because of the bus's schedule] I have almost an hour's wait after I arrive).
I can read. Not just the bloggy-goodness I soak up at home, but books (which I don't read so many of as I used to. Back when I didn't have a car, I was cranking through 4-10 books a week, these days, maybe two). I also get to watch/listen to people.
Friday was a humdinger.
I get to the stop. Because the driver of this bus isn't all that good I have to arrive at least ten minutes before it's supposed to pull up.(If I were running a bus line, he'd be fired. He rushes his schedule, so he can stop and smoke, lies to people ["I only stop at Gov't Center" which wasn't true. It's a regional line, not a city line, so it has fewer stops, but there were at least two other stops. I think he lied to me as well, when he said the bus was damaged, and so leaving service at Gov't center. He gave me a pass, and a buck to hop a city line, but still. I walked to Poly before the city line could have delivered me... and that was about a two-mile schlepp] Maia says she's seen him pass people up, and he almost blew by me once).
So I get to the stop. I sit down and take out my present reading (The Stories of English by David Crystal. Really good). Guy comes up and asks me when the bus comes. I tell him. His manner puts me on guard. White guy, late 20s, hair a little unkempt, a hint of "ghetto" to his dress. Not freshly shaved, and sort of loose in the joints. Clean enough, but sort of bent.
He's talking to someone, I think on a cell-phone as I read. It's a nervous sort of reading, not so much because this guy is hovering, not quite in eyesight (there's a switchbox of some sort next to the bench, it blocks the view to the west) but because I am afraid the driver will ignore me if I'm not on my feet when he sees me.
Then this guy starts yelling, "There he is, the fucker said he was out of town, but there he is." It's at this point I realise a woman, and a kid in a stroller, are with him. He goes out into the second lane of traffic, as the cars stop at the light, and starts yelling at the occupants of the car. From body language, and a limited view (there are other cars in the road) it seems he is spitting into the car. Various threats are made (I have no idea what the occupants of the car said) and he struts back to the curb.
The car leaves at the turn of the light. Not as I would have done (slowly) but with a racing motor and a squeal of tires.
The guy comes over and asks again about the bus. I repeat that it ought to be along any moment.
They walk off. I can still see them, a hundred yards away, as the bus heaves into view.
Sitting on the bus, watching the people come and go (SLO has a hub sort of system. The Regional buses have a few stops, and at points along the way they coincide with various city lines, so there are spurts of on/offloading. As well as large groups of people sitting at some stops). Tooling along Hwy 1, through Pismo there's a tennis court on the right.
A group of three, siblings; I think, are on the court. A teen, and a couple of kids, roughly 5-7. All are wearing the same outfit. Shoes, and black shorts, no shirt. One of the younger ones is female. She is careless. She's hot, playing with her brothers and as comfortable as she can manage. The bus suddenly has three converstations going as the people notice the girl. Consensus seems to be that it's borderline acceptable. The one person said (from the other end of the bus), "It's all right some places," with the tone that this place wasn't quite right, but not so wrong as to be beyond pale, for people of questionable class.
The couple in front of me (about twenty, somewhat silly, with an infantin a stroller) were talking about this and that, and chatting with the man across the way (mid-thirties, hispanic, with a toddler, in a stroller) and she took a couple of pictures. Small point and shoot digital. She complained it wasn't really focusing right. She said she knew how to use a "manual" camera, and that they were all right, "If you had the time and knew exactly what you wanted." but she was going to stick to her digital camera.
Got it. Manual equals film.
Got to Poly, watched the students go by. Picked up the pots Maia was going to take to the raku party on Saturday (it was nice, lots of good pots, a drum that broke in the kiln, and one that didn't. Freestanding kilns, on wheels. A jet, for propane, a cylinder of kao-wool [I think. I'll ask Jen on Tuesday] and a floor of firebrick. Gets to about cone 06/05. The day went late enough to take some pictures of glowing pots, glazed and glistening, as the kilns were lifted away) and went to wait for her to pick me up.
