Halloween Dialogue with a Suicide Bomber

As was explained in Paranoid Marijuana Video Diary #10 (video at the bottom of the post). The paranoia returned this Saturday after going MIA for nearly three weeks.

Though it began early in the evening and left a trail of many stories and many wounds, I will recount here only the story of the costumed bomber who sat next to us on the bus.

Paranoid. I’m with my friend, Lorrie. We’re riding the bus. The bus is crowded. Some of them wearing halloween costumes. A stop or two after Lorrie and I board, a man gets on wearing a white-banded keffiyeh and a jacket that awkwardly bulges at the torso.

Though he’s concealed the brunt of the explosive apparatus, I recognize the costume instantly. Clever. In no time at all, my mind begins to twist– would it not make for a grizzly and provoking newscast–an elaborate and tragic meta-hoax, the bus bomber who dressed up like a “bus bomber,” who infiltrated our culture’s depraved and satanic festival of dark fantasy, and, for the sake of Allah, for the sake of Ironic Justice, murdered us.

How would such a legacy endure? Who would preserve the legend once the murderer had blown himself and everyone around him to bits? Who would have ever known how damn clever the bastard had been?

Halloween! That son of a bitch!

The knuckles are tattooed HARDA (right hand) SFUCK (left hand) with the “A” and the “S” both occupying thumbs. The tattoos are not costume. Who the hell is this guy? Could it be? I indulged in such holographic musings long and heavily, amassing a thick and nerve-bending trepidation. Finding myself, once again, resigned to the End, should it be so.

I lie. I can’t resign. I’m too afraid to die quietly. People are too damn quiet on Canadian buses. No one is talking. The Suicide Bomber is not talking. Those damn tattoos on the knuckles.

My loss of control is subtle, and will ultimately prove edifying, but still, I lose control.

Me: I love the costume, but I don’t get this (pointing to the ivory horn *see photo above*)

Suicide Bomber: It’s so I can get drunk as fuck tonight.

He doesn’t sound like a suicide bomber. I’m relieved by this profession of lust for alcohol. Like, really relieved.

Me: Hold on a second, I don’t have a horn flask, does that mean I have to stay sober for all of eternity?

Suicide Bomber: haha

Me: But I still get the virgins, right?

Suicide Bomber: haha, yeah, you can still have your virgins.

I feel better now. I look around. I wonder if anyone else feels better now that the Suicide Bomber has broken the deathly silence on the crowded bus to show good humour, a relatable lust for alcohol, now that he’s promised me my post-mortem virgins. I wonder if anyone else feels more comfortable.

I ask the Suicide Bomber if we can get a picture of his costume and he says ok. I tell him I have a blog, that I’ll probably post the picture on it, and I give him my card. I wonder. I look around at all the faces, I feel in my grandeur a palpable dispelling of many festering concerns, not just my own, and I wonder. I wonder about my job.