Homeless Heart Beats

      I just got off at the Downtown Berkley BART stop, it is an underground stop with the equivalent of four flights of stairs to climb before sunlight can touch your skin.  I'm tired today, and didn't feel like dragging my bike, which is as ugly as it is heavy up those God damn stairs, so I looked around for the BART police; seeing none, I jumped on the escalator.  Getting on an escalator with a bicycle is one of many fine-able offenses and rules I try and break as often as possible.  Obviously the creators of BART's rules and regulations have never had to carry a forty pound girls mountain bike from the early 80's up and down subway stairs 4 times a day. 
     Some other BART rules that I regularly ignore are the no smoking signs I choose to observe and disregard, the penalty of which is a $250 fine.  I drink alcohol on the train whenever I feel like it, knowing I will loose my public transportation privileges if I am caught.  I walk on the yellow strip of braille flooring that separates me from the floor and certain death.  I have also discovered that if you walk out of the emergency exit doors with complete conviction, you do not have to pay BART fair.    
     It's not that I don't care about order or respect the institution responsible for building a train capable of traveling under the ocean and delivers me to the most beautiful city in the world; because I do care and I do respect it.  I just don't care to much these days about doing the right thing.  I doubt the economic foundation of BART will be rattled if I jump over the gates now and then or run out of the emergency exit when I have no money; and unless I get to the top of the escalator and toss my bike at the people behind me, I don't think anyone's lives will be dramatically altered if I rise to the streets of Berkley California on stairs that move, opposed to stairs that do not.  
     The homeless man behind me on the escalator however, was profoundly affected by my decision to use it.  Standing just one step behind me, he yelled through his beer dried beard, "You MOTHERFUCKING ARROGANT BASTARD, I WILL SLAP THE SHIT OUT OF YOU, YOU FUCK!"  People were starting to look and back away from this man, but I was more concerned about the attention he might draw from the BART police, and that he might get me in trouble.  I have already been kicked off BART for a multitude of reasons and I was in no mood to fight with train police again.  "YOU FUCKING FAGGOT BASTART," he yelled, hitting the back tire of my bike.  At that I turned around to get a better look at this man.  Even though he was a step behind me, we were still eye level to one another.  He was easily 6 and a half feet tall and thick.  He was old and white, and had the jaw line of a junkie, the pupils of a dead person. 
     As I stared into this man's eyes he screamed so hard in my face that I felt his hot sick breath sting my nose hairs and my cheeks felt his spit, "I'M GOING TO SLAP THE FUCKING SHIT OUT OF YOU!" I was beginning to regret my decision to take the escalator, because while it is easier on my body, it takes about a minute longer and I was only half way up.  I turned back around and gripped my handle bars, and started calculating how hard I was going to have to hit this man, and what part of his body would be best to do it, so that he would fall backwards and I could run.  Would I use my fists, or simply donkey kick him with all my might. 
     By the time I reached the sunlight there were already security personnel waiting to confront the screaming man.  "Shit," I thought to myself, "they are going to fine me for using the escalator," as soon as my bike hit the pavement I was on it, peddling into traffic; traffic being another thing I have no regard for.  As I bolted through a crosswalk that was flashing the words, "do not cross" I looked back at the man who had picked a new target; the security and a woman selling jewelry on the sidewalk.  "Thank God," I said to myself before taking a deep breath and hopping off my bike to walk it beside me.  I had no idea where I was going.
     It's always a weird feeling when I get to Berkley or San Francisco and take the first breath, because it is in that first breath that I realize I have no idea where to go or where I am in relation to the world. It is disorienting, it is intoxicating it is joy and fear and sometimes loneliness to take that breath and to look around myself and know nothing but four directions I can choose to walk or bike or trolly in.   I will often stand in one spot for thirty minutes when I get off the train station, smoking cigarettes and deciding which direction to take, while leaning on my old ugly bike and soaking in the purest sun to ever bleed into my flesh. When I do pick a direction, I am free; from everything.
     I walked my bike for a long time today after the homeless show down on the escalator deciding where to go and soaking in the beauty, the people the mountains.  I thought a lot about what I would have done if he had actually slapped the shit out of me. I pondered this for a mile or so before ending up here, in the Gourmet Ghetto on Shattuck Ave sitting on a patch of grass that separates opposite flows of traffic.  I'm sitting here getting a tan and watching people obey they cross walks and eat pizza a few feet from me.
     Soon after I sat down here, It dawned on me that I have sat in this exact spot before, it is the exact patch of grass where, just two months ago, I listened to the steady pace of Bosnia's heart after we made love for six hours in his studio just a few blocks away.  We had just finished our sex marathon not five minutes before lying down in the grass, my insides were still shifting back in place.  At one point during sex, he stopped what he was doing and pointed at my stomach.  When I looked down at it I could see my heart pounding blood into my gut, like a drum stick was beating me from the inside out, my skin stretched to invite the pulsing.
     I've noticed a peculiar phenomenon with the human heart when I rest my ear to the chest of a man who I have just made love to.  It beats in an irregular rhythm. It beats fast even though it is at its resting tempo, hard as if every vein in the body is parched of blood, it speeds up slightly with the inhale of oxygen and slows to a stop at the exhale.
     If you listen closely, to a mans heart, only after you make love to him, to it's rhythm, while your ear is tickled by chest hair, you can hear the answer to a question before the muffled vibrations of his voice can answer you.  As Bosnia's chest raised my head up and down I asked him, "will I see you again?"  My voice sounded strange, like when you moan during a yawn and you hear your voice from within your body.  Before he could speak I heard his heart speed up, as if I had just slammed an adrenalin needle into his chest plate.  "I love the way I feel when I am around you, so what do you think?" he said.   I knew in that moment that I would in fact see him again, but what his heart told me was that he would not see me in the way I want to be seen.  The tempo of his heart raised because of anxiety and the knowledge that he was leaving the country to go back home to be with his partner of 5 years.  I also listened to my heart, it told me that it would only make my stomach dance during sex, that it would not feel anything for Bosnia.  That it would not feel anything for a while. 

     But that was months ago, and this patch of grass has been cut many times since.