BY Tenere Williams • PHOTO Glenn Pebley

As you may recall, on my last adventure on the L.A. Metro, I had a homeless man telling me that I needed to throw away my dress shoes because he didn’t particularly like them. Mind you that advice came from a  man who was not wearing any shoes at the time.

So this past Monday when I boarded the train, little did I know that my eyes (and other senses) would be opened wide due to a horrific scene I will now recount for you. I must warn you, this story is not for children, the faint of heart or those who get queasy easily.

As I opened the paper Monday morning, I thought for sure that I was going to have a nice quiet ride to Downtown LA. Now, if you’ve ever ridden a train in any city during rush hour, there’s that surreal moment before the passengers are let on the train where you can see what looks like people yelling, talking loud, etc. but you yourself can’t hear it. So it just looks like mouths moving with no sound. Then when those doors open, its like a wall of noise enters the train and destroys any peace you thought you had.

Along with the passengers entering the train, entered one of the homeless ladies I commonly see on my train route (I don’t know why, but I seem to be a magnet for homeless people).  She’s actually a nice lady, not a pushy homeless person, and I generally try to give her something when I can.

But I’m going to be honest…on this particular trip, I just wasn’t in the mood. So I stuck my earbuds in my ears, looked out the window and hoped she would just pass me by when she came by looking for money.

Well, she made her rounds up the aisle and I saw her drawing near. I was sure she’d see me looking out the window and continue on to the next passenger. But what happened next may have changed me forever…

As she passed me by, the lady in front of me pulled some money out of her purse to give to the woman. Now after a couple of seconds, I turned from the window to notice the two women sitting across from me making strange faces.

The first woman’s face looked horrified, like she was on the ride Freefall at Six Flags Magic Mountain and the ride operator had just dropped her from 15 stories high. The other woman had the “stink face”—you know the look—lips curled up, eyebrows crunched down and shaking her head like she smelled a combination of old cheese and hot garbage.

I turned to see what the women were looking at and was met with a full on bare butt moon about a foot from my face! I mean if she would have farted, I probably would have felt it!

Apparently the homeless woman had dropped some change that the lady in front of me had given her and she was picking it up. Good Lord!

I kid you not when I say the woman had on no underwear, her t-shirt was hiked up cuz she was bending over and her pants were around her knees. I was shocked, confused, scared and mad…all at the same time. It was truly horrible.

And on top of the nasty booty in my grill, it seemed like an eternity for the woman to pick up the change! Now again, I’m not making light of her being homeless, but c’mon dogg, nobody would be prepared for something like that—especially at 8:00 am.

The funny thing was that after she picked up the change, she just mozy’d right off the train and didn’t think twice about it. I thought to myself, “WHAT?! No apology? No sorry-I-almost-left-my-booty-cheek-prints-on-your-face!”

As a result of the whole experience I am now emotionally scarred and wear a full-on gas mask on the train and jump back whenever anyone drops change around me.

I also saw it as a way of karma coming back and saying, “You should have given that lady some change! You heard me knockin,  you should have let me in the first time, punk.”

Lesson well learned.

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What’s the nastiest encounter you’ve had with another person that made you visably upset?

Tenere can be reached at twilliams@oyemag.com

Tenere Williams has lived in Los Angeles all his life. He loves eating at all kinds of food trucks and will not hesitate to destroy a kid 10-0 in a game of one-on-one.

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