Vertigo

I must have had a little panic attack that night, sitting in the dark with my headphones on, the laboring hum of the bus's engine vibrating my seat, my heart racing in anticipation of nothing. The sensation is familiar, some rip in time emerges without warning, a backstory to the script wherein the hero, leaving no stone unturned, discovers that nothing in his imagination exists without character. The vertigo he experiences is a side effect of being reintroduced to the general population, having been conditioned all of his life to live every day in fear of the next. I sat suspended there for some time fascinated by the view of the station below, as on many nights seen through foggy plate glass windows, a charming vignette about bitter cold February New York. Steam rose from the cracks in the walls of the heated interior and came spewing forth every time someone opened the door. Heat escaped with curses from those comfortably huddled inside, came swirling around the soot covered parking deck, danced around conduits, rigging, piping, finaly relented and mingled with the dry exhaust air. As the 9:30 bus was poised to depart Port Authority there was some furor among the passengers in the front compartment over luggage and empty seats. A few desperate latecomers were turned away even as they came vaulting after us, the stern old Jamaican driver reversed, then waved them off through his side mirror. I was to be delivered to the show on Somerset Street within the hour. I clutched at my bag, put my head back, dug round in the front pocket for the adderall.

As the bus hurtled along owning the road on its course caustic fires leapt into the breach from open furnaces on the horizon, manic headlights disappeared en masse behind shadowy metallic structures, like a thing alive, the intersecting architecture softened at a distance to look like the veiny transparent leather of reclining bat wings. Red beacon lights still flashed on forgotten towers sunk out in the wetlands, illuminating the otherwise imperceptible depth from the Turnpike overpass to the reedy surface below. I dreamed pleasantly, transported myself to a familiar old crowded subway car where people gripped handholds and slept standing up, while those awake sat squinting under too bright florescent lights. I awoke periodically to the sound of voices in the seat behind me. Two well dressed black cats were arguing in subdued half whispers, "Problem is, his definition of tough love is different from ours, what we're used to, you know what I'm saying, is different from his world..." As I drifted back to sleep the men’s voices permeated my dream, I could hear them from somewhere opposite me, as if they had come walking in from one car to the next, "He used to get thrown around by his parents, shit thrown at him, he'd get in fights with his sister, rip out her weave, his sister would scratch his ass all up, his neck 'n shit, we're not used to that, you know what I'm sayin', we didn't come up like that...". "I'm not even tryin' to hear about my man's hard knocks...", his friend interrupted, though before he could move to consolidate his argument the first guy needed to finish what he was saying, "I'm not even tryin to say I never raised my hand when I was a kid, man, me an' my brother came to blows enough times", he said, pointing at a small scar on the top of his head, "Coz dat's how kids communicate, you know what I'm sayin', like general frustration. I remember one night, when we were in our room an' he wouldn't shut up, I kept tellin' his ass, then 'Bap!', I thought I kicked him in his back but it was his stomach, an' he was cryin and sista came in the room like, 'What happened? What did you do?', with hair like all nappy in pink curlers...but after that, everything was lovely, man and I never touched my brother again."