Subway Sexual Har(ass)ment: Or, Why I Should Flush My Metropass Down the Toilet

A few minutes ago, I posted this as my Facebook status:

Jessie Hale Reason #3,423 to hate the subway: unable to tell difference between lack of personal space due to overcrowding, and legitimate sexual harassment.

But I feel that this story really requires further explanation, or at least, vigorous use of slant text, which Facebook cannot at this time accommodate. I need italics to deal with this situation, people. It is italic worthy.

So this morning I got down to Eglinton Station at my usual start time of 8:30, which incidentally is the same time that every single person in the entire city gets there too. It's always busy, and today was no exception, but it was compounded today by the fact that the TTC seemed to be running even less efficiently than usual. So, while more and more people kept showing up, the appearance of subway cars was less frequent. I think the scientific term is "clusterfuck."

A side story: I've been working more or less 9-5 in Toronto for about ten months. Accounting for a two-month period where my schedule essentially consisted of me showing up at the Tightrope office whenever the hell I felt like it and leaving two hours later, along with the usual holidays and weekends, I estimate that I have boarded the subway at 8:30 a.m. at Eglinton Station about 180 times. Now, on very busy mornings, the TTC will occasionally shake itself awake for long enough to send an empty car to high-profile stations, rather than just letting everybody board at Finch and hoping for the best. I was once waiting at Eglinton Station when one such empty subway car ambled along. And stopped. I got a seat on the subway, y'all. It was probably one of the best moments of my entire life (which is a sad situation that might require another, less entertaining blog post). It happened AN single time (HT 2birds1blog.com), out of 180 times, giving it an experiential probability of 0.006, and yet, every single morning, I hope that it will happen again.

Needless to say, it didn't. An empty car actually did amble along, but it just hooted in a surly sort of manner and kept going towards Bloor or wherever the hell the important people were waiting. So, when a subway car finally did allow us to board, it was, of course, packed. I didn't so much get on voluntarily as I was carried along on a sea of sleepy bank-worker people, but I did actually manage to get a spot away from the door and close to a communal pole. I think my gym bag was wedged between someone else's knees, but nonetheless, I was fairly satisfied with the hand (ha) fate had dealt me.

UNTIL.

Ok. Now, I understand that when the subway is crowded, you really don't have much of a choice about where your body goes or which of its parts touch which of other passengers' parts. It's not like I'm going to ask anybody to respect my bubble on the TTC at 8:30 a.m. And I also understand that my ass, being not exactly diminutive, is fairly difficult to avoid even at the best of times. In polite circles, you might refer to it as a round thing in yo' face. But let's just say that whatever was touching my ass this morning felt an awful lot like a hand, with five separate and very active fingers. And let's also just say that that hand felt like it was moving with purpose. I was willing to give the pervert behind me the benefit of the doubt while we were actually moving - maybe s/he was just succumbing to the normal inertia experienced by all physical matter, and certainly the two very short women in front of me who were unlucky enough not to be able to reach the overhead pole were having no small trouble keeping themselves out of other people's bizz - but when we were stopped for a few moments at St. Clair, the damn thing was still moving very actively and very much with purpose.

Trouble is, not only could I not move away from The Thing (appropriate, no?), I also couldn't turn my body around to a sufficient degree to determine whether or not what I suspected was happening was actually happening. I couldn't even see who was behind me! It could have been a completely normal nine-to-fiver like myself whose purse was comprised of unfortunate dangling zippers and knobs that just happened to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or it could have been a sketchy weirdo who gets off on the idea of fondling innocent women who convince themselves that it's probably just somebody's purse! I'll never know. And that terrifies me, you guys. It was a traumatizing incident made all the more traumatizing by the fact that I don't even know if it was traumatizing or not!

So, yanno. If you're in the market for a Metropass, let me know.

New Year's Resolutions, the TTC, and Why My Feet Hurt

My only real New Year's resolution was to complain less. While my complaining is sometimes just - Amazon.com, for example, deserves nothing if not my ire - I complain way too much about things that don't really matter. One subject on which I was particularly resolved not to whine is the subway. The TTC combines two of my most hated phenomenons: a method of transportation I have no control over, and other people. Many were the mornings I would rail against the lady who leaned her entire body against a communal pole as though unaware that other people might choose to hold onto it rather than faceplant into a hostile stranger's crotch, or the college kid whose enormous backpack took up the space that ought to have been occupied by at least two tiny Asian women. But no more! The subway might not be perfect, I reasoned, but it at least gets me where I need to go, and usually more or less on time. Complaining about it would only waste my negative energy, which I need to save in case I ever meet Peter Singer.

The TTC, apparently, took this as a challenge.

Owing to the always nebulous "signal problems," the Yonge-University-Spadina line was shut down between Bloor and Osgoode. When I got into the Yonge & Bloor subway and saw the kind of crowd that I thought was usually reserved for the Pope, I decided I could wait a half hour and hightailed it out of there for a slice of vegan pizza. Half an hour and a crispy crust later, I tried my luck again, only to find that the Northbound platform had become something of a mosh pit. Even the buskers looked slightly fearful for their lives.

Fortuitously, today was the first day all year that I'd worn my enormous boots.


As you can see, those things are nothing if not f'real.

So I walked.

Now, I suppose I should be mad that, despite a 9% fare increase, the TTC still cannot be relied upon to create a public transit system that will actually get me anywhere. And yes, on my long ramble I found many things worth complaining about. For instance, Torontonian business owners have apparently not grasped the incredibly high-tech procedure of dumping some salt on their sidewalks, resulting in what would be called a winter Slip 'n' Slide if Slip 'n' Slides were dirty and dangerous and...ok, it basically was a Slip 'n' Slide. And although my boots are basically foot-shaped tanks, my coat was $30 at Urban Planet and offers about as much protection from the cold as a pair of crossed fingers.

But really, it wasn't that bad. The babushka I improvised out of my scarf kept the snow off my face, and I was warmed by Lady Gaga's ambiguously gendered loins via my iPod. I got to see a lot of Yonge Street, which is actually quite pretty once you get north of the Brass Rail, and while my monthly Metropass is not inexpensive, it's definitely cheaper than a Metropass combined with a gym membership.

I was born in Toronto and I therefore have a right, if not a duty, to complain a damn lot about everything in this city, and twice as much about everything outside of it. But my resolution stands. My feet hurt and I think I have pneumonia, but I still say that any day ending with a fizzy bath bomb and a glass of red wine can't be all bad.