Which was when I heard the idjits, "...[improve] my chance for getting pussy, because now I'll have somewhere to take it."
I guess my shock showed on my face, because the speaker saw me and said hello, asking, "how you doing sir?" It isn't that I don't think young men are shallow on the subject of sex (or young women for that matter, having one of the women at the raku party explaining there was no point in getting a male stripper for another's 21st birthday because there were only two, and they stank, the one who can dance is scrawny and the better looking one has no grace, and that for a while there was only one, and that was the skinny one; but mostly I don't get to hear women on the topic, or at least not more grown up women) but the thrust of the language got me.
I wouldn't have blinked if he'd been talking about the act, not the part. If he'd said, "It'll improve my chance to score/get some/etc." it would have been fine. I expect people to think about sex that way. The younger they are the more I expect it.
But to reduce a partner to an "it," that's wrong.
But I got to see hawks, and lichens, and a bat, so the day was all right.
The bus is an interesting place. I forget some of the things I like about the bus; because the things I like about the car cause me to avoid the bus (time; taking the bus to Poly means budgeting at least two hours, from when I walk out the door, just to get there. It's a 20 minute drive. Maia's schedule is such that [because of the bus's schedule] I have almost an hour's wait after I arrive).
I can read. Not just the bloggy-goodness I soak up at home, but books (which I don't read so many of as I used to. Back when I didn't have a car, I was cranking through 4-10 books a week, these days, maybe two). I also get to watch/listen to people.
Friday was a humdinger.
I get to the stop. Because the driver of this bus isn't all that good I have to arrive at least ten minutes before it's supposed to pull up.(If I were running a bus line, he'd be fired. He rushes his schedule, so he can stop and smoke, lies to people ["I only stop at Gov't Center" which wasn't true. It's a regional line, not a city line, so it has fewer stops, but there were at least two other stops. I think he lied to me as well, when he said the bus was damaged, and so leaving service at Gov't center. He gave me a pass, and a buck to hop a city line, but still. I walked to Poly before the city line could have delivered me... and that was about a two-mile schlepp] Maia says she's seen him pass people up, and he almost blew by me once).
So I get to the stop. I sit down and take out my present reading (The Stories of English by David Crystal. Really good). Guy comes up and asks me when the bus comes. I tell him. His manner puts me on guard. White guy, late 20s, hair a little unkempt, a hint of "ghetto" to his dress. Not freshly shaved, and sort of loose in the joints. Clean enough, but sort of bent.
He's talking to someone, I think on a cell-phone as I read. It's a nervous sort of reading, not so much because this guy is hovering, not quite in eyesight (there's a switchbox of some sort next to the bench, it blocks the view to the west) but because I am afraid the driver will ignore me if I'm not on my feet when he sees me.
Then this guy starts yelling, "There he is, the fucker said he was out of town, but there he is." It's at this point I realise a woman, and a kid in a stroller, are with him. He goes out into the second lane of traffic, as the cars stop at the light, and starts yelling at the occupants of the car. From body language, and a limited view (there are other cars in the road) it seems he is spitting into the car. Various threats are made (I have no idea what the occupants of the car said) and he struts back to the curb.
The car leaves at the turn of the light. Not as I would have done (slowly) but with a racing motor and a squeal of tires.
The guy comes over and asks again about the bus. I repeat that it ought to be along any moment.
They walk off. I can still see them, a hundred yards away, as the bus heaves into view.
Sitting on the bus, watching the people come and go (SLO has a hub sort of system. The Regional buses have a few stops, and at points along the way they coincide with various city lines, so there are spurts of on/offloading. As well as large groups of people sitting at some stops). Tooling along Hwy 1, through Pismo there's a tennis court on the right.
