Hand AIDS, Minor Molestation and Larceny: A Typical Bus Journey in Ireland

Where do I start?! I hate buses more than Mormons hate the gays. Perhaps I should tell the story of the worst bus journey of my entire existence. Happening just last week, this bus journey was more painful than if that man who had a baby got kicked in the balls while in labour. (remember him?!)

On a wet Monday evening I awaited the arrival of the dreaded 5.15pm deathbus outside college in the pouring rain. I had a bad feeling about this bus from the get go.. Firstly, because there was enough people waiting at the bus stop to form a relatively large racist mob. I waited. And waited. Of course my MP3 player decided to go ahead and die, the one time of day I actually need it and it chooses to abandon me and force me to listen to the random noise escaping out of the phone of a nearby nakker instead. Finally after half an hour of waiting and feeling increasingly common as time went by, I saw it coming. To my shock and utter disbelief, it wasn’t a double-decker bus. I could see the deadbeats of society packed into the single-decker like impoverished sardines and my stomach dropped. Battling past the people waiting with a flagrant disregard for the nest of elderly women perched at the edge of the curb, I made it to the top of the queue. I was getting on this bus and I didn’t care how many hips I broke to do it. The bus pulled to a shaky stop and the flimsy doors opened. I was immediately confronted with the stench of stale urine, failure and unemployment. I prepared myself to board a bus that was most definitely dirtier than Hilary Clintons vagina.

Handing the questionably senile driver my return ticket, I looked down the aisle and saw about 4 inches of standing space left. Regretting ever having eaten in my life, I squeezed myself into the spot, giving the morbidly obese man occupying two seats the filthiest of looks I could muster. I grimaced as the bus driver allowed all the pedestrians access to his already overflowing deathbus. The last of the people entered and were literally pressed against the door and clung to any fixture they could see, hoping they wouldn’t meet their death on a bus that contained at least 17 drug dealers and probably half the cast of the Jersey Shore. The bus then began moving and the ordeal got considerably worse. The smelly emo man next to me shifted his position so his presumably infected armpit was in my face, causing me to just cease breathing and hope for the best. I had to lunge for a pole to latch onto so I didn’t fall and get trampled to death by the scourge of Cork city. I was too afraid to hold onto to the pole tightly, for fear of contracting some sort of hand AIDS so I was thrown around like Rihanna when she steps out of line.

I then noticed the little ginger scumbag rooting through schoolbags people had left on the luggage rack. No more than 8 years old, he had an accent that would put a traveller to shame. He had a bottle of Coca Cola in his hand and occasionally took a break from his blatant thievery to take a double-handed swig out of the bottle, like it was the Blood of Christ and he was the Pope or some shit. Eventually he gleefully and unashamedly he shouts to his “Daaaaaaaaaaaa” that he has found “2 yourrrrrrrrrrrrro” in a schoolbag. His shabby, also ginger and homeless-for-at-least-10-years looking father greedily snatches it off his delinquent offspring that should have been aborted. Then through his drunken stupor he must finally remember he’s actually in public and this kind of behaviour isn’t normal for those of us with an IQ greater than a retarded melon and he quickly glances to his left and right and shoves the 2 euro coin into his filthy shirt pocket. Afraid to make eye contact in case I caught whatever disease turned him into such a drain on society, I attempted to look out the window. This led to me getting another face full of infected emo armpit. Meanwhile the senile bus driver, apparently unaware that the bus was as full as a 1950’s Irish Catholic housewife’s womb, kept packing the bus with as many peasants as he could find.

We then came to a standstill in traffic. The lack of air in the bus coupled with the overwhelming stench of desperation and poor made me want to not exist. Imagine you packed an oven full of decomposing animals covered in the liquid faeces of an Irish tourist visiting India and the morning-after vomit of a college student who had half a bottle of jagermeister and 3 double cheeseburgers from McDonalds the night prior. Then throw a few infected emo armpits and the soiled underwear of around 6 old aged pensioners and you may just have the smell that was on that bus and that still lingers in my nostrils whenever I think of the lower class. I managed to momentarily break free of my armpit prison and steal a glance out the window. Oh, how I envied the people in their comfortable, normal smelling automobiles. Fucking bourgeoisie!

Just as my lungs were about to melt, we finally began moving again. My stomach dropped lower than Mary Harney's self esteem when I saw another bus stop up ahead. A slew of CIT students waited excitedly for the bus to stop. Accepting that I would probably die on this bus if even one more person was squashed on, I started carving my Last Will And Testament into to the various fat folds of the obese man who was taking up two seats. I figured it was about time such a burden on society was put to use and scribbled away furiously. However much to my surprise and delight, I looked outside and saw the bus zoom past the unsuspecting students. I briefly made eye contact with one of them and I swear I saw a little piece of their soul die. I found myself smiling.

As I entered in the final leg of this hellish journey, I foolishly began to relax. But I had forgotten about the death-hill. As steep as the decline of legal music purchases and housing potholes wider than Louis Walsh’s arsehole, it was the final obstacle for me to overcome. As we began our excruciating descent I forgot all about the hand AIDS and clung to the pole like I was a 19-year-old single mom addicted to methamphetamine. It felt like I was on a theme park ride designed by Walt Disney if he was awoken from his cryogenic slumber and had spent the last couple of decades getting ass-raped in hell by Satan who wielded a dildo borne from a cast of Tiger Woods penis. Basically it was all kinds of fucked up. I closed my eyes tight and prayed that the emo guy wasn’t groping my ass intentionally. Somehow the bus managed to not turn over and kill me and I escaped the death-hill physically unscathed. Not emotionally unscathed though, as that groping still haunts me in my sleep. As my stop approached I frantically pressed the stop button and ploughed my way to the door, eager to escape this place of burgeoning disease and despair. I finally escaped the death-bus and relished my ability to breath in air that wasn’t tainted with mediocrity and regret.

However my exit was bittersweet, as I was plagued with the knowledge that the college year was just beginning. Faced with many more colourful bus journeys awaiting me, I wept. And wept. Then showered. Then wept again.