By Nadine Dabby, 17, Beverly Hills HS

“I got on the bus after school and found myself sitting next to a guy in roller blades and a Walkman, carrying a giant trash bag full of cans. He was screaming Metallica.
Then Metallica-man started to talk to himself, or maybe to me and the other kids in the back of the bus.
“You know why I’m beautiful? I’ll tell you why I’m beautiful, because I have blond curly hair; a lot of people pay a lot of money to have blond curly hair, and I don’t have to, because I have blond curly hair—see.” He grabs a small strand and shows it to us. Yeah, it was blond all right, but it wasn’t really curly, but I refrained from pointing that out. Metallica-man continued. “Don’t ever smoke pot, it fries your mind.”
“I used to smoke pot, and look at me! look at me!” He shouted.
Eight stops, and I can get off the bus, just eight.
“You know who smoked pot? President Clinton smoked pot! And he admitted it! And he’s still president—that’s why he’s the Anti-Christ!!!” Metallica-man mumbled about how the country was going to hell because the Anti-Christ was elected president even though he admitted to smoking pot.
The other kids and I exchanged awkward glances. Nothing really brings you closer than a lunatic yelling about how the president is the Anti-Christ.
I was down to six more stops when we passed a fashion store on Wilshire Boulevard that displayed happy, beautiful mannequins in the window.
“You think if that mannequin was alive, she’d have sex with me?!!!” he shouted.
I said,”Yes, because you have blond curly hair, and you didn’t have to pay a lot for it because it’s real…”
I was ignored. Metallica-man slumped down in a new form of twisted agony, saying, “NO! No, she wouldn’t… nobody would sleep with me!…”
At this point the bus began over-crowding with people, jam-packed so that you couldn’t move an inch without touching someone else. Metallica-man started singing at the top of his lungs and I bailed the bus one stop early; that was just too weird.”