A Guide to Slashing Bus Seats

Thomas wrote:
On Nov 8, 1:09 am, Gregory <greg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:


being German is
a whole different way of thinking.



Beethoven was pretty cool though.



Being called Ludwig held him back initially, a bit like yourself,

you didn't let Ballymun hold you back, you went on to write some of the greatest works of Irish literature.

G.


A Guide to Slashing Bus Seats


When I was a teenager I had to obsession. I longed for the opportunity
to slash bus seats. Everybody in Ballymun did this - it was a rite if
passage. You were nothing until you had drawn raw foam. Being a skinny
kid, I wanted to prove my manhood so I would not continue to be
beaten-up by local skinheads who scorned me with cruel remarks before
they set on me.


"Hey Unki you never told me your mother was a barmaid" They would mock.


"Really? She was a shoplifter the last time I saw here" Would be my
reply as tears filled-up my eyes and streamed down my young face.


But no more would Unki be a victim of the Doc Martin in the subway under
the Ballymun Dual-Carriageway on his was back from the library were the
predators lay in wait for me. I would pass this rite into manhood and
slay my first bus seat. I would not be happy until my body was covered
in foam. This would be the only method of winning the respect of they
who abused me.


Now, most of the people who slashed bus seats usually did it while
coming home from school. Usually these were scumbags from Ballygall and
Finglas who took the 19A - like all infidels did. They had such
community pride that they would never think of slashing their own buses
like the 19 or the 33 only our buses! The small single decker and highly
vunerable 36, 36a or the little-used 17a. These buses were very easy
prey as there was no conductor. You paid the driver, made your way to
the backseat, wipped-out the pen knife and cut the blue vinyl until the
white foam erupted, Mount Etna like.


So I decided to skip school one afternoon and make my way to the great
hunting ground of Parnell Square. An area so rich in diesel-fueled prey
that it was like shooting fish in a barrel. I walked along the west side
of the square stalking the bounty and selecting a suitable victim. There
were buses from near and far. From places close to home; Santry,
Finglas, Coolock and others more exotic breeds who destination boards
fell from the pages of a Rudyard Kipling novel like Rush, Mulhuddart,
Ashtown and the remote Navan. A town who's very name would bring terror
to the hearts of the civilized white man.


But I needed a quick kill. I have no time from big dreams of tearing the
back seat of a 33 asunder as I looked down upon the unclean minions of
North County Dublin in their polyethylene greenhouses. It had to be a
quick, clean execution. I gazed around until my eyes fell upon a
destination board that was scripted with words that were an insult to my
name, family and community.


No. 22 - Cabra West


The very sight of the numbers alone was an afront to my way of life. The
two digits resembled a pair of maggots on a festering corpse. Even the
advertisement for Bachelors Peas on the side mocked me. I was a
Mattersons tinned vegetable eater and damn proud of it! This repugnant
drinker of the processed crude would pay for all the misery in my life.
Yes indeed it would pay with it's very foam.


I boarded the bus and looked at the animal behind the wheel in his
ragged CIE uniform. I scorned the elderly and pregnant filth which lined
the sides of the lower deck on they way home from Moore Street or the
Rotundra. I walked up the stairs in a spiral manner which was the custom
until I reached the vinyl abattoir that would become the upper deck.


I looked around and saw nobody. I was alone just Unki, the Stanley Knife
nicked from my Dad's toolbox and several dozens seats who would be in
the throes of diarrhea if only they had aresholes. The dye was cast and
their fate was sealed.


Would it be the front seat? "No, too risky, I could be spotted by a
conductor on a passing bus" I though to myself. I was a sucker for the
classics. God decreed that the back seat and nothing else would
suffice.


On the back seat of a 22 bus on its way to Cabra I would become the 11
year old that shall be man.


I made my way to the back seat and sat down as the bus pulled out from
the square. My hands were sweating with the anticipation and my heart
pumped with adrenaline. Then the sub-human conductor made his way
towards me. I laughed art him as I would a compost heap on fire. He walk
towards me and he knew he was a dog.


"Where are ye going?" he asked in a thick Cavan accent.


"My Destiny" I replied.


"Well it is after school hours so I will have to charge you full price"


I gave him the money and he gave me a slip of white paper. It was a
small price to pay for the greatest journey of my life. The bus left the
traditional and familiar confine of Dorset Street and proceeded up the
Old Cabra Road. I remembered how Bram Stokers described the feeling of a
trip across the Danube as one of leaving civilization behind. I was in
that position now.


The bus passed the Mather Hospital and made it's way to Cabra West via
the Navan road. Then it passed the cement factory and railways yards at
Carnlough Road.


As the doomed CIE bus passed the monolithic silos of the cement works, I
realized that the terminus was not too much further. I pulled the
Stanley Knife out for my pocket. The sunlight caught its nickel plated
blade and you could almost hear the bus seats scream. I selected a spot
on the seat near the stitching so I could slice diagonally across the
seam. The effect of the initial cut coupled with the stitching
relinquishing its grip, would form a wound in the shape of a Maltese
Cross. Thereby signifying the divine nature of this rite and
guaranteeing the legacy of the Knight Templar to survive in a drab
industrial suburb in North Dublin.


I plunged the DIY dagger in the directions of the seat.


Nothing!


I could not do it. I was not able to pierce the vinyl. I chickened out.
Honor, valor, triumph and even God himself had abandoned me at the point
when I needed him the most. Why? What was wrong with me? I did not have
the right to be called a man because I could no perform this manly act.
I was lost. I felt like a fart in a spacesuit!


I was finished.


The bus pulled into the terminus in unfamiliar surroundings. Laughing
and mocking me. I made my way towards the stairs. The sense of failure
was incredible, I was shaking and tears were streaming down my
pre-pubescent face. I turned about to face the stairs and in the corner
of my eye I saw a small piece of white foam protruding from the seam of
one of the aisle seats. I reached over and with all my energy pulled at
the white flesh. A large chunk came out of the seat in my hands. I was
victorious, in a sense. Sure I had not slain vinyl, but I had foam and
who was to know otherwise?


I was a man again.


epilogue.


I walked down into the dank subway as I did every day to make my way
home. The skinheads lay in wait for me - their Doc's primed with Lady
Esquire and ready to be mixed-up with my blood. As I approached them, I
could tell they were quite surprised by my unusual lack of terror. Just
as the first skinhead grabbed me, I reached into my pocket and held
aloft the chunk of foam that was torn from the guts of a No. 22 bus the
day before.


You never forget the taste of a Doc Martin washed down with bus-seat
foam.


unki


.

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