Crooked
◊ When I was in my mid-teens, my parents gave me a bus pass and an 11 p.m. curfew and said I could do as I wished, as long as I didn't ask them to drive me anywhere. I bused almost everywhere until I was 17.
South Bay transit is awful; the further you get from downtown San Jose, the slower and crappier the buses run. In Campbell, all the buses but the 60 and the 62 run every half-hour, at best. That meant a lot of waiting.
It also meant I'd be stuck at the same bus stops with a lot of the same people. My friends and I ran into one guy pretty often when we waited for the 26; he was five or ten years older than us but talked to us as if he were still a teenager himself. After we'd known him for a few months, he offered us good money for real human bones. He especially wanted skulls.
"I use them in my art. Plastic ones just don't look the same when you light them up from inside. Real bones just look better, you know?"
We used to run into him pretty often, but then didn't see him at all for a few months. The next time he surfaced, he told us about how he'd been beaten up by a bunch of guys in their late teens. They'd attacked him for being or looking or seeming gay -- that's usually enough for those fucktards to start a fight. They'd circled him and called him "fag" and then jumped him. They'd used their skateboards. He didn't stand a chance.
One of the skateboards had hit him in the side of the head, almost severing his ear. He showed us how it was still a little crooked from being sewed back on in the ER.
"See how this one's a little lower than the other? I was telling the nurse that it was on crooked, but they didn't listen. And now it's always gonna be like that." He shook his head, exasperated.
"I told them it was on crooked."