“Move!” she screamed, as I turned around in the direction of a voice that seemed desperate, yet firm. I looked up, and noticed a woman sitting right across me, looking at me with fierce, wide open eyes. I was on the cell phone in an extremely important call, and had moved to this exact spot because everywhere else people were playing loud music.

I was at the FedEx Kinko’s, ready to fax something when an important phone call interrupted my task. I was almost finished, but the phone call was more important than the fax in question. I walked outside and occupied a spot. I had now infringed on somebody’s territory.

The angry face, harsh glance, and red eyes told me this lady was very mad. I hesitated. Surely she wasn’t talking to me. I looked behind me to see if she was talking to someone else. My fears were confirmed. This lady was talking to me.

“Are you there?” The voice on the phone said.

“Yes.” I hesitantly replied, not quite sure how to respond to this oncoming threat.

The woman noticed me staring in her direction, so she reaffirmed her threat, “Yeah you. MOVE! This is MY AREA!”

The threatening woman (aka, screaming lady) seemed ready to force me from my position if need be.

As I looked at the lady who threatened me, I noticed a homeless woman nearby; one of her arms was prosthetic, with a robotic-looking piece with claws ready to strike at any moment. I couldn’t really tell if “she” was a he or a she, but for purposes of clarity, I will assume that she is indeed a she. “She” luckily didn’t threaten me, as I would have moved in a second for fear of being struck down by robotic limbs. The other lady, however, would not stop her threats.

There was loud music on both sides of the street, so the spot I was sitting at was the only spot I had the least interference — until now. For some reason, I had picked the one spot (an area, at a bus stop) where this woman (whoever she was) felt threatened because some guy was talking on his cell phone on a call that could not wait.

Fearing that I was being too loud, I talked a little quieter (yes it is possible, for those that know me). However, the volume of my voice didn’t calm the woman down. She made it clear that I should move. I moved to the side and stood up, but she was still not happy. She wanted me to walk far away. I couldn’t. The music was too loud and the phone call was too important to have been interrupted by loud gangsta music, or this mad lady.

“MOVE OR ELSE YOURE GONNA GET YOUR GOD DAMN ASS KICKED”

And I think my “ass” felt threatened. The woman started saying that she would kick my “ass” if I didn’t disappear. I just wanted to talk on the phone. I didn’t care about my freedom to go away at that point. I didn’t care about my freedom to drive at that point. I didn’t care about freedom to say stuff at that point. All I cared about was the freedom to talk on my god damn Kyocera phone, and the freedom to sit in that exact spot. Besides, the last time I checked, I paid the freaking taxes for the bench I was sitting on.

The screaming woman didn’t care; she kept yelling that she will beat the crap out of me, and she kept repeating that at the top of her lungs. Some rubberneckers started to stare at me. They were probably wondering who this guy was that could infuriate a lady so much. I got tired of standing. Screw this woman. I sat back down. For a moment, I felt like Rosa Parks defying a screaming lady’s demands.

“HEY YOU ASSHOLE!! YOU GONNA MOVE???” I looked at her with a serious face and nodded a no. I was talking on a cell phone. To heck with this lady, since I wasn’t bothering her directly at all. As a method of retaliation, she started picking up her papers and started throwing them on the other side of the bus stop. Her retaliatory methods encouraged me to keep sitting.

Finally fed up with this woman, I decided to embark on a case of hired mayhem. I ended up hiring a robotic-armed woman as my secret agent to silence the screaming woman who had a fetish with the spot my ass was parked on. How did I achieve such a feat? Read on….

The screaming woman, furious and crying like a little baby, yelled (even louder than before), “WILL SOMEBODY GIVE ME MY SPOT BACK? HE FUCKING TOOK IT!”

There were other people sitting on the bench, and I had changed my bench spot several times by sliding from one end to the other. She simply had a problem with me and my cell phone existing in this part of the universe. The homeless woman with the robotic arm came around again and asked if I had some change. I smiled a sorry face and nodded a no, and then I had an idea! I motioned the one-armed woman to come back and took out a $5 bill, and pointed at the yelling woman, who was still yelling, and made some figures with my hand to show that she was talking a lot.

“Get this woman off my back.” I implied with my gestures and figures.

Then, while I was on the phone, listening, I pointed at the one-armed woman and made a zipper type gesture on my mouth. The robotic lady computed for a few seconds, looked at the other woman, and then smiled with a huge grin and then looked at me and whispered “More.”

