I am walking by a couple at the gym who are arguing.
The wife yells at the man, “We come all the way to this country and you have to go fuck that Algerian at the bus station!”
Read moreHe is small in stature and looks smaller now, hunched in the cubicle he is using for his clothes. She too is not tall but she stands over him as she yells, her back to me, as I walk past them.
I am guessing they are from El Salvador or somewhere in Central America.
The cubicles are lined up in a row against one long wall, all beige in color with a single seat and above the seat, a hook for your clothes, and above that, a shelf for anything else you might have brought with you.
I continue towards the showers where, outside of the entrance, there is a small group gossiping about the argument. Men and women, and a couple of smaller boys, lie on the floor, in the semblance of a circle, some propped on their elbows, others lying down but fully face up.
“Well we all have had long bus journeys,” I point out, as I squat down with them.
I think back to my first job when I had to take three buses back to back to get to work. One of the men only had to take two. And a couple of others acknowledge the same.
“And bus stops can be dangerous,” I continue, then one of the women agrees with me.
“Besides if you have a woman rub her pussy in your face wouldn’t you be all over it!” I add.
The woman looks shocked or surprised at my language, especially that I would use such words in front of the boys, in front of my own son, no less, but another man sitting opposite me in the circle nods and smirks.
Photo by Anthony Starks via Flickr