The Time I Was a Douchebag on the Subway

So it’s Tuesday morning and the subways on the yellow line are mysteriously MIA.  When an R-train finally arrives, it’s so packed that half the people on the platform give up and wait for the next one.  I am about to give up too but at the last second see a tiny sliver of space and squeeze myself in just before the doors close.

Two stops into the crowded ride, I’m still congratulating myself on my urban ninja skills when the guy behind me mutters, “Don’t lean on me.”

This was the old me. (Sculpture by Tip Toland, click image for Artist

I hadn’t been leaning on him, though I certainly could have bumped or nudged into him, given the sway of the subway car and all.  But actual leaning was what the man in the full velvet suit on my left was doing to me.  I was not leaning.

Two years ago, when I was new to New York, two girls had said the same thing to me on the shuttle from Grand Central to Times Square when I had accidentally touched their arms.  I’m talking about two young girls, up to my shoulder in height, braces, maybe even pigtails.  Nonetheless, I backed away as if they had scorched me with hot irons, and tears might have, you know, sprang to my eyes and shit.

That was the old me.  Today, I am a hardened urban fucking ninja.

I turn around and stare at the guy.  He was made of that sort of pale, hardy, fatness that, though it bestowed him with curves, was undeniably masculine, like a rotund marble sculpture.  He wore a large t-shirt the color of dog shit in the spring time and I bet, I just bet, that he watched all the Tomb Raider movies on opening day and doesn’t bring his empty plate to the kitchen after he finishes dinner in front of the TV at his mom’s house.

So I say to this broken but hardly unusual man, “What the FUCK are you talking about?  I didn’t LEAN on you, you FUCKING ASSHOLE.”

In an instant, all eyes in the packed subway car looked up at me and, too embarrassed to stop, I continued to shout a barrage of profanities at the guy who dared accuse me of leaning.  Eventually I gained what you might call momentum, which gave me the nerve to look all around the crowded train and stare at each individual passenger straight in the eyes, daring someone, anyone, to challenge me.

For some reason, no one wanted to challenge me.

“You leaned on me, I felt it,” the guy says with a strange little smile.  It made me livid.

“No, I didn’t, you FUCKING ASSHOLE!” I holler at the top of my lungs.

“Yes, you did, I felt it.”  The fact that he did not raise his voice to match mine only served to further infuriate me.

“NO YOU DIDN’T!”  I could not stop shouting.

“Don’t tell me what I felt,” he stipulated quite reasonably.

“Look!” I yelled triumphantly, pointing at the sliver of space between us as I backed away from him as much as possible without melding into the velvet-suited man on my left.

“So?” the guy jeered.

“So HOW could I be leaning on you? LOOK at that!” I gesticulated wildly at the space between us.

The guy was not deterred.  ”So what! I felt you leaning. I know what I felt.”

“No you don’t, you ASSHOLE,” was my JD-educated reply.

My law school diploma was this big.

We paused a little as the door opened and some people tumbled out and twice that number squeezed in.

After the door closed, we resumed arguing seamlessly.

He remained adamant that I had leaned on him, repeating, “I know what I felt,” over and over in his soft, almost sing-song, way.

I could not for the life of me understand how he could maintain such calm while my feelings towards him bordered on the homicidal.

“WHY would I lean on you?” I screamed, this time at the subway car ceiling, daring God Himself to contradict me.

He shrugged, “I don’t know, but you did.”

Then, the worst possible thing that could have happened, happened.

“No I didn’t! It’s a… a question of intent,” I stammered.

We all know about the beta male lawyer who gets off on bullying busboys and bouncers with stupid law shit that he learned studying for the bar exam, even though he’s a total pussy at work.

I did not want to be that guy!

I stood frozen in silence, terrified that someone would say, “Oh great, a fucking lawyer!,” and call me out on the douchebag that I was.

And what was even worse was that what I’d said didn’t even make any sense! Everyone was probably snickering to themselves and thinking, “What kind of lawyer is she, her arguments are zany!”

“Whatever, you leaned on me,” the guy whispered triumphantly, sensing my rapid decline.

“Whatever, don’t flatter yourself,” I muttered defeatedly, thoroughly shaken by my own douchebaggery.

The rock and sway of the subway car lull us into silence, a silence in which I stew in my own abject failure as a human being until I am seized with the terrifying idea that the subway guy works at my firm.  I imagine us walking side by side into the same office building, then standing together in a crowded elevator while he regaled everyone with the story of the angry lawyer that could not even put together a worthwhile defense.

Ha ha ha, she is so dumb!

When he gets off the subway car a couple of stops before me, I breathe a giant sigh of relief.

A stylishly dressed man who had been reading the NY Post the whole time moves to stand beside me in the still-crowded subway car. He nods at me and smiles.

“That guy…” he began.

“He’s a FUCKING ASSHOLE!” I was so glad to be able to defend myself without anyone there to challenge me that I didn’t even realize I had sunk so low that I was actually talking shit about a stranger behind his back, to another stranger, on the fucking subway.

The stylish man grinned, “He liked you.”

“What??”

The stylish man nodded knowingly, as if I would be pleased with this piece of information.

Years ago, perhaps, this might have been charming to me and tickled my chewy girlish center.  But these days, post-graduation, pre-coffee, and on the way to work, my center is an impenetrable fortress of ice and stone.

I look humorlessly at the stylish man and ask him if he has the time.

Urban Ninjas don’t like to be late for work.

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