She had understood what I wanted, and she wanted more money. I looked at the screaming woman; she had taken out her cell phone and was doing something on it, while still screaming like crazy.

I looked at the one-armed woman, and then took out another $10. The one-armed woman said “More“, so I took out another $20. She immediately took the $35 with her menacing robotic claws, put her index finger on her lips as if telling me to be patient or silent, and then walked off in the other direction.

I was stumped! I thought “Wow, $35 given away for nothing!” I myself wanted to scream at the robotic lady, wanting to tell her “At least do something before walking off with my money to buy a stainless steal cleaner for your robotic arm!”

Then…

The iron-arm secret agent strikes!

I was sitting, looking in the other direction, almost starting to become moody as the lady kept yelling all sorts of profanity at me. Then, all of a sudden, I heard a huge “AAAAH” scream, from some female. I heard some people scream too. I looked in the direction of the screaming woman and noticed she was on the floor.

“What happened?” I thought in ignorance as the robotic woman jumped on the threatening lady and proceeded to beat the crap out of her.

The screaming women started pulling hair and kicked my robotic savior, and the two started shuffling on Shattuck street between Center & Allston, stopping the oncoming traffic from Center.

Many people started running towards them, some trying to get them off. The one-armed woman had fulfilled her promise; she had shut up the woman for $35, though I never imagined it would be through a fist fight. I wonder if I missed the actual action scene, with the iron-fist hitting the screaming woman from the side, while she was still screaming. Who needs to go see action movies in a movie theatre when I can direct my own, action-packed movie for only $35. Talk about reality TV.

The two women were finally separated from each other by some nearby people, and the robotic woman started walking towards me. Some guy tried to stop her from simply walking away and she yelled with her iron arm pointing at the guy, “YOU WANT MY DAMN ARM UP YOUR ASS?” The guy backed off, scared.

The screaming woman started to push and hit others around her, so people started wondering if everyone in the universe was crazy. As the iron-clawed woman approached me, she started saying out loud, “Put down the fucking phone and walk away foooo’” She started sprinting and it was an epic scene; have you ever seen a woman with a robotic claw hand running down on Shattuck street, or any street in the world? I knew I had to move now, no matter what. I couldn’t just put the phone down, so I started walking towards Fed-Ex again. I stood outside it for a few minutes, watching the chaos that Bes had just created from across the street. After the important phone call finished, I went into Fed-ex and started faxing the things I wanted to fax. I kept checking outside every few minutes to see what was going on. The police had arrived, and they were probably asking different people different things. No one was pointing towards me, which was good. Within 20 minutes or so, the street was clear again and there she was, the screaming woman, sitting at the same spot. Some people never learn.

I left FedEx Kinko’s and started walking towards my car. I got into the car, wondering about what had happened. That was probably the 7th nice incident that had happened to Bes on that same day, so it was noted in Bes’s memory for future reference. If only Bes could write a book, it would be awesome (I’m accepting pre-purchases).

I started driving down the street and had to stop at the red light. The light was one light before the screaming lady’s bench area. I heard the same lady screaming again, so I thought she had spotted me and was alerting everyone again. I looked in her direction, surprised. She had not spotted me. She was yelling at some girl who was sitting at a bench near the bus stop. The girl didn’t have any cell phone on her, but she did have a terrified look on her face as she got up and started walking away really fast. I wonder why the screaming woman got mad at her. If only that terrified girl had thirty five dollars.

Perception ruled almost everything

The screaming woman viewed the whole scene as being able to be solved by her yelling at me, without perceiving my situation. I had looked at the situation considering the idea that anyone can sit at bus stops, and that I was not bothering anyone, and that the woman was not homeless. Many homeless people have territories in the Bay Area, so if you invade that space, they can get upset. The screaming lady was surely not homeless, so I thought the invasion of territory shouldn’t be significant. The one-clawed woman/male/something assassin had looked at the entire perspective based on how he/she/it could return some value to me for the $35 I gave to the iron claws, and hitting the other woman seemed the only way for her to achieve some useful results. The imagined or perceived perception of everything resulted in three different characters causing a chain of events that the universe observed.

Who said one-clawed people were evil and not trustworthy? Chaotic, yes. Extreme, yes. But trustworthy, I think. Or at least this one-clawed human being was.