Bus Portrait #1: Sublime in his Pimpitude

Seen on the bus this morning: A young black man, at most twenty-two, with a beautiful face--perfect skin as warm and smooth as a melted Hershey's Kiss; gentle, almost feminine features--and an outfit so loud it seemed to be wearing him rather than him wearing it. He got on in a run-down neighborhood best known for street whores and drugs, and he was sublime in his pimpitude. His choice of attire for 10AM: a polyester suit, eggplant in color, with a slight sheen, the fabric woven in a loud pattern alternating stripes and a Greek key motif; beneath this, a lavender linen shirt. His vast suit jacket fell to mid-thigh: long enough to require seven buttons. He sat in an ostentatiously assertive way--perched on the corner of his seat, legs jutting out at a 90-degree angle to each other, one bejeweled hand gripping each knee, his spine in a permanent slouch that conveyed the message that he didn't have to sit up straight for anyone. Methinks the pimp doth protest too much: his posture was so defiant that what it really conveyed was anxiety, a touchy insecurity. The flashy outfit was a smokescreen, his poverty betrayed by details: the worn-down shoes; the fact that he was only wearing two gold rings and his watch, if it ever was real gold, was losing its plating; the slightly ratty wool disco hat in a shade of smoky aubergine, worn at a jaunty angle, the wool having long since started to pill. As the bus went about its business of picking people up and letting them off, he muttered to himself, "Damn, it just stoppin', and stoppin', and stoppin'!"