Vincent

Some men are big bellied because they never move. Others because of the dreams they had to eat barehanded so that the ones they love may survive. But men are not binary; they live in the spaces in-between things. He lay closer to having had to eat his dreams barehanded. But he was not a liar; how could he be with his belly in front of him a constant reminder.

He told me he threw an 80 fastball when he was 14. I didn’t know what a fastball was, but I listened because it was cold and I was hungry and I was lonely. He told me he was from New York and that parking was a bitch in the eighties. I told him he’d never seen a bitch like parking in Lagos. We became friends over that laughter. We became brothers when each night I would ride the bus back and forth several times because he too felt lonely at night.

It is quite the trade being a bus driver, moving thankless blobs of humanity back and forth ad infinitum. It is quite the trade being a student, so caught up in the rush of minutia that you forget to be thankful for the men and women who move you back and forth, between minutiae, ad infinitum.

But in the middle of the night, two lonely souls will meet on a bus and become brothers over fastballs and parking and where to take pretty girls on dates for free in Brooklyn. He told me he busted his arm learning to throw curveballs before he should have. He could have gone pro, but weary are those words. Arm in sling he had to eat his dreams. Had to get a job. You know how these things go. He ended up in the south.

He told me he coached baseball when he could get a moment. He told me that he would never teach a young boy to throw a curveball before he turned 16. I still didn’t know what a curveball was. I might find out one day. He died in a car crash. One reckless blob of humanity runs a red light and a brother you made in the middle of the night on bus rides, the memories of which grow hazy, is gone.

You will remember him for the story he told you of when he tried his first cigarette and his father caught him. Or the first time he tasted whiskey and his father caught him. Or the first time… you have started to forget. The minutia grow, it is inevitable that you will forget.

“You alright son? You like you need to talk to someone”