"Bumping" in the Subway

Journal rdewald's Journal: "Bumping" in the Subway 9

Journal by rdewald on Saturday June 24, 2006 @07:55AM

Sometimes I really feel naive and innocent in NYC.

There's an article in my paper today entitiled "Woman Have Seen It All on Subways." A reporter seemingly randomly talks to women on the 6 line and discovers that they all have a story to tell about being groped or flashed on the subway. I spend a lot of time on the New York Subway system, it caused me to reflect on my experience.

Before I go there, though, I have to tell a Subway moment I had just yesterday. A somewhat phsyically compromised man with a severe lisp got on the train with me yesterday to beg for money and food. This is not unusual, people take advantage of the enclosed space to sell bootleg DVD's, candy and all sorts of things on the grey-market.

The Subway beggar usually begins with "I hate to bother you people...." It's funny how there's a protocol, they've taught each other, and it doesn't take too many of these people, certainly less than a hundred, to make a huge cultural impact on millions of people. There are several variations on the theme, some just beg, some play drums, some dance, and a lot of them sing a capella. I do not give to Subway beggars, I think it is wrong to encourage such an activity.

Anyway, back to the story. This gentleman with a severe lisp, looking like he was about 10 days off of his medication, said "I'm sorry to bother you good working people on your way home, but I'm homeless and if anyone has any food or spare change they can donate I really need it. God Bless and I'd like to entertain you with a song....

Ain't too proud to beg
Sweet darlin'
Please dont' leave me
Don't you go...."

I kid you not. I would have violated my policy and given him a dollar if I had any reason to believe that this was a deliberate pun.

So, New York women apparently all have a story about a groping on the Subway. I have certainly experienced a huge number of inadvertent touches. For someone as contact-starved as I, it's actually a sort of comforting experience to have the inadvertent touch. I don't seek it out, I do everything I know to avoid it, but it doesn't bother me when it happens. I've also witnessed no small number of nipple slips.

I've also had three separate individual encounters of what I"ll call "zipless intimacy" in homage to Erica Jong's "zipless f*ck." These are encounters of deliberate physical intimacy brought on by the random close proximity to another caused by Subway crowding. I have no idea how often this happens, I've never discussed it with anyone before.

The first time, in the Fall of 2000, was riding the L Train from Brooklyn to Manhattan. It was a morning commute and the train was sardined full. I was standing near the door and a young woman with red hair about 10 inches shorter than I squeezed on next to me at the Bedford Ave Stop, the last stop in Brooklyn before the train goes under the East River to arrive at First Ave in Manhattan, a long transit of about 3-5 minutes depending on the train speed. She was facing me, she looked up at me, smiled, and leaned into me and placed her head on my chest, closed her eyes and put her arms around me to steady herself.

Before I could think about it, I had the natural response, I put my arm around her. When I did that, she really settled into the hug and relaxed. We hugged just like the other intimates on the train until we disembarked at Union Square, three stops later, after about 10 minutes of hugging (since there was congestion that morning and the trains were slow). We both exited the train, she turned and smiled at me and went on her merry way. I thought about trying to catch her and talk to her, but I felt it was not the thing to do.

I haven't thought about her in a while, but I still remember her face as well as people I saw yesterday. It's just one in a long litany of weird things that have happened to me in the City. Not all "wierd things" are bad or unpleasant. In fact, most of them aren't.

Incident #2 (Fall 2002): I sat down on a relatively uncrowded train across from a very cute young woman who smiled broadly at me when we made eye contact. To my amazement, she crossed the car and sat next to me on the left while picking up my arm and putting it around her, placing my hand squarely on her left buttock. She put her right arm on my left leg and her elbow was in my crotch. We rode about four stops and the train got crowded at 34th street because some event was letting out at Madison Square Garden. She got up and sat on my right leg and put my right hand in her lap, inviting a grope I suppose, but I just squeezed her hand and she held it until she disembarked the train a couple of stops later. When she got up, she turned around and kissed me warmly on the neck. Again, I was speechless and I just sat there on the train and watched her walk up the platform. She looked over her shoulder to see if I was still looking at her as the car doors closed.

Incident #3 (Spring 2006): On the 1 Train I was sitting on the bench-seat next to the door at the end nearest the door. My arm was draped over the arm rest. Am early 20's Latina stood next to me in the door-well and leaned her buttocks into my arm. I assumed she was just being mindless and didn't realize that was my arm she was practically sitting on so I ignored it, mostly. At the next stop I moved my arm in such a way that she could not have possibly not known that she was leaning on me, figuring that was going to be the end of the encounter. She stepped away for a moment, then when the doors closed she moved back over to me and leaned back into my arm, this time very subtly grinding herself over my deltoid. She didn't look at me, though. This was some sort of fetish or something, she wasn't engaged with me as a person. But, I didn't mind and didn't avoid the contact. She got off the train a couiple of stops later and never made eye contact.

The article implies that it is only young women who experience these kinds of things and it is only older creepy men that engage in uninvited touching and only for twisted purient pursuits. That's not my experience.

Of course, put this in perspective. I ride the Subway numerous times a day, and I have been doing that for more than 2000 days, so we are talking an incident rate of less than one tenth of one percent of Subway rides. But, if one considers that there are about 5 million subway riders a day, 0.1% of that is 5 thousand per day. That's a lot of anonymous touching and flashing.

I guess I can figure what guys get out of it--fantasy material. I've been brushed by a number of full and beautiful breasts as women make their way on and off crowded trains. It can be useful fantasy material.

I've also had a number of less mysterious encounters, one time I was standing next to Monica Lewinski on the 6 Train with a big double-corona cigar in my shirt pocket. She looked at it, looked at me and shook her head smiling as she looked away.

Another time I was standing facing a really pretty woman and she began talking to me about weight loss in a very sensitive and caring way, telling me that the real key is loving yourself, that it all springs from there. Then I got off the train at 28th street, walked up to the street level and her face was plastered on an advertising (cosmetics) billboard, 4 stories tall, on the building on the corner.

Another time Hillary Swank settled in a seat next to me and began quizing me about the Subway changes (this was a couple of months after 911) and we chatted a bit about the surreal quality in the City. She dropped her scarf as she got up and I called after her "Hillary" and her head snapped around confirming the ID. She thanked me for the scarf and smiled warmly. I felt a notion of appreciation that I hadn't made a big deal of her celebrity.

It's interesting what people do when crammed into small spaces.

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