Sunday, 9:00 a.m., Hayes Fillmore - Union Fillmore

Why am I always surprised. I am such a feeble creature. The way I have weather amnesia in SF. I find myself saying, "It wasn't this cold last summer. It didn't rain this much last Spring. It wasn't this warm last May."
But it's Sunday morning and the bus is not supposed to be this full. But it is and for some reason, I am surprised.
I get herded to the middle next to a teen mom. There is a small, Chinese woman sitting in front of me. I'm damn near straddling her. And she smells. I know in America we have some absurd obsession with hygienic smell, but really, she smells like how my ex who worked in a kitchen, how the bottom of his pants would smell after being dragged in sink water and discarded beef cutlets soaked in garlic all night.
The mom is holding her maybe two-year-old son. The boy is staring at me and I quick stick my tongue out at him, lowering my defense status to that of a toddler. He looks away and begins kicking the Chinese lady in her little dome covered in a floppy hat. I think of saying something, but if I open my mouth I imagine smell particles flooding in like a whale eating krill, so I would taste her.
Finally, the woman grabs the child's foot and says, "He kick me. He kick me too much."
And the teen mom responds, "So? It's a fuckin' crowded bus. Get a car if you don't like it." Everyone goes quiet and stiff. Confrontation on the bus mimics an instant game of freeze tag.
"You old bitch," mutters teen mom.
At Geary the man sitting next the elderly woman gets up and teen mom sits down with her child. The child, a little over an inch away from the elderly woman, just stares. Stares and then stares some more at her now.
And then...I fart.
I have no idea how it escaped. Liked a trained double-agent, it is silent and violent and it smells grotesque in the way that only unassuming girls can fart. It is peeling my eyelids back it is so bad. It is too warm on the bus for farts of this magnitude and it just expands and lingers at nose level like a half-dead balloon.
I look down at the Chinese woman and try to glance over and place blame, feign like it was the boy. But, she is covering her nose and mouth and glaring with two, angry round eyes. There is no fooling her.
So, I start to laugh. My shoulders are shaking. Because my smell trumped her smell and that is some accomplishment.
The teen mom sees me laughing and says, "Holy God, was that you?!"
And I can't stop laughing, my face clown red, and I say, between chuckles, "Yeah."
"Oh my fucking God. My baby's shit don't even smell that bad."
I say that I am sorry, but I can't stop cracking up.
"Woo, girl. Daaamn." The toddler is hysterical with giggles.
An older guy behind me, pushing me and also pushing 300 lbs. says, "That's almost impressive."
And now, we're all laughing. Me and the hundred people crammed into the 3 x 3 space where we are standing smelling my ninja fart. Everyone laughing, except the little, smelly Chinese lady still covering her nose and mouth.