Monday, October 06, 2008

Subway Altercation






I was involved in an A-1, blogilicious subway altercation today. It was about 10 after 8 this morning. A subway rolled up to a large crowd of commuters, and against my better judgement, I crowded in alongside them, my body twisted unnaturally against half a dozen strangers. Even after the next stop the car was still bursting. We were like strands of straw haphazardly bundled up in a bale of hay. No one wanted to be there, but one guy - a bulky, meaty dude with a little turd of a ponytail - began fussing at the tall, preppy guy next to him. The meaty guy was pretty scary looking, all shoulders and biceps. But he was really going off and it irritated me. He was telling the guy to give him some room, that he was crowding him. The preppy guy was trying to explain that there was nowhere to go, but the meaty guy just kept on fussing. Here we all were, all in the same boat as him, nowhere to go, and he was acting like he was the only one whose personal space was being violated. So even though it goes against the New York code of conduct, I spoke up.

"If you don't like being crowded, then don't take the subway," I said. "We're all crowded."

So he said, "Shut up, BITCH! Mind your own business. No one wants to hear your problems."

So I said, "That's right. So why don't you shut up."

He said, "Suck my DICK!"

I said, "No, thank you."  I said it serious too. Even though I was quaking in my shoes a little, I kept my snark going.

He said, "I bet you would like it. It's really big."

"I doubt it," I said, snorting.

"Do you want me to take it out right here and show you?" he asked, threateningly.

I thrust my nose into the air. "Absolutely not."

Then we rode in awkward silence until I got off the train, 3 stops later.

No one jumped in or made eye contact. New York style.

Later, I felt kind of bad. Clearly he was having a bad day and was acting out. Perhaps I should have given him a hug and drawn a unicorn on his wrist. Or a butterfly. I'm sure that would have helped.

1 comment:

JR said...

This is great. He definitely did not need a hug, maybe a swift kick, but not a hug.

I have a favorite subway story that I would like to share with you, Hicks in New York. So I was on a train and some guy propped the subway door open with a box while he arranged the rest of his stuff on the platform. We waited about 30 seconds as the door tried to close over and over on the box. Fed up with waiting, some guy on the train decided to kick the box out the door onto the platform so the doors could close and we could leave.

Realizing what happened, the dude ran up to the subway car and they started yelling profanities at each other through the glass of the closed door. And then the unthinkable happened, the door opened back up for no apparent reason. The guy jumps in leaving all his stuff behind and practically tackles the other guy throwing him on the floor. They start fighting, but realizing he left all his stuff behind on the platform, he jumps back out to grab it, mid-fight mind you, and the doors close just before he can get back in and we leave. Good times.