Freak Magnet

Public transportation makes me nervous. Very nervous. I don't know all those people and they don't know me. We can see each other and there isn't anything I can do about it.

People cough, talk, listen to music, stink, eat and do all sorts of things other than sit or stand politely and try to remain invisible or otherwise unobtrusive.

BART is particularly heinous. The trains go through all kinds of neighborhoods. When the doors open an exchange of hostages takes place.

I've hated BART since my first ride on it back in the late '70's. It was a bad experience not because of the trip to San Francisco but the trip home.

Going to the city I was appalled by the extreme scenes of poverty, decay and filth below. I'd never seen anything like it inside the U.S. and didn't expect to see it in the bay area.

On the way home later that night, after seeing a play at the Curran Theater, we witnessed a fight in the station while waiting for our train back to Oakland. Two guys beat up a presumably queer black man, throwing him down onto the tracks. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know whether to go to his defense or stay put in case I had to defend my "date." Neither option settled well with me and I've thought about my decision ever since.

Fortunately my trips on BART are now very rare even though I go to the San Leandro station every morning and evening to deliver and retrieve Brad to and from his commute to San Francisco.

The photo above was taken on my last trip. I met up with Brad in SF to go see the new Bloomingdale's store which was about to open to the public.

I didn't want to schlep around inside a nice store like that looking like a hobo so I put on some of my better clothes, shaved, combed my hair and wore a sport coat. It was called "dressing for success" back in the late '80's at my job in the reservation center. (Which made little sense since people on the phone had no idea what you were wearing.) I, for one, never dressed for success.

Wearing three layers always makes me feel hot and being on BART makes me nervous. So I start to perspire shortly after getting dressed. It's very uncomfortable. And that day turned out to be warmer than expected making things even worse.

Before even leaving the San Leandro station, I had to pee. Bad. So I cautiously approached the station agent and politely asked her how one goes about getting access to the toilets, fearing I might get my head snapped off or be told that they weren't working and I'd have to go back to the car and pee in a cup; a particularly delicate and dangerous thing to do. She was incredibly nice and called me "sir" more than once. "It's the jacket," I thought to myself. "I look nice."

Maybe it was the camera. It's big. Or maybe a combination of both the camera and the jacket. Because what happened next really perplexed Brad when I told him about it later because, he said, people don't usually strike up conversations on BART.

Right. Maybe not during commute hours. But during off hours, the freaks ride the trains.

So I was pleased to find that the train was quite empty. There was plenty of room for everyone to have their own personal space. I fidgeted, looked out the window, read part of an abandoned newspaper and then put its pages back into sequence when I was done. I whipped out my camera and pointed it all around, looking for a good shot. And then I heard a voice coming from someone who had entered my personal space without an invitation.

"Aren't you afraid of getting into trouble for taking photos on BART?"

For a split second I thought it was BART Police. But it wasn't. It was a guy, younger than me, who looked and sounded like he might have been from Thailand.

Puh-leeze, I thought, and just shook my head.

"Are you freelance?"

"No," I said, wanting the conversation to end there.

"Oh, so you work for someone!"

"No." I thought maybe he'd think I didn't understand English when really I just didn't want to breathe his used air.

"I know," he said, "you're pa-pa-rot-zee!" (That was just plain stupid.) He was acting like he'd just met a celebrity and it was making me extra nervous.

I said "What? No." before I remembered that I didn't know English.

"That looks like the kind of camera they use. Is it?"

Of course my camera isn't the kind they use. The guy was a moron. And he kept warning me about getting into trouble for taking photos. So I got out my cell phone and pretended to listen to voice messages, just to end our weird conversation.

We were in the transbay tube where there's no signal at all. But it's the only thing I could think of. I was nervous, sweating and irritated and, for all he knew, was about to detonate a bomb using my new VirginMobile cell phone. I have to admit that I toyed with that idea (the false impression) just to mess with him a little bit. He did watch me the whole time.

So I was rather pleased with myself when he asked me which station I was going to. Mayybe he didn't like the way I was fidgeting with my cell phone and wiping the sweat off my brow. Maybe I looked nervous and it made him nervous. Maybe he wanted to ask me out for a drink. In any event, he got off the train one stop before mine, not bothering to say goodbye. And I was left to wonder what he was really thinking but very glad to be rid of him.

It seeme like most of the time I'm totally invisible when I'm in public. People walk straight into me. But for some reason that day was different. And since I always have my camera with me, I'm guessing it was the sport coat.

If it's going to turn me into a freak magnet, I'll remain unshaven with jeans and T-shirt and regular bed-hair (without gel) like every other hobo on BART.