A group of three, siblings; I think, are on the court. A teen, and a couple of kids, roughly 5-7. All are wearing the same outfit. Shoes, and black shorts, no shirt. One of the younger ones is female. She is careless. She's hot, playing with her brothers and as comfortable as she can manage. The bus suddenly has three converstations going as the people notice the girl. Consensus seems to be that it's borderline acceptable. The one person said (from the other end of the bus), "It's all right some places," with the tone that this place wasn't quite right, but not so wrong as to be beyond pale, for people of questionable class.
The couple in front of me (about twenty, somewhat silly, with an infantin a stroller) were talking about this and that, and chatting with the man across the way (mid-thirties, hispanic, with a toddler, in a stroller) and she took a couple of pictures. Small point and shoot digital. She complained it wasn't really focusing right. She said she knew how to use a "manual" camera, and that they were all right, "If you had the time and knew exactly what you wanted." but she was going to stick to her digital camera.
Got it. Manual equals film.
Got to Poly, watched the students go by. Picked up the pots Maia was going to take to the raku party on Saturday (it was nice, lots of good pots, a drum that broke in the kiln, and one that didn't. Freestanding kilns, on wheels. A jet, for propane, a cylinder of kao-wool [I think. I'll ask Jen on Tuesday] and a floor of firebrick. Gets to about cone 06/05. The day went late enough to take some pictures of glowing pots, glazed and glistening, as the kilns were lifted away) and went to wait for her to pick me up.
Which was when I heard the idjits, "...[improve] my chance for getting pussy, because now I'll have somewhere to take it."
I guess my shock showed on my face, because the speaker saw me and said hello, asking, "how you doing sir?" It isn't that I don't think young men are shallow on the subject of sex (or young women for that matter, having one of the women at the raku party explaining there was no point in getting a male stripper for another's 21st birthday because there were only two, and they stank, the one who can dance is scrawny and the better looking one has no grace, and that for a while there was only one, and that was the skinny one; but mostly I don't get to hear women on the topic, or at least not more grown up women) but the thrust of the language got me.
I wouldn't have blinked if he'd been talking about the act, not the part. If he'd said, "It'll improve my chance to score/get some/etc." it would have been fine. I expect people to think about sex that way. The younger they are the more I expect it.
But to reduce a partner to an "it," that's wrong.
But I got to see hawks, and lichens, and a bat, so the day was all right.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 07:46 pm (UTC)Get some sex, etc. Getting pussy, (or dick, for that matter) is changing the mental landscape (even if it's being used as a euphemism for sex) and while the map is not the territory, it reflects the territory.
And objectifying the other participant in something (e.g. shooting gooks, or zipperheads, rather then a more removed, "enemy") divorces the participant from having to see them as people.
And if he'd stopped there, with just the turn of phrase, instead of following it up with, "I'll have a place to take it," or if he'd said, a place to take, "her," I'd have just chalked it up to callow youth.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 07:57 pm (UTC)The only crime worse than that is someone who allows herself to be treated that way.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 09:33 pm (UTC)I somehow doubt the guy in this circumstance is likely to say, "I want some tail, you willing to put out?", but rather acts moderately charming, and then never calls again.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 11:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 11:24 pm (UTC)TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 11:27 pm (UTC)There's a lot of quasi-aggressive slang in reference to sex.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 11:36 pm (UTC)Yeah, but it doesn't bother me so much, because it seems to be contextualized to the act, not the person.
That may just be my interpretation (and certainly it's not a phrase I hear often) and I'm missing those connotations.
TK
no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 08:16 pm (UTC)Let it be said that I was MUCH more careful about taking the bus after that!
*grins*
I was just thinking the other day how much I truly miss Thurs. night Farmer's Markets. I would go almost every Thursday and enjoy the sights and sounds, and buy HUGE avocadoes for a buck apiece. God, I miss that. Do you and Maia ever go?
no subject
Date: 2006-02-06 09:35 pm (UTC)TK