Unfortunately, this story is not odor-free...

I’m on a bus and it’s worse than hell.

Not that I have anything against public transportation. No. I’m a big fan, actually. More people should take the bus to wherever they’re going instead of buying five cars for every possible occasion. Really, the city should do something about all the nervous drivers killing jaywalkers and polluting the air and burning what little we have left of fossil fuels. Maybe a Got bus? ad campaign would do the trick

But this one bus ride I’m taking, it’s just awful.

The bus is almost empty. There’s only three people standing, including me, and maybe half the seats are taken. I don’t know about the other two guys, but the reason I don’t sit down is this bus disgusts me.

I guess I’m just that lucky guy who always gets a hobo sitting within smelling distance. Or a guy who ate the most garlic ever. Or a guy who sweats like a pig.

Or an old man who smells like week-old urine.

I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen anything as mind-numbingly sickening as this guy.

He smells of old age.

He smells of ear infection.

He smells of dandruff.

He smells like a dead dog rotting in a sewer in Mexico.

He’s got this disgusting growth on his ear; it even makes me sick just writing about it.

You got to wonder what this guy’s mental condition is. Either he has the biggest tumor on the dignity center of his brain, or it’s just Alzheimer’s of unprecedented proportions. What else could turn a man into a reeking bag of hygiene’s worst nightmares?

He’s the reason soap wakes up all sweaty and shaking.

He’s why Freddy Krueger visits shampoo every night.

Oh, and did I mention he stinks?

All I can do is look around at all the calm faces of people sitting around this abomination of fresh air and wonder, how come no one else is holding back vomit except me? I have to open the window and stick my head out into the cold wind just so I don’t pass out. And the little oxygen I manage to get into my brain I burn on wondering about these people just simply ignoring the stench.

Then the seat farthest away from this guy becomes vacant. The bus stops and two people get off. But they’re not holding their noses and they’re not throwing up on the sidewalk. They just get off and walk away. One of them the person formerly sitting on the seat the farthest away from what I can only call that guy.

But I don’t sit down. Because that’s another thing I hate besides old people already decaying before they even die. Warm seats. The second worst thing on a bus.

Don’t you just hate it when you sit down and you can still feel the body heat left over by the previous person? Not that it’s really body heat. It’s all their farts and pissed pants and hairy asses and bloody hemorrhoids imprinted on the fake leather seat forever. And when I accidentally sit down on a warmed-up seat, this image of a thousand gigantic asses of fat old women just storms through my head and catapults me back on my feet.

So I remain standing next to the open window and not far enough from that guy.

And the bus just goes on and on forever before it stops on the next stop, which is when I consider getting off prematurely. Alas, before I make up my mind the door closes and I’m stuck with old stinky boy and the people who ignore him.

I wonder what would happen if I told the man to get off. If I told him he smells worse than a record-breaking pile of manure. Would anyone even agree with me or am I the only sane person on this six-wheel gas chamber bus?

Of course, I say nothing, because by now I must be green as a carton character eating Castor oil and I’d probably throw up if I tried to speak.

By the time I manage to get enough fresh air through the window so I don’t have to worry about collapsing on the floor from a stench-induced fatal seizure, I’m halfway home. I tell my self, it’s only going to be five more minutes. But who am I kidding, it’s at least seven.

As I get more oxygen, I start to remember some other encounters with filthy people on buses and trams and in the streets.

A guy sleeping on a bench, in desperate need of a diaper.

A woman with hairy ears and what looked like drool on her coat’s lapel.

Two constructions workers who probably hit a septic tank pipe while digging the foundations of some rich guy’s new house that will now stand on a pond of someone else’s spilled shit.

And of course gypsies, but let’s not even get into that.

Now I’m thinking about the kid I was a hundred percent sure pooped his pants when suddenly the guy stands up. Out of the blue, the old crap-sack is getting off the bus. I should be jumping with joy, but instead I’m just disgusted even more. His blue slacks are all worn out and yellowish on his ass and I know it’s not just because he sits around in the sand too much. I know what that yellowish stain is, and it’s definitely not dirt.

I turn around and miss out on him stumbling out onto the sidewalk and slowly and disgustingly walking away, and it’s all I can do not to barf out my intestines. But I’m free. It’s just a couple more minutes in the bus and the air is getting better with each blow of the wind coming in through my life-saving open window.

Next stop, a man gets on and sits where the old guy sat before. And he just has to smell the piss and feel the farts, but he doesn’t get up. It sickens me even more and I have to close my eyes, imagine something nice.

These ignorant drones on the bus are even worse than the old guy. They pretend they don’t smell all the bodily fluids he soaked himself in. They pretend they don’t see that awful thing on his ear I am once again not even going to describe because I’m turning green already.

These people, they pretend everything is OK, but maybe if they did something, the guy would go away. Maybe if people weren’t so ignorant, old body bags like this guy wouldn’t even exist.

I don’t know

All I care about is I’m getting off.

My stop is being stopped at.

I take a last look around at the gassed people and I step into the cool breeze of fresh January air and it’s a symphony to the senses.

My nose is dancing to the Blue Danube.

It’s ballet in my lungs.

I feel so clean and fresh this must be a deodorant ad.

It would be a happy ending to this gut-wrenching stench fest if it weren’t for that dog shit I almost step in. What a day this is. Really. I am so throwing up when I get home. And if after reading this you’re not doing the same thing, then you people are just as weird and insane as those reek-tolerant jerks on the bus.