Final Essay

One scorching New York City day, so hot that the air was wavy, and so long ago that I knew I’d had sex eleven times in my life, I was on the subway heading to work.  It was mildly crowded on the train, but nothing overbearing, and it took a moment for me to register that a man had come up behind me and started feeling me from my boobs to my belly to my butt. From his clothing, level of apparent hygiene, and utterances to an unseen character named Charlie, I surmised that he was a residentially challenged citizen. Having been raised to believe that nobody was to touch me in my happy places without my approval, and having been schooled by women who didn’t invent Gender Studies but believed they did,  I hollered at the top of my lungs, “No! Get your hands off me! Don’t you touch me!”

Well, Charlie’s buddy listened to me. He backed away, hands in front of him, perhaps a bit scared in whatever way his self-medicated hallucinatory haze could muster, and toddled off in a tardive dyskinesiac hustle. I bear him no ill will. However, to my fellow riders that day, they with their attachés and their Wall Street Journals and their gazes everywhere but where I needed them, I bid them a hearty Fuck You. Nobody looked; nobody said a word, not during and not after. That part has stuck with me more than anything that came before. 

If I were to get molested on public transportation today I think my expectations for me would be higher, and far less for any spectators. Maybe eighteen years ago I was new in town—heck, I wasn’t even living here then; I was a sloppy visitor. Maybe then I was still suburban on the brain; all apologies, gazes downward, speaking too softly for the waitress to hear me ask for more coffee--looking too young and chubby for anybody to want to help keep some sicko’s grimy claws off me, even when I yelled. Actually, when I go back back back in my memory, I seem to remember that any drops of sympathy that were on that 7 train were directed at the man. What is that all about? Were people sad for him that I was the best grope he could find?

Let’s cut to today:

I pretend I’m on the A train, and I’m late for work. I didn’t have a chance to shower this morning because the hot water was out again and the super wasn’t answering his cell phone. Sure, I could have taken a cold shower, but those hurt, so I just washed the necessary parts with a washcloth and hoped for the best. The time is 8:52am, so there’s no way I’m going to make it to work on time, and I’m already crushed up against the door and a metal pole because two Austrian tourists are backpacking across New York City and I’m in the way of their bedrolls.

I feel something. I’m being touched! Massaged? Someone is actually rubbing the rolls of my belly fat. What the fuck? I swivel around as fast as possible despite the encumbrances. I see him, again, just as he looked eighteen years ago. He still doesn’t look dangerous, but his hands are still on me. The biggest difference is in me; I’m a New Yorker, now. I’ve lived here ten years. I know how to get a seat on the bus and how to ask for cream instead of milk for my coffee. I ignore the free daily newspapers and can’t be taken in by the comedy show runners in Times Square. I look at this guy, Charlie’s old friend, and I make my hand into a closed fist. And I take that fist and I punch him with all my might into his lower jaw. He makes no sound, but stumbles backward. I hiss at him, “Don’t you ever touch me again.”

Surprisingly, or not, nobody notices. This is just classic NYC transportation entertainment. So what if nobody came to my aid? I wish I’d known when I was a kid that they can indeed all go to hell after all. It turns out I don’t need anybody. I feel like spitting as I say that last line.